1957

I guess I must have, what was it?. My point is that things are often not as black and white as we believe. For instance, there are many days at my house that it would only be raining in one or two out 12 windows, and journalist sticking their head out of one window and pronouncing the a person a liar for saying its is raining or the sky is purple would be wrong.

1958

Perfect. Thanks I’m totally stealing that.

1960

“Honey, should I bring an umbrella?”

“Well, that’s complicated. When I look out the kitchen window its not raining, but when I look out the living room one it is. So beats me.”

Congratulations on having a really big house, though, I guess?

1961

It’s more a function of living in Hawaii. There’s a reason they have so many rainbows in that state.

1962

edit: Oops, supposed to be in reply to @Strollen

Facts = truth.

Spoiler for too many words.

Summary

Regarding covering impeachment, [some] media are treating facts as if they are partisan.
This is pretty simple, really.

Does a US president have broad discretion with setting the direction of US foreign policy?
Yes. This is a fact.

Does a US president have too much power with setting the direction of US foreign policy?
The answer to this is not a fact and subjective. People can make a case for/against.

Does a US president have unlimited authority setting US foreign policy?
No. This is a fact. Congress can pass legislation to impose sanctions or authorize aid. Even, once upon a time, declare war.

Do US citizens have a Constitutional right to due process when suspected of criminal activity?
Yes, fact.

What mechanisms does the US government have for investigating criminal activity conducted in foreign nations?

The Department of Justice and the FBI.
Another fact.

That’s it. There is no the Democrats said this; the Republicans said that; we don’t know — it’s so tribal! — so you decide

In the case for Ukraine, the impeachable offense occurred the moment trump tried to coerce Ukraine into conducting an investigation into Biden [note: no “quid pro quo” required .]

On top of that he withheld aid paid for by US taxpayers for personal gain and tried to cover it up by stashing the transcript of the most secure NSC servers used to safeguard highly classified, critical national security data. The administration released a call summary, not a transcript. Releasing the aid after they got caught does not obviate the wrong doing despite an NPR analyst telling us “well the Republicans have a point.” NO THEY DO NOT. (“The bank robbers forced everyone to the ground and demanded that bank employees open the vault. However the police showed up before the would-be robbers took any of the money, therefore they are free to go.”)

The media did the same bullshit with climate change. A Norwegian scientist at the turn of the 20th century predicted that burning fossil fuels (coal, oil) would raise global temperatures. Exxon scientists in the 1960’s concluded the same. It’s a simple law of physics: carbon dioxide is a green house gas. It is not credible to conclude that global warming is a hoax concocted out of whole cloth by environmentalists desiring government take over or university scientists looking for grant money.

The only** skeptics are funded by resource extraction companies but this did not prevent some people concluding “lol clouds libtards” or “a sea level rise of a few centimeters is nothing to be alarmed about” or “only a few million will be mild inconvenienced” or even “sharia law in the US is a bigger threat than climate change.” (All things said on this forum over the years.)

Edit: **I don’t know if it’s “only” but certainly “primarily.”

TL, DR:
I could go on. There is a huge gulf between policy prescriptions and desired outcomes - where nuance and subjective opinion live - and basic, incontrovertible facts.

You are conflating the two.

1963

It would work if they did something like this…

A says one thing.
B says another.

Quotes are both reported (because of the source) with a notation that A’s facts don’t check out while B’s do.

1964

It’s the gays, isn’t it. I knew it.

1965

Eia kā mākou, ʻokoʻa mākou, a maikaʻi mākou.

1966

In which Chuck Todd has an epiphany.
(This piece is on the long side but worth reading.)

(forcing a space to fix the broken graphic image)
1
2

Three years after Kellyanne Conway introduced the doctrine of “alternative facts” on his own program , a light went on for Chuck Todd. Republican strategy, he now realized, was to make stuff up, spread it on social media, repeat it in your answers to journalists — even when you know it’s a lie with crumbs of truth mixed in — and then convert whatever controversy arises into go-get-em points with the base, while pocketing for the party a juicy dividend: additional mistrust of the news media to help insulate President Trump among loyalists when his increasingly brazen actions are reported as news.

With Todd’s confessions the mask has come off. It could have come off a long time ago, but the anchors, producers, guests, advertisers and to an unknown degree the remaining viewers colluded in an act of make believe that lurched along until now. One way to say it: They agreed to pretend that Conway’s threatening phrase, “alternative facts” was just hyberbole, the kind of inflammatory moment that makes for viral clips and partisan bickering. More silly than it was ominous.

In reality she had made a grave announcement. The nature of the Trump government would be propagandistic. And as Garry Kasparov observes for us, “The point of modern propaganda isn’t only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth.” This exhaustion, this annihilation were on their way to the Sunday shows, and to all interactions with journalists. That is what Kellyanne Conway was saying that day on Meet the Press. But the people who run the show chose not to believe it.

Edit: One more blurb. Todd confesses to naivity for not realizing sooner Republicans argue in bad faith. In 2012, Norm Ormstein and Tom Mann (no left wing liberals they) wrote (emphasis added):

It’s not naiveté. It’s a willful blindness to what the Republican Party had become. Four years before Trump was elected, Tom Mann and Norm Orstein wrote, “The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.” Chuck Todd as NBC’s political director, and Meet the Press as its premiere politics show could have taken seriously what these exemplary members of the Washington establishment were saying back in 2012. They chose not to, but not because of their naiveté. They thought they knew better than Mann and Ornstein. And they were probably afraid of sounding too extreme themselves.

1967

Hilarious. “I’m shocked–shocked!–to find that gambling is going on here.” Nothing will change. MTP will continue to be, along with the NYT editorial page, the bastion holder for Both Siderism. Driftglass has been regularly beating Chuck Todd around the head for years:

1968

Yeah, not a surprise but it certainly reveals the “liberal media” lie promulgated by Republicans and now accepted as “truth,” much like “Republicans care about the deficit” or family values or, well, any of the rest of the bullshit. More insidiously is how apt the label of “corporate media” and the bias that goes along with it now appears.

Related, a surprisingly not half bad NYT opinion piece:

1969

Good thread by Greg Sargent explaining trump’s use of disinformation:

1970

Valuable information there, wrapped in a shameless hard sell for his book.

1971

Heheh.

It ends on a … hopeful! … note. Which just seems all wrong to me! Otherwise alarmingly true.

1972

I was startled to read this - you’re right.

Then, today we get this:

@#$% the NYT

1973
1974

In an update to the NYT debacle, they edited Bret Stephens’ article to take out one of the more offensive references and then tried to editor-splain it all away.

1975

Is that the guy who tried to sue people for calling him a bedbug?

1976

Yep. He and the NYT deserve each other.

-Tom

1977

The NYT has been spamming me for a few days trying to get me to re-subscribe.

Hahaahahahahahahahaha