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Why would your standard be "prove that this evidence is fabricated?" Shouldn't your standard be "prove that this evidence is in any way authentic" before we mov

Why would your standard be "prove that this evidence is fabricated?" Shouldn't your standard be "prove that this evidence is in any way authentic" before we move forward with a discussion of it?

ceilingcorner 6y ago
I'm not the one making the claim that it's fabricated. > Shouldn't your standard be "prove that this evidence is in any way authentic" before we move forward with a discussion of it? Of course, but when has the media ever done that? There is clearly a massive effort to sink this story. Why?
- Traster 6y ago
  It seems you're just unaware of how any reputable journalist works, and unaware of how fact checkers work, and unaware of the massive ramifications that happen when real journalists are shown to have published something wrong. It's really strange that you're unaware of it, because the article you're commenting on goes in to great detail about what happens when other reputable news organisation's fact checking fails.
  - ceilingcorner 6y ago
    There is clearly an effort to present this story as "debunked" or "false" or "fabricated." The CBS link, as I said, doesn't show anything to be fabricated and is merely a bunch of ad hominem attacks. Debunking things before investigating them is not good journalism. Period. As I said in the initial comment, the NY Post is not a reputable paper and the story itself seems strange and fake, but guess what? That doesn't matter. The evidence for the story, at this point, seems at least plausible, plausible enough to investigate it. If it's fake, Murdoch and the NY Post will have a massive libel suit to pay for. That's how the legal system works.
    - zimpenfish 6y ago
      > Debunking things before investigating them is not good journalism. The NYP doesn't appear to have investigated them though. And they don't seem keen on providing access for other people to investigate the authenticity - as people have pointed out, it would be trivial to prove the email authenticity given the DKIM headers. Yet they remain stubbornly absent from the story, no? > The evidence for the story, at this point, seems at least plausible It doesn't even pass a simple smell test - who drives cross-country to drop off their laptop at a cheap repair shop and then doesn't pick it up? Another smell test - you have a bunch of emails that you could trivially prove are authentic but for some reason you're avoiding doing that.
      - cik2e 6y ago
        The Bidens are from Delaware. Plenty of reason for Hunter to have been there.
        zimpenfish 6y ago
        Sure but again - why would he use a tiny repair shop on the other side of the country when he lives in Los Angeles? I'm originally from the North West UK but live in London and I take my Macs to the London Apple stores when they need fixing, not John Q Northerner's Chop Shop when I'm visiting family.
        Supermancho 6y ago
        Plausibly, because he was having it worked on (maybe to give to a family or friend) then just found/decided that he didn't want to bother with it. People will decide that computer problems are immediate and inconsequential at the drop of a hat, if you've ever worked on them.
        zimpenfish 6y ago
        I don't know many people who would just go "eh, forget it" for a Macbook at an anonymous repair shop whilst it was still laden with emails and photographs and other personal content. Even if he can shrug off the cost of the laptop itself, I'm reasonably sure that Hunter Biden - long the target of the GOP ire, remember - or at least a lackey would have been back to that shop about 30 seconds after someone realised what had happened.
  - finnthehuman 6y ago
    >and unaware of the massive ramifications that happen when real journalists are shown to have published something wrong Even the source article had to go back to the W administration to find examples. In the age of the Internet news writers know to avoid making a statement of fact while busily implying facts, so later when it turns out when they're wrong they're just HACKS and not also FRAUDS.
  - manigandham 6y ago
    As of 2020, I find that journalists are no longer reputable, fact checkers don't check facts, and there are no ramifications when something wrong is published. This is the default state of the world until proven otherwise and is supported by countless examples. The media is not some bastion of truth, it's just as subjective as the rest of us and has progressively gotten worse as all standards are pushed aside for the narrative.
    - wstrange 6y ago
