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Conspiracy Theories and Flawed Journalism
In case you haven’t been paying attention, Donald Trump has once again stirred up a hornet’s nest with one of his tweets, this time concerning the death of Lori Klausutis, an employee of then-Congressman Joe Scarborough. The story in a nutshell is that Klausutis, an otherwise fit young woman of 28, died in Scarborough’s Fort Walton Beach office from a head injury she sustained when passing out due to an undiagnosed heart condition. It has been a favorite topic among conspiracy theorists for almost 20 years.
The medical examiner’s report should have been the end of it. After all, the outcome of the autopsy was perfectly reasonable. But then several things got in the way. One, the medical examiner that made the ruling turned out to be a bit of a crackpot, arrested a decade later for illegally keeping stolen body parts in a South Florida storage facility. Secondly, Scarborough himself hasn’t helped. Here he is joking about the incident on Don Imus’ nationally syndicated radio show while pushing the launch of a show on MSNBC:
That was in 2003. Laughter is a strange reaction from someone who said it was outrageous rumors that caused him to resign his seat in Congress.
The reactions to Trump’s tweet has been predictable enough. But like so many of the other outrages of the Trump era, the anger is either misplaced or counterproductive. Like the political class that wishes to ignore their own complicity in Trump’s rise to the Oval Office, likewise the press wishes to ignore their own complicity in making the truth a rare commodity in the so-called “age of information.” If you spend three years rumor-mongering about Russia collusion theories and the backgrounds of Supreme Court nominees it’s difficult to take your objections to the President’s tweets seriously. In the end the reality of your headline is “Noted Victim of Conspiracy Theories Shares His Own Conspiracy Theories.”
Someone on Twitter framed the situation thusly: There is no difference between a “conspiracy theory” and “fake news.” That, of course, is nonsense. Conspiracy theories are partly based on the experience that the application of the law is too often double-tiered, with one set of rules for ordinary citizens and another for the well-connected. This is universal. Those on the right see privilege born of political power, those on the left see it as being the result of wealth and race.
In that regard, most conspiracy theories are organic, born of curiosity and mistrust, and perpetuated because the ordinary citizen doesn’t have the resources to disprove them. That makes “fake news” ten times worse. It’s not amateur bumbling, it’s professional malpractice. They have the resources and the skill but lack the motivation and therefore the effort to provide the most truthful reporting possible.
All good reporters and the best stories begin with theories and the simple question, “What if…” It’s the ability to follow through and the willingness to be convinced that dead ends aren’t wasted that makes a good journalist.
But there is also a basic flaw in journalism that needs to be addressed: the two source rule. In an era where elements of the Federal Government are actively trying to undermine and overturn the results of elections the standard for printing or broadcasting, an item needs to be higher than that. As the folks at Fusion GPS demonstrated, finding two or more people to tell the same lie in order to get that lie into the papers and on-air is an awfully easy thing to accomplish.
Fundamentally, a functioning press would be able to able to throttle conspiracy theories without breaking a sweat. But that takes trust from the public-at-large, something that the profession of journalism has willingly abandoned in the pursuance of political goals.
Published in Journalism
A $10 gift card to Whataburger is yours if you get him to demonstrate half an ounce of intellectual honesty with respect to Biden’s treatment of the truck driver.
23 data points that a $35m investigation revealed to be a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
The norms were destroyed before Donald Trump. And since 2016 he has been slandered, vilified, lied about by Democrats and the media, including Scarborough, all of whom wanted to perpetuate the Russia hoax and had no interest in any information contradicting their phony narrative. And that’s only one of many phony narratives they’ve created about the President. Meanwhile, every Republican learned when they saw what happened with Brett Kavanaugh that the lies and slanders weren’t just for Trump, it was for all of them. If you think Trump going away is going to restore normality and comity you are deluded.
It’ll all be fine once Republicans get back to business as usual.
The republicans, I take it, are the one getting paddled. (Is that Mitt Romney?)
Sound and fury, larded with lies and disinformation.
For example, “Kremlin-linked Mifsud.”
If a guy working for the Kremlin was doing all of that, the FBI, CIA, and British intelligence (all of which were part of the frame job) have a really big problem.n
So far Trump has kept doubling down.
In 1946, the Republican Party took back the House of Representatives with a simply slogan “Had Enough?” And the American people had had enough of the Democrats at that point.
