It's disturbing that there is no source cited in those articles -- that's garbage journalism, but none of your are bothered by such garbage?
I'm sure lots of people are bothered by it, but it's hardly unusual. News outlets print things attributed to unnamed/unauthorized/anonymous sources every day, on topics as mundane as celebrity relationships and who Trump is going to pick for cabinet positions (in order to get the "scoop" slightly before he makes the official announcement). It'd be great if people payed closer attention to what sources are being cited, and this sort of thing does result in misinformation being treated as fact, but in general I'd rather read things without attribution than to not know about them at all.
In this particular case, it looks like someone gave news media advance information about what was going to be written in the report we discussed earlier. Given that the information accurately reflected what was written in the report (with the validity of the report itself being a separate, if very important, issue), the "fake leaked memo" idea just doesn't make a lot of sense. There'd be no reason to pretend to leak the contents of the report when the report itself was released shortly afterwards.
If RT publishes something that's true but goes against US interests, it's absolutely wrong to call that "fake news".
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This whole "foreign propaganda" hysteria that's going on in the US right now (aka "fake news") is an extremely scary development. It's not actually targeting fake news at all, but alternative narratives. What's scarier is that this is largely being carried out by big companies like Google, without the need for the government to force companies to do it.
I never said that any of what RT is publishing is "fake news," and I definitely think this is an important issue. That said, thus far, I haven't seen much evidence that private "fact-checkers" or the government have actively characterized alternative narratives/opinions as "fake news." And actual fake news is a problem that needs to be addressed as well -- it doesn't take much effort to become aware of just how much completely inaccurate information peppered with a few truths can become extremely relevant on all sides (Obama's birth certificate, Hillary's brain damage, Trump's plan to start a "Muslim registry" of Muslim citizens, etc.).
Or the fact that the US routinely interferes in the sovereignty of other nations! This is insanity!
I think most people are aware that governments do this to each other constantly. That's exactly why it doesn't seem that far-fetched that Russia was trying to influence the election through cyberattacks.
(...)her campaign emails and the DNC email were gained both by anonymous hackers (and not very sophisticated ones at that) and inside whistleblowers.
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Occam's razor says there's a simpler explanation. And the "Russia did it" conspiracy is tainted from the start as being a CIA propaganda campaign, so why choose their convoluted plot over the simple explanation
I'd say it's hard to say one way or another. I'm not really sure it's that much simpler to believe that Russia wasn't involved, either. It'd be weird for Russia not to try to influence the election, and it'd be extremely weird for Russia not to try to breach these e-mail accounts; there's absolutely no question that Russia does dedicate resources to trying to breach security in the US, including through similar "unsophisticated" attacks. That's just how government intelligence works.
On a tangent - "state-sponsored media" as a denigrative term is a funny Americanism, as in many parts of the world state-owned media is actually legislated to be fair and balanced, unlike privatized media (such as all US media)
I don't really see what's funny about it? This sort of legislation is the exact thing you're worried about being turned into a tool for propaganda, right? And I do think that, while "private" media certainly has flaws, and certainly is influenced by the government as is, it's still safer for the government not to be directly paying the media outlets.