      This is exactly the goal state sponsored disinformation campaigns. To flood the marketplace of ideas with so much "fake news" that no one believes anything anymore. When that happens, people feel free to believe in what is convenient or aligns with their personal world view. The reality is that not all news sources are equally bad or biased. Some do a better job of fact checking than others.
      - tomp 6y ago
        Mainstream "reputable" media has ran many campaigns that are obviously not Russia-sponsored, least-of-all the Russia-gate conspiracy theory, and all of "Trump is sexist", "Trump is racist", "Trump supports white supremacy" stories based on fake Trump quotes ("fake" as in, taken out of context and twisted).
      - manigandham 6y ago
        Sure, some do better than others. However none are good at it, and therefore the bar is so low that it's better to assume it's all false until proven otherwise.
      - pmarreck 6y ago
        It's not a very glamorously-designed site but I've found https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/ https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/ to be pretty solid. I'm glad they rate political inclination separately from factuality because I've gotten to the point that I only care about the latter, and not the former, and highly suggest others do too. Nothing rated below "HIGH" in Factual Reporting should be passed along, IMHO. They always link to the evidence for their ratings.
  - DaniloDias 6y ago
    This is a golden example of uncharitable commentary. Instead of slapping a narrative on someone that summarizes all of their ignorance, maybe take a tactic that doesn’t make you stick out as an unlikeable, unpersuasive partisan. Listen, consider and dispute what someone says. Your strawman summary of a hypothetical dumb person is only nourishes the narcissist who hit reply.
- slg 6y ago
  Let's go directly to the person who was trying to get the story published:[1] >Giuliani told the Times he brought his documents to the Post because "either nobody else would take it, or if they took it, they would spend all the time they could to try to contradict it before they put it out." The entire reason the story ended up specifically in the NY Post is because "the media" refused to publish it without attempting to ""prove that this evidence is in any way authentic". It sounds like you really don't understand how journalism works if you think they will just publish everything regardless of the levels of supporting or contradictory evidence. [1] - https://news.yahoo.com/giuliani-gave-hunter-biden-story-054726242.html https://news.yahoo.com/giuliani-gave-hunter-biden-story-0547...
  - ceilingcorner 6y ago
    You’ve got about three levels of ad hominem attacks in this post.
    - slg 6y ago
      These aren't ad hominem attacks because they get to the central issue we are discussing. Different news agencies have different reputations for verifying that authenticity of what they report. I'm not going to give a story in the National Enquirer the same credibility as a story published in the New York Times. It isn't an ad hominem attack to voice that opinion. Although I do notice that you did not address the merit of my post. There is a little irony there.
      - ceilingcorner 6y ago
        No, they are ad hominem attacks because they only attack the credibility of the source and not the information. As I’ve said, the NY Post is hardly a bastion of journalism. The thing is, neither is The NY Times, the Washington Post, or basically any media source other than CSPAN. They are all biased and anyone paying the slightest bit of attention over the past four years has noticed this. So to somehow claim that the “real journalists” would have done otherwise is absurd, considering that they’ve done the exact same thing repeatedly. Everything is on the level of Fox News now.
Miner49er 6y ago
Isn't there some evidence? Like the pictures? Sure, the emails could be fake and the photos real, but it does seem to indicate that they have at least obtained some sort of computer from Biden? Also, neither Joe or Hunter Biden have denied any of it so far, AFAIK.
- zimpenfish 6y ago
  > Also, neither Joe or Hunter Biden have denied any of it so far, AFAIK. If they comment - even to blanket deny - it gives the story weight which is exactly what the people who planted it want because then they can spin it out for a few more days/weeks. Better to keep quiet - like with the court packing question - and let other people kick this ridiculous farce into touch.
  - refurb 6y ago
    If all the emails and such are fake, are you saying it’s a better strategy to just not comment on it versus just releasing a statement that it’s all fabricated (because you know it is)? Seems like a strong denial would go much further here.
