Discussion: Reporter Resigns After Falsely Tweeting MD Shooter Wore Trump 'MAGA' Hat

Stupid.

There is enough evidence that Trump’s assault on the press was the final straw telling this wacko to proceed.

Why make shit up?

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What in hell was Berry ‘thinking’? ‘You got complaints about Fake News? I’ll give you some real Fake News!’

Who the hell did Berry think he was – a privileged liar like Trump?

And apparently from a Republican paper to boot.

WTF?

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And now Berry’s idiocy will be used to refute any hint that the Orange Menace ever uttered a syllable suggesting violence against journalists.

Thanks, moron.

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I’m a scientist and I know and work with a lot of folks who call themselves scientists. 90% of them really are. They are fastidiously scrupulous about bias and work to block or counterbalance any subjective feelings they have about the results of their work. But that 10%? Hoo, boy, do they muck up the field with all their crap, their ax-grinding pseudostudies to promote their favorite hypotheses, their dishonest reporting of methods and framing of results, and their playing of popular press reporters who don’t know their game.

The same is true with the press. Some idiot eager to get a “scoop” goes to press with a rumor they think is titillating without ever checking on its veracity, and the whole profession looks bad. Worse, the Trumpies now have a scalp they can wave around as they declare all non-right-wing media to be full of lies. Makes me want to kick some ass.

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Is it just me or is there a large liquid dose of self- righteoussness in this AP article?

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Reporters should not be making things up, obviously, but the double-standard here is astonishing, isn’t it?

Reporters are supposed to be 100% accurate all the time - regardless of intent - or they are accused of reporting “fake news” and forced to make public apologies or, in cases like this one, resign. They are subjected to public humiliation, especially by competing news outlets.

In contrast, Administration officials, beginning with the Liar-in-Chief, of course, lie with abandon and never face any sort of disciplinary action by the administration. They never apologize. They often “double-down” (a term that, when combined with Trump, now brings up 28 million entries on Google) and lie that much more brazenly.

Goebbels would be proud.

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Of course Trump’s lying has only accelerated, where this reporter was shoved out the door immediately for being a mendacious jackass.

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This is what struck me as well. Not that what this reporter did wasn’t a legitimate firing offense. But “reporters” for right-wing outlets do this every goddam day, and get rewarded for it.

The Information War is being fought with very different rules of engagement. The answer definitely isn’t for the side of Truth and Logic to drop its high standards, but the difficulty of this battle should not be underestimated.

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You just answered your own question - from a Republican paper.

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Bad enough that the description of the shooter as having “long hair” was enough for the Brietbart/incel crowd to start in on him being a socialist hippy democrat, then this.

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I think it can be viewed separately, is the thing. In the modern United States, like say postwar to today, it’s been considered a major, career-ending thing to fabricate a story. No publication of any repute would let you get away with it—you’re out the door that day. It brings the entire media world into disrepute, it hurts everyone.

So that was always the standard, and everyone knew it. The mendacity of the Trump camp is unprecedented, light years beyond Nixon, and yes, their attacks make it even more important to stand behind the reporting and know it’s unimpeachable. But that standard was always there. You can fairly point to many, many deficiencies, many mediocrities, many wrong and bad things in the business. But fabrication was never tolerated in our lifetimes.

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What evidence? Seems like this guy was just fucked in the head and thought doing this was justified because of their reporting of his previous crimes.

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Red hat red-herring?

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That’s the name of the paper: the (Springfield) Republican.

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reporter has resigned after falsely suggesting

Is he saying that he knew it was false?

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What the fucking fuck? How ridiculously stupid do you have to be to not only lose your job in this manner, but take such a giant shit all over your profession in the process AND feed such crazy red meat to a quickly snowballing neofascist movement and its state media propaganda ministry in the process?

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Falsely suggesting? How about falsely claiming? The AP has trouble calling a spade a spade.

The text of the tweet:

Shooter who killed 4 people at Annapolis newspaper dropped his #MAGA hat on newsroom floor before opening fire.

Edit: And what is it about news stories about controversial tweets not reporting the actual tweets?

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He tweeted (since deleted) it.

Personally, I would like to see the tweet. Do the words “probably” or “may as well have” appear? The AP report says “falsely suggesting.” What the hell does that mean?

I have a feeling ….

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I am a career scientist also. Agree scientists are held to a higher standard (daily/weekly critiques of their work, peer review, self review, etc.), but like most fields, there also the dumb and lazy “scientists” who coast as much as they can get away with that would bump your 10% up to 20-25% in my book. Almost Trump approval numbers, although the Repub scientists I worked with were mostly old school decent moral conservatives, not the Tea-Bagging Trump racist kind (a very small subset).

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