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Comment by polote | Hacker News Reader

The pandemic made me realize how much newspapers have impact on people opinions. If they keep telling a vaccine in unsafe, a big part of their readers will believe the vaccine is unsafe. If they keep telling a vaccine is safe a big part of their readers will believe the vaccine is safe. And that no matter what the reality is.

I'm not american but reading NYT during the elections, I was astonished by how much NYT was blaming Trump for everything, and never say anything positive about him. Now I treat newspapers as propaganda.

I actually stopped reading any news at all except bloomberg a month ago and can't be happier.

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100% true. And let's recall the Time article how the media in US conspired against Trump: https://www.worldtribune.com/time-magazine-all-but-confirms-...

It’s sad to see so many newly-created accounts that only argue about politics, from a particular point of view to counter what they see as HN’s incorrect groupthink. “There’s this forum, guys, where people don’t think the right way. Let’s brigade. Go there, create an account, and comment.”

I wonder who it is referring people to HN for this purpose.

I agree, it seems like there has been a constant raiding party around here for the last few weeks. I'm glad someone else has noticed. Thanks for speaking up!

Trump refusing to ever wear a mask had a huge impact on how seriously people took covid and what they did to protect society. Trump really is at fault.

You totally missed my point. I didnt say anything about Trump being right or wrong. I just said that for NYT anything that is related to Trump is bad. And I'm pretty sure this is not the case

When you have to argue that you're "pretty sure" not everything about a person is bad then negative press coverage is not surprising.

I am currently struggling to come up with something about Trump that's not mostly negative. Maybe his honesty in the Woodward calls? That's stretching it a bit, and only highlights how dishonest he's been in public. His response to Covid and natural disasters? So bad it better be incompetence rather than malice. His refusal to clearly distance himself from hate groups? His refusal to pay his own lawyers? Trump University and all the other scams?

No, I'm lost, I might be missing something. Please explain what Trump did well that isn't considered morally questionable.

For example, don't you think Trump acted well regarding getting vaccine quickly ?

Do you honestly think Trump had anything to do with vaccine development? I don't think he hindered it, but I don't think he accelerated it either.

> I was astonished by how much NYT was blaming Trump for everything

The guy was calling the whole thing a hoax, I don't know what credit he should get for anything.

That was already debunked, but thanks for being an example of people believing whatever narrative the media pushes.

I've seen, with my own eyes, plenty of his tweets and videos of him saying it was a hoax, so debunk it for me.

You think you've seen videos and tweets. But you really haven't. There was one incident that came close: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-coronavirus-rally-re...

The Snopes article was published 2 weeks before the impacts of coronavirus even started to be felt in this country, back when he was privately telling the truth about it to Woodward.

Trump's base overwhelmingly believes it's a hoax. So is "left" wing media lying to me that he says it's a hoax, or is right wing media lying to all his supporters that it's a hoax?

He seemed to have believed it wasn't a hoax when closing the border with China. He was being impeached at the time. He was criticized for being too drastic in this decision, even xenophobic. I'd like to know when he actually called the virus a hoax.

Your argument essentially boils down to "he only called it a hoax once--and c'mon doesn't he really deserve a huge benefit of the doubt as to which part he was calling a hoax?--and all the other times he downplayed it or called it no big deal he avoided using the word 'hoax'". If, as you contend, he hasn't been pushing that idea all along--in one set of words or another--why does his base believe it's a hoax?

If someone is alleged to have claimed that ghosts don't exist, but we see them hanging protective charms over the doors and sprinkling salt on the floor, the objective observer will seriously doubt the allegation.

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