    - zimpenfish 6y ago
      > are you saying it’s a better strategy to just not comment on it Yes. > Seems like a strong denial would go much further here. "But he would say that, wouldn't he? Why would he deny it if it was fake?"
      - refurb 6y ago
        Seems like the exact opposite is happening right now. Since he isn’t issuing a blanket denial, people think that means it’s not fake.
        zimpenfish 6y ago
        I think it pretty much doesn't matter what he says or does - people will believe the angle they believe and that's presumably what the people behind this are hoping will carry for three weeks until election night.
Natsu 6y ago
So far, there's at least one picture of Hunter with a meth pipe that doesn't appear to be manipulated. That seems to indicate there's some non-zero something there, with how much being up for debate. Also, the ODNI says there's no intelligence pointing to Russia, despite some claims to the contrary. We should probably withhold judgement and let the facts come out. Let people compare the signature on this contract for the laptop with Hunter's, let people forensically analyze the image, etc.
- sroussey 6y ago
  What I would do is mix in a fake information bomb among real data so it looked authentic. Specifically, I would add fake incriminating emails and then go to Ukraine and pay some people off to fake in the other side as well. It could be invalidated later, but who cares. It would look good enough and people only remember original headlines, not corrections. And if related to an election, only needs to last until election night. Easy peasy.
  - jml7c5 6y ago
    >What I would do is mix in a fake information bomb among real data so it looked authentic. This is a dangerous line of thinking because you can apply it to anything you don't want to believe. Beliefs should follow from evidence, not supposition.
- weswpg 6y ago
  > So far, there's at least one picture of Hunter with a meth pipe that doesn't appear to be manipulated. That seems to indicate there's some non-zero something there, with how much being up for debate. It is already public knowledge that Hunter Biden has addiction issues. How does this photo make you believe the other claims are authentic? I've heard before that a standard disinformation tactic is to sprinkle some truth along with the lies. I'm particularly skeptical of using an unrelated personal problem to assassinate his father's character as being involved in some sort of international business crimes. > We should probably withhold judgement and let the facts come out. Let people compare the signature on this contract for the laptop with Hunter's, let people forensically analyze the image, etc. while you're claiming that reasonable people should withhold judgement, the election is 2-3 weeks away and low-information voters are not going to wait for a forensic analysis to form their impressions. It should be 'innocent until proven guilty', full stop, but you're saying it should be the other way around and that we should keep our minds open to the possibility that he's guilty. Totally backwards.
tsdlts 6y ago
Should we apply this same rule to the NYT's article on Trump's tax returns? They never proved authenticity other than to say that they had "an anonymous source." It seems one group of people are completely fine with accepting the NYT article on faith, but dismiss the New York Post article as obviously fabricated.
chmod600 6y ago
Evidence is always a back-and-forth. Enough specifics have been presented that the media should be demanding to know what, specifically, is fabricated. Joe Biden, running for office, should be able to offer specific denials, explanations, and clarifications. The question we are tryong to answer is: was Hunter Biden using his dad to get some easy money; or was Joe Biden using his son to hold the payouts? The former is a slimy gray area; the latter outright corruption and highly compromising.
dilap 6y ago
So a newspaper claims to have a laptop from Biden's son, with plausible-seeming email and photos. If it were not from Biden's son, or the emails were fake or altered, then I would expect the Biden campaign to say so. Since they have not done so, it seems more likely the laptop and emails are legit. Can you think of any reason the Biden campaign would not call out fakes, if they were in fact fake?
specialist 6y ago
Journalism: Share your data, cite your sources, sign your name. Once we have verified speech, someone will eventually think to keep score. citeseer, pagerank, arvix for journalism. In other words, like with peer review in science, let the peanut gallery determine truthiness.