With Trump never, never backing down and always doubling down, I think that the most effective question Biden could have would be if Americans have had enough of Trump, or were simply exhausted of all of the lies, all of the deceit, and all of President Tweety.
Chris Cillizza of CNN had an excellent piece at https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/26/politics/joe-scarborough-donald-trump-lori-klausutis/index.html. The money quote:
“Let’s take this out of the political context for a second. Strip it down to the bare bones. And those are this:
“A powerful person is using a massive megaphone to allege, contra facts, that another powerful person was responsible in some way for the death of a young woman. In so doing, the powerful person is dredging up terrible memories for those close to the woman — and forcing them to deal with her tragic death anew. All in service of hurting another very powerful person. The woman — and her family — are collateral damage.
“Without names or politics included, that sort of behavior is the sort of thing we would condemn as despicable. Literally disgusting. The sort of thing that, societally, we would need to stand up against for fear that it would one day come for us and the ones we loved (and have lost).”
If I was Timothy Klausutis, I would be more angry about this. And yet he said nothing at the time. Because only the Orange Man is Bad. Sad.
The electorate of 1946 is dead. Within two years Harry Truman won the White House with the simple slogan of the “do nothing Republicans.” (You would have to have been born prior to November of 1925 to vote in ‘46.)
Again, no one is defending Trump’s tweet. The only one “doubling-down” here is you.
And so will Trump withdraw his tweet?
And how about you? Aren’t you simply “Anti-Anti-Trump”? And if you are “Anti-Anti-Trump” then aren’t you a Trump Enabler?
The Wall Street Journal’s editorial today page states
“Donald Trump sometimes traffics in conspiracy theories—recall his innuendo in 2016 about Ted Cruz’s father and the JFK assassination—but his latest accusation against MSNBC host Joe Scarborough is ugly even for him. Mr. Trump has been tweeting the suggestion that Mr. Scarborough might have had something to do with the death in 2001 of a young woman who worked in his Florida office when Mr. Scarborough was a GOP Congressman.”
The Journal’s editorial board publicly condemned Trump for pushing the conspiracy theory in an editorial Tuesday, saying his comments about Scarborough were “nasty stuff” and “ugly even for him.”
The editorial board added that it didn’t expect Trump to stop his tirade against Scarborough but wanted to make it clear that “Mr. Trump is debasing his office” and “hurting the country in doing so.”
Are you with the WSJ in condemning Trump, or do you believe that the WSJ is another “liberal” newspaper?
I doubt it. Just as I doubt it has any meaningful relationship to how 99.9989% will vote in November. Mean Guy vs Dementia Guy and rebuilding the post-Covid economy will probably be higher on the list.
You don’t seem very interested in what or who has “enabled” the rise of Donald Trump because you’re as complicit as anyone. Just as those, like Joe Scarborough, that straddle the political/media sphere are also complicit. I’ve been pretty consistent in my analysis of the Trump Era. You won’t ever get past it, nor will anyone else in the Republican Party, until you address the systematic failure of how the party has dealt with the day-to-day rumble of partisan politics.
I truly don’t think you comprehend how much of Trump’s rise is directly attributable to George W. Bush, John McCain and Mitt Romney and the professional class of consultants and bed-wetters that pour over polls and the Op-Ed pages of the WaPost and NYT every morning. You know, the “normalcy” you yearn for. Until you (and them) are ready to engage in self-examination you’re stuck.
There is an excellent piece in The Atlantic today by Republican Peter Wehner. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/05/malignant-cruelty-donald-trump/612097/
He writes,
“Donald Trump doesn’t merely want to criticize his opponents; he takes a depraved delight in inflicting pain on others, even if there’s collateral damage in the process, as is the case with the Klausutis family. There’s something quite sick about it all.
“A lot of human casualties result from the cruelty of malignant narcissists like Donald Trump—casualties, it should be said, that his supporters in the Republican Party, on various pro-Trump websites and news outlets, and on talk radio are willing to tolerate or even defend. Their philosophy seems to be that you need to break a few eggs to make an omelet. If putting up with Trump’s indecency is the price of maintaining power, so be it. Will Trump’s white evangelical supporters—Franklin Graham Jr., Robert Jeffress, Eric Metaxas, Mike Huckabee, Ralph Reed—defend his behavior as the perfect embodiment of the New Testament ethic, the credo of Jesus, the message from the Sermon on the Mount? ‘Blessed are the brutal, for they shall inherit the Earth.'”
