Flake's Pravda speech

[dukkha]

Most "sources" are not anonymous. They are known to the journalists who count on people being willing to speak off the record because of fear of retribution.

Deep Throat was not anonymous...he was a protected source.

So are the many others who are quoted for attribution...and as sources.

off the record isn't synonymous with anonymous -correct.
The problem is fake news has been overly reliant on anonymous sources

[Tranquillus in Exile]

Grand jury indicts Maryland executive in Uranium One deal: report
http://thehill.com/policy/internatio...ne-deal-report

The "Maryland executive" was indicted for bribing a Russian official to swing deals for his firm with a Russian uranium-exporting agency.

The Uranium One conspiracy theory alleges that Secretary of State Clinton was bribed by Russians to let them take over 20% of America's uranium reserves.

Please explain what connection you see between these two.

[signalmankenneth]

[blackascoal]

It boggles one's mind to think there are Americans who do not see the massive damage Donald Trump is doing to the concept of a free press.

I still am confident we will survive this abominable administration, but we will be the lesser for it, survive or not.

Luckily, there are people like Flake who no longer have elections to worry about so they can speak their mind without regard to negative political consequences.

How sad it is to see how far we have fallen.

Even sadder that there are thinking Americans who do not see the problem...or who see it and allow ideology to require that it be swept under the rug.

This moment in time should make us stronger, more vigilant, more open to the concept of diversity and the need to fight for it.

Trump will be the best think to happen to the progressive agenda since the sixties. In fact, he already is.

[Frank Apisa]

This moment in time should make us stronger, more vigilant, more open to the concept of diversity and the need to fight for it.

Trump will be the best think to happen to the progressive agenda since the sixties. In fact, he already is.

I hope so.

I am a strong advocate of a progressive agenda...and I think it vital for such such an agenda to prevail. It is my opinion that the continuity of our nation...and of the ideals embodied in our nation...depends on it.

[Bourbon]

so..just sit back and let "advocacy journalism" do it's hatchet job, because..well you know..first amendment and Stalin and stuff..

All the other Presidents had the same Journalism ... so why is Drumpf such a Pussy?

[Frank Apisa]

off the record isn't synonymous with anonymous -correct.
The problem is fake news has been overly reliant on anonymous sources

Respectfully as possible, Noise, that is certain only in the minds of people who want to think that.

The incredible irony is that most real "fake news" right now is coming from the guy complaining about it most...Donald Trump.

[Darth Omar]

That was awesome!

Conservatives - even those who are pro-Trump - need to wake up on this. Trump's tactics regarding the media are pretty textbook for what dictators & tyrants do.

No it isn’t.

Dictators literally control the media. Our media is as free to trade in Fake News today as they were yesterday and the day before. Not even Trump can stop them.

Ironically, your post would qualify as ‘fake news’.

[Cancel 2020.1]

No it isn’t.

Dictators literally control the media. Our media is as free to trade in Fake News today as they were yesterday and the day before. Not even Trump can stop them.

Ironically, your post would qualify as ‘fake news’.

That's a hairsplit - and Trump is working toward limiting the press more through legal action.

His basic tactics are - as I said - what tyrants do. So, no - once again, you have "fake news" wrong.

[tsuke]

The left defends mainstream media because it is part of their party.

The Democrats have been winning the culture wars which is why they have managed to take their partisans and have them installed as "arbiters of truth". Time to take it back

[tsuke]

Democrats yearn for the time when people would blindly believe the NYT just because they are the NYT. It makes their jobs a lot easier. People think now.

[chink]

Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Arizona, delivered a rebuke of President Trump on the Senate floor Wednesday, in a speech that drawed a comparison between Mr. Trump and Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin and called for greater protection of members of the press around the world.

In his remarks, Flake called out Mr. Trump's repeated attacks on the news media, saying it's an "assault as unprecedented as it is unwarranted."

"Mr. President, it is a testament to the condition of our democracy that our own president uses words infamously spoken by Josef Stalin to describe his enemies," reads the excerpt. "It bears noting that so fraught with malice was the phrase 'enemy of the people,' that even Nikita Khrushchev forbade its use, telling the Soviet Communist Party that the phrase had been introduced by Stalin for the purpose of 'annihilating such individuals' who disagreed with the supreme leader."



He added that damage done by the "sustained attacks" by Mr. Trump would not be "confined" the president's time in office.

"Here in America, we do not pay obeisance to the powerful - in fact, we question the powerful most ardently - to do so is our birthright and a requirement of our citizenship -- and so, we know well that no matter how powerful, no president will ever have dominion over objective reality."

Flake said the issue of the protection of the First Amendment and the truth dates back to the founding fathers and that "no politician will ever get to tell us what the truth is and is not."

"Anyone who presumes to try to attack or manipulate the truth to his own purposes should be made to realize the mistake and be held to account. That is our job here. And that is just as Madison, Hamilton, and Jay would have it," added Flake.

He also called on Democrats and Republicans to unite and become "allies of truth."

"2018 must be the year in which the truth takes a stand against power that would weaken it. In this effort, the choice is quite simple. And in this effort, the truth needs as many allies as possible. Together, my colleagues, we are powerful. Together, we have it within us to turn back these attacks, right these wrongs, repair this damage, restore reverence for our institutions, and prevent further moral vandalism," said Flake.

Besides longtime target CNN, the president has picked fights with outlets like the "failing" New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, despite giving interviews with the news organizations.





Flake ends his remarks

"Mr. President, the question of why the truth is now under such assault may well be for historians to determine. But for those who cherish American constitutional democracy, what matters is the effect on America and her people and her standing in an increasingly unstable world -- made all the more unstable by these very fabrications. What matters is the daily disassembling of our democratic institutions," says Flake.

He adds, "We are a mature democracy - it is well past time that we stop excusing or ignoring - or worse, endorsing -- these attacks on the truth. For if we compromise the truth for the sake of our politics, we are lost."

let me help you we are not a democracy, we have never been a democracy.

[Cancel 2020.1]

Democrats yearn for the time when people would blindly believe the NYT just because they are the NYT. It makes their jobs a lot easier. People think now.

Quite the opposite is true. No one who parrots "fake news" is thinking.

And the NYT has an opinion page. You get that, right?

[Bourbon]

The GOP is going to get some Tough Love ... real soon.

[blackascoal]

I hope so.

I am a strong advocate of a progressive agenda...and I think it vital for such such an agenda to prevail. It is my opinion that the continuity of our nation...and of the ideals embodied in our nation...depends on it.

We are standing in a historical moment in time good brother. Moments that often go unnoticed until time looks back on them.

From the moment Trump was elected I said he would be the best thing to happen to the progressive agenda in a long time. But I had no idea it would happen this quickly, that he would be this openly racist, that he would be this rejected even by allies, that he would attempt to rule as king, that he wouldn't even be smart enough to stay off Twitter.

But even more amazing then Trump is the mind-boggling ignorance of his followers. I'm not sure this nation has ever seen anything like it before .. but they are a shrinking minority of brain-dead Americans, rapidly losing power.

Rapidly losing power.

Rapidly losing POWER.

Your hope is well-founded.