Why would your standard be "prove that this evidence is fabricated?" Shouldn't your standard be "prove that this evidence is in any way authentic" before we move forward with a discussion of it?

ceilingcorner 6y ago

I'm not the one making the claim that it's fabricated. > Shouldn't your standard be "prove that this evidence is in any way authentic" before we move forward with a discussion of it? Of course, but when has the media ever done that? There is clearly a massive effort to sink this story. Why?

Traster 6y ago
It seems you're just unaware of how any reputable journalist works, and unaware of how fact checkers work, and unaware of the massive ramifications that happen when real journalists are shown to have published something wrong. It's really strange that you're unaware of it, because the article you're commenting on goes in to great detail about what happens when other reputable news organisation's fact checking fails.
- ceilingcorner 6y ago
  There is clearly an effort to present this story as "debunked" or "false" or "fabricated." The CBS link, as I said, doesn't show anything to be fabricated and is merely a bunch of ad hominem attacks. Debunking things before investigating them is not good journalism. Period. As I said in the initial comment, the NY Post is not a reputable paper and the story itself seems strange and fake, but guess what? That doesn't matter. The evidence for the story, at this point, seems at least plausible, plausible enough to investigate it. If it's fake, Murdoch and the NY Post will have a massive libel suit to pay for. That's how the legal system works.
  - zimpenfish 6y ago
    > Debunking things before investigating them is not good journalism. The NYP doesn't appear to have investigated them though. And they don't seem keen on providing access for other people to investigate the authenticity - as people have pointed out, it would be trivial to prove the email authenticity given the DKIM headers. Yet they remain stubbornly absent from the story, no? > The evidence for the story, at this point, seems at least plausible It doesn't even pass a simple smell test - who drives cross-country to drop off their laptop at a cheap repair shop and then doesn't pick it up? Another smell test - you have a bunch of emails that you could trivially prove are authentic but for some reason you're avoiding doing that.
    - cik2e 6y ago
      The Bidens are from Delaware. Plenty of reason for Hunter to have been there.
      - zimpenfish 6y ago
        Sure but again - why would he use a tiny repair shop on the other side of the country when he lives in Los Angeles? I'm originally from the North West UK but live in London and I take my Macs to the London Apple stores when they need fixing, not John Q Northerner's Chop Shop when I'm visiting family.
        Supermancho 6y ago
        Plausibly, because he was having it worked on (maybe to give to a family or friend) then just found/decided that he didn't want to bother with it. People will decide that computer problems are immediate and inconsequential at the drop of a hat, if you've ever worked on them.
        zimpenfish 6y ago
        I don't know many people who would just go "eh, forget it" for a Macbook at an anonymous repair shop whilst it was still laden with emails and photographs and other personal content. Even if he can shrug off the cost of the laptop itself, I'm reasonably sure that Hunter Biden - long the target of the GOP ire, remember - or at least a lackey would have been back to that shop about 30 seconds after someone realised what had happened.
- finnthehuman 6y ago
  >and unaware of the massive ramifications that happen when real journalists are shown to have published something wrong Even the source article had to go back to the W administration to find examples. In the age of the Internet news writers know to avoid making a statement of fact while busily implying facts, so later when it turns out when they're wrong they're just HACKS and not also FRAUDS.
- manigandham 6y ago
  As of 2020, I find that journalists are no longer reputable, fact checkers don't check facts, and there are no ramifications when something wrong is published. This is the default state of the world until proven otherwise and is supported by countless examples. The media is not some bastion of truth, it's just as subjective as the rest of us and has progressively gotten worse as all standards are pushed aside for the narrative.
  - wstrange 6y ago
    This is exactly the goal state sponsored disinformation campaigns. To flood the marketplace of ideas with so much "fake news" that no one believes anything anymore. When that happens, people feel free to believe in what is convenient or aligns with their personal world view. The reality is that not all news sources are equally bad or biased. Some do a better job of fact checking than others.
    - tomp 6y ago
      Mainstream "reputable" media has ran many campaigns that are obviously not Russia-sponsored, least-of-all the Russia-gate conspiracy theory, and all of "Trump is sexist", "Trump is racist", "Trump supports white supremacy" stories based on fake Trump quotes ("fake" as in, taken out of context and twisted).
    - manigandham 6y ago
      Sure, some do better than others. However none are good at it, and therefore the bar is so low that it's better to assume it's all false until proven otherwise.
    - pmarreck 6y ago
      It's not a very glamorously-designed site but I've found https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/ https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/ to be pretty solid. I'm glad they rate political inclination separately from factuality because I've gotten to the point that I only care about the latter, and not the former, and highly suggest others do too. Nothing rated below "HIGH" in Factual Reporting should be passed along, IMHO. They always link to the evidence for their ratings.
- DaniloDias 6y ago
  This is a golden example of uncharitable commentary. Instead of slapping a narrative on someone that summarizes all of their ignorance, maybe take a tactic that doesn’t make you stick out as an unlikeable, unpersuasive partisan. Listen, consider and dispute what someone says. Your strawman summary of a hypothetical dumb person is only nourishes the narcissist who hit reply.
slg 6y ago
Let's go directly to the person who was trying to get the story published:[1] >Giuliani told the Times he brought his documents to the Post because "either nobody else would take it, or if they took it, they would spend all the time they could to try to contradict it before they put it out." The entire reason the story ended up specifically in the NY Post is because "the media" refused to publish it without attempting to ""prove that this evidence is in any way authentic". It sounds like you really don't understand how journalism works if you think they will just publish everything regardless of the levels of supporting or contradictory evidence. [1] - https://news.yahoo.com/giuliani-gave-hunter-biden-story-054726242.html https://news.yahoo.com/giuliani-gave-hunter-biden-story-0547...
- ceilingcorner 6y ago
  You’ve got about three levels of ad hominem attacks in this post.
  - slg 6y ago
    These aren't ad hominem attacks because they get to the central issue we are discussing. Different news agencies have different reputations for verifying that authenticity of what they report. I'm not going to give a story in the National Enquirer the same credibility as a story published in the New York Times. It isn't an ad hominem attack to voice that opinion. Although I do notice that you did not address the merit of my post. There is a little irony there.
    - ceilingcorner 6y ago
      No, they are ad hominem attacks because they only attack the credibility of the source and not the information. As I’ve said, the NY Post is hardly a bastion of journalism. The thing is, neither is The NY Times, the Washington Post, or basically any media source other than CSPAN. They are all biased and anyone paying the slightest bit of attention over the past four years has noticed this. So to somehow claim that the “real journalists” would have done otherwise is absurd, considering that they’ve done the exact same thing repeatedly. Everything is on the level of Fox News now.

