11 ms·

The first link in the article is not a "lie". "Portland Protesters Burn Bibles, American Flags In The Streets" has a RT video that shows exactly that, and link

The first link in the article is not a "lie". "Portland Protesters Burn Bibles, American Flags In The Streets" has a RT video that shows exactly that, and links to several other confirmed Twitter accounts all stating the same thing. How is that a lie?

oxymoran 6y ago
Because it doesn’t agree with the narrative that Mr. Robinson is trying to push.
devman0 6y ago
Not saying it's a lie, but having problems corroborating the original footage. No major news agencies are carrying it, I can't even find an AP or Reuters on it and they generally would report on this kind of thing. For instance, AP has a report of flag burning on Aug 1st, but nothing about bibles. I'm skeptical because there have been times footage from other events have been reused out of context to push an agenda. Just a few days ago Trump ran a campaign ad that used Ukrainian protest imagery to demonstrate chaos in the US, for instance.
a_bonobo 6y ago
Where does OP's article say that the bible-burning incident was a 'lie'? New York Post says 'a bible', and your video a single book being burned, can't see whether that's a bible. The original video has been deleted (link is dead here: https://twitter.com/stillgray/status/1289512762733785088 https://twitter.com/stillgray/status/1289512762733785088 ) but quickly picked up by the usual far-right BS twitterati. >The fire was later put out by members of Moms United for Black Lives Matter, who doused the flames with bottles of water and stomped on the embers, so that article OP cites is outrage bait, it's not an informed source.
- rukittenme 6y ago
  > so that article OP cites is outrage bait, it's not an informed source. How does this follow? One faction burns a bible and another faction puts it out. How do you choose which narrative to privilege?
  - a_bonobo 6y ago
    The book being burned doesn't look like a bible to me - the breitbart article tries to spin that one book being burned into a NSDAP-like mass book burning event, with bibles being burned - we don't know which faction burned that single book, but breitbart wants the reader very hard to believe that it was BLM people/leftwing people.
    - rukittenme 6y ago
      > wants the reader [...] to believe You can play this game for the rest of your life. It won't make you more informed. It won't make you happier.
  - staycoolboy 6y ago
    > How do you choose which narrative to privilege? Do you REALLY find it that hard to figure out? I can't tell if you're being sincere, or just being a troll who is trying to shrug and say nihilistic-sounding things to advance the alt-right agenda, which is to "flood the channels with shit" as Bannon said. If some right-wing rando at a protest start burning a bible, and then two large established groups of protestors try to stop him because it is not what they are protesting and is sending a misleading optics, it really isn't that hard to see what is going on. Like the white supremacist biker that was recently arrested for smashing windows during a BLM protest in an attempt to create deceptive optics for the right wing media machine.
awinder 6y ago
There's been a lot of coverage around false-flag sorts of behavior in Portland, but the fact that this thing is being pumped through the lie pipelines that originate with places like RT (Russian state-controlled media) is kinda a dead giveaway. We can get into a nuanced discussion of "is it really lying" since there's a video, but I have not been a party to any conversations in my lifetime that start with a nuanced discussion of "is something technically a lie" that end with a good feeling in my gut. So that's kinda a clue that despite the technicalities of language something uncool is happening.
- luckylion 6y ago
  1) There are protestors 2) They are doing things 3) "Protestors are doing things" is a lie because they might not "actually" be part of the protestors but instead be false-flag undercover agents? That's wild. You can't have a functioning press under those assumptions, because you don't know for absolute certain that everything is the way it looks. Donald Trump might be a long-term agent of the Democratic Party aiming to damage the Republican Party. Of course, it doesn't look that way on the surface, but you never know. Saying he's a Republican is "a lie" by those standards.
  - dj_mc_merlin 6y ago
    There is a long, long history of false-flag operations undertaken during protests. Some caution is advised when deciding whether any one action is taken by genuine protesters, especially when it's as comically "unpatriotic" as burning the bible and flag.
    - luckylion 6y ago
      Obviously, just as it's important to be cautious in general when reporting on hot issues. But to claim that it's a lie because they might be false flag seems ridiculous. Your reporting might always turn out to not be accurate in hindsight, but I wouldn't consider it a lie unless you knew it to be inaccurate at the time of publishing.
arp242 6y ago
That may perhaps not be the best example – although the linked Breibart article is hardly a stellar journalism and some of the commentary is wildly off-base – but the general pattern described in the article seems to be mostly right to me. IMHO dismissing/criticising a rather lengthy article just on one less-than-ideal example is not really good form.
- irontinkerer 6y ago
  > IMHO dismissing/criticising a rather lengthy article just on one less-than-ideal example is not really good form. I actually up-voted the article, and started reading, then removed my up-vote when I realized the very first article linked contradicts the entire headline. If the headline is true, the author could have picked dozens of other links of obvious lies, but clearly didn't attempt to validate their own work
mundo 6y ago
Through selective omission, by presenting the non-central as central. Did the events in that article happen? Yes, probably. Would someone who gets their information from Breitbart have a roughly accurate idea of what happened at the Portland protests? No.