The piece ends,
“There is a wickedness in our president that long ago corrupted [Trump]. It’s corrupted his party. And it’s in the process of corrupting our country, too.
“He is a crimson stain on American decency. He needs to go.”
Amen.
Sorry, I am not buying it. JVL has an excellent piece in The Bulwark today. https://thebulwark.com/faq-should-twitter-ban-donald-trump/ He writes in part,
“Ideally, a president would have the decency and temperament, experience and prudence to keep from saying the kinds of things Trump routinely says on Twitter.
“And if you wind back the clock to, say, 1970, or 1990, or 2015, there were all sorts of guardrails in place that would have stopped a Republican president from saying the things Donald Trump says.
“His advisers would have told him to cut it out.
“If they didn’t, then conservative intellectuals would have taken him to the woodshed.
“If they didn’t, then congressional Republicans would have told him to lock it down.
“And eventually, by hook or by crook, the president would have gotten the message.
“Those guardrails are all gone. Trump’s advisers are his family. Congressional Republicans are more beholden to Trump than any party has ever been to a president. And Conservatism Inc.?”
By not calling Trump to account, with all due respect, you are enabling his behavior.
Again, quoting people like Wehner and Last as an appeal to authority doesn’t work. These are the same people who helped create the situation that led to Trump’s rise. Stop and ask yourself why have these people have been spitting into the wind for four years. Primarily it’s because they are incapable of detecting which way the wind has been blowing. Last’s “guardrails” are actually part of the problem, not the cure. This is what “enabled” Trump.
If I had to come up with analogy, you and your Bulwarkian idols are like oncologists who want to defeat cancer yet continue to smoke cigarettes – and continue to sell them to your patients. You are not only incapable of asking the question, “How did we get to this point in our politics?” you don’t want anyone else to ask the question either because the answer isn’t one you like. That only assures that you will continue to be frustrated at the current state of affairs.
After the Democrats crush Trump and take the Senate in 2020, I wonder what you will say then.
Senator Romney tweeted a criticism of Trump’s tweet. I stand with Senator Romney, and against President Tweety.
I will say it wasn’t a tweet. Again, the post-Covid economy, China and a LOT of other factors are going drive this election, not the stylistic sideshow the majority of anti-Trumpers have been fixated on for four years.
Bruce Bawer on the “D.C. Right”:
@garyrobbins Let me amend something to the last comment. Elections (all of them) are unique to the moment. The big danger here is that if Trump does lose, the party will completely mis-interpret the reason.
IF they attribute it to style and not substance, if they fail to properly assess the rise of Trump before they try to analyze a loss, they risk enabling the rise of someone much, much worse. But then foresight has never been their strong suit to begin with. They’re still hopelessly stuck driving in reverse with George Bush’s head squarely in the rear view mirror.
This prediction is just as good as your one in 2016.
There were many data points regarding the death of Lori Klausutis that were suspicious and unanswered by Scarborough, one could legitimately come to that conclusion as well.
This reminds me also of how Seth Rich’s family wanted no further investigation either.
You are quoting “American Greatness.” That is hardly a reputable source, like, say, the Wall Street Journal.
The issue with Trump is not style nor personality. It is about his complete lack of character.
I fear that we are getting far afield of the original post, namely President Tweety smearing Joe Scarborough.
Perhaps you will recall my prediction of 2018.
Please let Seth Rich and Lori Klausutis rest in peace.
Unsolved and very suspicious cases should not be left in ‘peace’. It is greatly perplexing to me that a family would not want all rocks turned over and questions answered by all suspects to a murder. Unless the family has been paid off or threatened by the guilty.
There’s your problem. That wasn’t what the original post was about. It was the ineffectiveness of the media and the role that lack of trust played in getting us to this point. That you can’t see anything beyond a need for everyone to share your sense of moral indignation is what led us “far afield.”
Perhaps you will recall that Dirty Cops Mueller, Rosenstein and Comey wrongly still had the President under the cloud of a Special Counsel investigation. That and that every Party with the White Office loses some seats in Congress in the off-year election.