Miner49er 6y ago

Isn't there some evidence? Like the pictures? Sure, the emails could be fake and the photos real, but it does seem to indicate that they have at least obtained some sort of computer from Biden? Also, neither Joe or Hunter Biden have denied any of it so far, AFAIK.

zimpenfish 6y ago
> Also, neither Joe or Hunter Biden have denied any of it so far, AFAIK. If they comment - even to blanket deny - it gives the story weight which is exactly what the people who planted it want because then they can spin it out for a few more days/weeks. Better to keep quiet - like with the court packing question - and let other people kick this ridiculous farce into touch.
- refurb 6y ago
  If all the emails and such are fake, are you saying it’s a better strategy to just not comment on it versus just releasing a statement that it’s all fabricated (because you know it is)? Seems like a strong denial would go much further here.
  - zimpenfish 6y ago
    > are you saying it’s a better strategy to just not comment on it Yes. > Seems like a strong denial would go much further here. "But he would say that, wouldn't he? Why would he deny it if it was fake?"
    - refurb 6y ago
      Seems like the exact opposite is happening right now. Since he isn’t issuing a blanket denial, people think that means it’s not fake.
      - zimpenfish 6y ago
        I think it pretty much doesn't matter what he says or does - people will believe the angle they believe and that's presumably what the people behind this are hoping will carry for three weeks until election night.

Natsu 6y ago

So far, there's at least one picture of Hunter with a meth pipe that doesn't appear to be manipulated. That seems to indicate there's some non-zero something there, with how much being up for debate. Also, the ODNI says there's no intelligence pointing to Russia, despite some claims to the contrary. We should probably withhold judgement and let the facts come out. Let people compare the signature on this contract for the laptop with Hunter's, let people forensically analyze the image, etc.

sroussey 6y ago
What I would do is mix in a fake information bomb among real data so it looked authentic. Specifically, I would add fake incriminating emails and then go to Ukraine and pay some people off to fake in the other side as well. It could be invalidated later, but who cares. It would look good enough and people only remember original headlines, not corrections. And if related to an election, only needs to last until election night. Easy peasy.
- jml7c5 6y ago
  >What I would do is mix in a fake information bomb among real data so it looked authentic. This is a dangerous line of thinking because you can apply it to anything you don't want to believe. Beliefs should follow from evidence, not supposition.
weswpg 6y ago
> So far, there's at least one picture of Hunter with a meth pipe that doesn't appear to be manipulated. That seems to indicate there's some non-zero something there, with how much being up for debate. It is already public knowledge that Hunter Biden has addiction issues. How does this photo make you believe the other claims are authentic? I've heard before that a standard disinformation tactic is to sprinkle some truth along with the lies. I'm particularly skeptical of using an unrelated personal problem to assassinate his father's character as being involved in some sort of international business crimes. > We should probably withhold judgement and let the facts come out. Let people compare the signature on this contract for the laptop with Hunter's, let people forensically analyze the image, etc. while you're claiming that reasonable people should withhold judgement, the election is 2-3 weeks away and low-information voters are not going to wait for a forensic analysis to form their impressions. It should be 'innocent until proven guilty', full stop, but you're saying it should be the other way around and that we should keep our minds open to the possibility that he's guilty. Totally backwards.

tsdlts 6y ago

Should we apply this same rule to the NYT's article on Trump's tax returns? They never proved authenticity other than to say that they had "an anonymous source." It seems one group of people are completely fine with accepting the NYT article on faith, but dismiss the New York Post article as obviously fabricated.

chmod600 6y ago

Evidence is always a back-and-forth. Enough specifics have been presented that the media should be demanding to know what, specifically, is fabricated. Joe Biden, running for office, should be able to offer specific denials, explanations, and clarifications. The question we are tryong to answer is: was Hunter Biden using his dad to get some easy money; or was Joe Biden using his son to hold the payouts? The former is a slimy gray area; the latter outright corruption and highly compromising.

dilap 6y ago

So a newspaper claims to have a laptop from Biden's son, with plausible-seeming email and photos. If it were not from Biden's son, or the emails were fake or altered, then I would expect the Biden campaign to say so. Since they have not done so, it seems more likely the laptop and emails are legit. Can you think of any reason the Biden campaign would not call out fakes, if they were in fact fake?

specialist 6y ago

Journalism: Share your data, cite your sources, sign your name. Once we have verified speech, someone will eventually think to keep score. citeseer, pagerank, arvix for journalism. In other words, like with peer review in science, let the peanut gallery determine truthiness.