oxymoran 6y ago

Because it doesn’t agree with the narrative that Mr. Robinson is trying to push.

devman0 6y ago

Not saying it's a lie, but having problems corroborating the original footage. No major news agencies are carrying it, I can't even find an AP or Reuters on it and they generally would report on this kind of thing. For instance, AP has a report of flag burning on Aug 1st, but nothing about bibles. I'm skeptical because there have been times footage from other events have been reused out of context to push an agenda. Just a few days ago Trump ran a campaign ad that used Ukrainian protest imagery to demonstrate chaos in the US, for instance.

a_bonobo 6y ago

Where does OP's article say that the bible-burning incident was a 'lie'? New York Post says 'a bible', and your video a single book being burned, can't see whether that's a bible. The original video has been deleted (link is dead here: https://twitter.com/stillgray/status/1289512762733785088 https://twitter.com/stillgray/status/1289512762733785088 ) but quickly picked up by the usual far-right BS twitterati. >The fire was later put out by members of Moms United for Black Lives Matter, who doused the flames with bottles of water and stomped on the embers, so that article OP cites is outrage bait, it's not an informed source.

rukittenme 6y ago
> so that article OP cites is outrage bait, it's not an informed source. How does this follow? One faction burns a bible and another faction puts it out. How do you choose which narrative to privilege?
- a_bonobo 6y ago
  The book being burned doesn't look like a bible to me - the breitbart article tries to spin that one book being burned into a NSDAP-like mass book burning event, with bibles being burned - we don't know which faction burned that single book, but breitbart wants the reader very hard to believe that it was BLM people/leftwing people.
  - rukittenme 6y ago
    > wants the reader [...] to believe You can play this game for the rest of your life. It won't make you more informed. It won't make you happier.
- staycoolboy 6y ago
  > How do you choose which narrative to privilege? Do you REALLY find it that hard to figure out? I can't tell if you're being sincere, or just being a troll who is trying to shrug and say nihilistic-sounding things to advance the alt-right agenda, which is to "flood the channels with shit" as Bannon said. If some right-wing rando at a protest start burning a bible, and then two large established groups of protestors try to stop him because it is not what they are protesting and is sending a misleading optics, it really isn't that hard to see what is going on. Like the white supremacist biker that was recently arrested for smashing windows during a BLM protest in an attempt to create deceptive optics for the right wing media machine.

awinder 6y ago

There's been a lot of coverage around false-flag sorts of behavior in Portland, but the fact that this thing is being pumped through the lie pipelines that originate with places like RT (Russian state-controlled media) is kinda a dead giveaway. We can get into a nuanced discussion of "is it really lying" since there's a video, but I have not been a party to any conversations in my lifetime that start with a nuanced discussion of "is something technically a lie" that end with a good feeling in my gut. So that's kinda a clue that despite the technicalities of language something uncool is happening.

luckylion 6y ago
1) There are protestors 2) They are doing things 3) "Protestors are doing things" is a lie because they might not "actually" be part of the protestors but instead be false-flag undercover agents? That's wild. You can't have a functioning press under those assumptions, because you don't know for absolute certain that everything is the way it looks. Donald Trump might be a long-term agent of the Democratic Party aiming to damage the Republican Party. Of course, it doesn't look that way on the surface, but you never know. Saying he's a Republican is "a lie" by those standards.
- dj_mc_merlin 6y ago
  There is a long, long history of false-flag operations undertaken during protests. Some caution is advised when deciding whether any one action is taken by genuine protesters, especially when it's as comically "unpatriotic" as burning the bible and flag.
  - luckylion 6y ago
    Obviously, just as it's important to be cautious in general when reporting on hot issues. But to claim that it's a lie because they might be false flag seems ridiculous. Your reporting might always turn out to not be accurate in hindsight, but I wouldn't consider it a lie unless you knew it to be inaccurate at the time of publishing.

arp242 6y ago

That may perhaps not be the best example – although the linked Breibart article is hardly a stellar journalism and some of the commentary is wildly off-base – but the general pattern described in the article seems to be mostly right to me. IMHO dismissing/criticising a rather lengthy article just on one less-than-ideal example is not really good form.

irontinkerer 6y ago
> IMHO dismissing/criticising a rather lengthy article just on one less-than-ideal example is not really good form. I actually up-voted the article, and started reading, then removed my up-vote when I realized the very first article linked contradicts the entire headline. If the headline is true, the author could have picked dozens of other links of obvious lies, but clearly didn't attempt to validate their own work

mundo 6y ago

Through selective omission, by presenting the non-central as central. Did the events in that article happen? Yes, probably. Would someone who gets their information from Breitbart have a roughly accurate idea of what happened at the Portland protests? No.