re: Breaking news on Fusion hearing today

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Glenn Simpson, who founded Fusion in 2011, also acknowledged to the House panel that he did not verify information in the uncorroborated and salacious dossier before briefing reporters on its contents during the campaign

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Wait, so is Simpson saying he leaked the dossier to the press? When he says "briefed" does he mean "talking" or does he mean he made copies and passed them out?

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I appreciate your perspective, but I disagree. I think both it and the dossier are definitely news.

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If that’s the case then I’m apparently to believe that no other president elect has ever been briefed on foreign produced opposition research by the Intelligence Community before and that it was such an unprecedented event that it must be reported on.

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Saying the President was briefed on it is "laughably stupid"

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1. The contents of the dossier were “laughably stupid.”

2. It wasn’t Tapper’s intent to simply make the public aware of the fact that Trump was briefed. The reason he reported on it was to draw attention back to the crumbling Russian collusion narrative while at the same time knowing that a bottom feeder would print it.

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If salacious stuff was out there about any other politician floated by a foreign power, and the IC briefed the pol on it, I'd find it newsworthy.

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The media apparently believes otherwise.

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It was Tapper’s I rent that was unethical. The existence of the dossier was well known to the media for weeks if not months prior to it being reported on. If they truly found it newsworthy and credible they wouldn’t have waited to report on it.

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think there is an auto correct error in there or something, I'm not following

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I don't remember specifics about what Buzzfeed said but I know CNN et al were over the top with the "we can't verify, we're only releasing bc Buzzfeed did" stuff

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Look, if you can't remember that CNN was running daily, constant programming focused on "what does this all mean" detailed discussions of each bullet-point on the dodgy dossier, then there really isn't much to talk about with you.

Almost every single time they mentioned the document, they would say something similar to, "We have not had the time to verify this document." They would then add, "But these allegations are so salacious and damning that we would not be doing our jobs of bringing you the news if we did not point out how incredibly bad of a person Trump must be if any of these items are true." At any rate, it was fuel to non-stop attack Trump.

If you don't remember it that way, then you are a damn liar or an unfortunate imbecile.

Choose one.

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establishes my original premise.

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Your original premise is that you didn't remember any of the media discussing the dossier.

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I'm uninterested in whatever dumb choice you're trying to force me into in some unremarkable defense of Trump (who isn't under attack by me in this thread).

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I'm glad you recognize that the choice I was giving you was empty (and not truly meant). My point in adding it was to highlight exactly what the news media was doing with the Trump Dossier.

CNN, especially, was 24/7 pounding it's viewers with 2 empty choices: The Trump Dossier is all fabricated and made up, or it is all valid and real. And their talking heads made no effort to hide which choice they wanted its viewers to make.

After months and months of CNN reporting about how inferior and such a bad guy Trump is -- what impact did that dossier and CNN giving its viewers such an empty choice have?

It did exactly what every successful propaganda machine does -- It gave the people that already disliked Trump a "valid" reason to dislike him even more.

And for the record, I'm bashing CNN here, but they are not the only network guilty of pushing the agenda.

Also, none of my statements are in defense of Trump. You implied that the dossier was news worthy even-though it is bullshite and had not been verified by anyone. You also implied that the discussion of bullshite had no negative impact on Trump.

I obviously have a differing opinion.

ETA: "that's a lot of mad text"... look, I am able to think coherently and communicate in complete sentences. I also am capable of typing very fast. I don't consider any of these capabilities as making me mad.

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Also, none of my statements are in defense of Trump. You implied that the dossier was news worthy even-though it is bullshite and had not been verified by anyone. You also implied that the discussion of bullshite had no negative impact on Trump.

I obviously have a differing opinion.

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My starting position is that I remember CNN "reluctantly" releasing the dossier's content. You can call that reluctance theater, and I might agree. I do not recall considerable energy devoted by CNN (or anyone else) toward convincing the American people that the content should be deemed credible. The one partial exception to that would be the meetings, which media outlets sought to verify/debunk.

I respect the position, as stated previously, that the dossier wasn't newsworthy. But I disagree, particularly with the benefit of hindsight. If the end here is to point out media hypocrisy, then we're at least partially aligned. My argument is that the dossier is regularly used to support that position (media hypocrisy) in a way that I do not find to be very truthful.

I think it does no good to gloss over the truth or exaggerate when trying to point out similar flaws in the media, and that is what I'm contesting in threads like these. It's not a defense of the media, it's my small rebellion against knee jerk reactions, false dichotomies, etc.

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The dossier is newsworthy

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Was it? Lol. It was fake, mot verified by a guy who was pissed about an investigation into Hillary!