Which of these three sources of news would you trust most, based on this image?

[goaded]

Fox, CBS, or Meidas Touch?

Updates

12 h

The CBS tweet got deleted once a community note stated: "Banking violations revealed accusations he had sexually abused teenagers while coaching wrestling at a suburban Chicago high school".

(The teenage boys were as young as 14 at the time, and Hastert admitted to it at trial and part of his sentence was to undergo sex-offender treatment.)

[Ill_made_Knight]

FOX is an immediate ignore as they are essentially propaganda central (note the absence of any mention of Hastert's shady past).
CBS is immediately in question because of the well documented ownership change. and history of caving to Trump's every whim (see 60 minutes, see the firing of Stephen Colbert) The culprits are Trumpy FCC chief Brendan Carr, his lackey Bari Weiss brought in to run CBS' ship and shape the direction of programming post Acquisition of the network by Trump buddy David Ellison. Ellison is currently acquiring another massive slice of media which would give him control of CNN by the way.
This leaves us with Meidas. They have an unashamed bend to the left in their programming, which I'm not necessarily opposed to. Legal AF and Katie Phang are in their network among others that I find more to the point and less sensational. I sometimes watch the brothers but that has to be seasoned with other things to get a better feel for reality.
Something like this I take just as a factual blip, digest it, and move along.
Anymore I'm tending to watch a lot of programming created by lawyers that are currently in the fight such as Marc Elias to get updates on things legal, and I'll view several interviewers of a person of interest to get a clearer slice of the actual person.
Things have gotten far too complicated, and I can see how a person might get lost if they haven't evolved with the issues.

[goaded]

Katie Phang is currently trying to get the DoJ to follow the law and release the Epstein files. It seems to be going well, if slowly.

Do you watch Glenn Kirschner? His Justice Matters videos are worth the time (I do skip some of the longer interviews, though).
https://www.youtube.com/c/GlennKirschner2/videos

[DryGermanGuy]

The Glenn Kirschner cooperation videos on Brian Tyler Cohen's YT channel are very informative and a bit more to the point.
https://www.youtube.com/@briantylercohen/videos

[Ill_made_Knight]

@DryGermanGuy both are very good follows. Kirschners "Justice Matters" is also very good, and I like BTC and David Pakman for interviews although I'll also take a peek at other interview sources on a specific person (Nicole Wallace, Chris Cuomo etc...) different people draw different aspects of a person out.

[Ill_made_Knight]

I do watch Kirschner's stuff, he's very knowledgeable, and Katie is doing good work for sure. I have lots of follows and sort of scan headline topics to decide what I'll jump into on a day. Like you I sometimes will wade into some of the longer ones a little way to see the direction and then might move along if it's redundant to other sources.

[DryGermanGuy]

Any established news organization with a good reputation. That excludes Fox Noise.

[lightbulb27]

None, take them in total for what they are. sensationalism. Ideally, a link from him to his total history. that be fox.

Fox - see no republican evil. We know they spin.

CBS - I only see evil. We know they spin.

MT - I only see evil. never heard of it...

The truth is somewhere in between. I looked and see him convicted and admitting, but didn't see details what happened. Most I saw was a chair to watch the boys in the shower or something. You know my wrestling coach stood and made jokes about penis' in the boys room. People do some stupid crap. Maybe he did way worse, I see no details.

The problem with this is it takes one apsect of life and destroys someones life in total, all their work, anything good they did... is erased. The only thing read..."failure". That is the devil (adversary). At some point, the devil is right and wins lives.

This, the media is the devil, sex is used as the ultimate weapon to destroy people. I see it all the time in "nextdoor" as someones life is trashed for variety of offenses not even convicted... their face splattered on a page they can never undo. There is no heart in it.

Maybe he was a sick person then and always, and should be punished like that. Of what I read, like most poeple, he's had issues. Just like that clinton fella, and other repupublicans.

If anything, people on GAG should read this adn other cases... Clinton, Trump, MLK Jr, JFK, Generals of WWII, and heed the warnings... live a pristine live to strict values. If you don't, you can be destroyed in the media in 5 seconds.

If it isn't this... then it's being associated forever with the insane person that murdered you, vs whatever else good you did in life.

Most people can... for one reason or another.

[goaded]

The victim who committed suicide's whole life was destroyed. Far worse than a slap on the wrist decades after the crime. Once more: the victims were BOYS, as young as 14.

[lightbulb27]

That is bad, maybe he should have gotten firing squad but it was past statue limitations. Again, I don't kow the details, don't know if he committed suicide to this. Just too much I don't know.
Again, we are via those headlines reducing that person down to that act, which is not well defined for most readers. Did it say "Hastert" gave so much to help some other people, etc? It's all one miserable thing he did that was wrong, which is not clearly defined.

That... is really not fair reporting on either account. It's headline sensationalism. What the Eagles sang about. "dirty laundry".

To be fair, fox would do that to talib or AOC, etc.,. They are all skewed.

China is better in that they don't report crap, but if someone does that crime, they are dead! That said, it doesn't report anything that cause them trouble... no free speech.

I'm sure there is a sane balance somewhere in there that is lost. Like I said, provide a link to the details from the headline report. To me the fox article is most accurate for that and the reader can dig deeper. But most wouldn't be interested if wasn't something awful associated. THEY... know what triggers people... shame, fear, anger, malice, envy, greed, murder... all these things are major triggers in the human heart.

That is not God! And his actions weren't God either to be clear. There's a past history of repbulicans (a few) that were closet gay, etc.. Shame and pride and arrogance being big problems in humanity.

Truth is, don't trust anyone... trust your own judgement, but have best perspective you can find.

for what it's worth of readers considerations...

[goaded]

Why do you keep trying to minimize what he did? There were at least four under-aged boys that he sexually abused. Hastert "pulled off a 17 year old boy's shorts and sexually fondled him during a massage after a workout". The one he was paying $3.5 million to keep quiet was just 14 when was abused in a motel room on the way home from wrestling camp. Hastert allegedly touched other wrestlers in a locker room after saying he would give them massages. Two wrestlers said Hastert performed sexual acts on them. He was not "just" sitting on a chair watching them shower, that was the least of it.

There was good reason for the judge to describe him as "serial child molester".

How many children do you think someone should be allowed to molest before it defines them?

www.itv.com/.../dennis-hastert-longtime-house-speaker-who-served-time-in-prison-dies-at-age-84
www.theguardian.com/.../dennis-hastert-republican-death

[lightbulb27]

ah, I didn't have that information. Like I said, I looked quick and didn't see any details other than noted.
Then he should have been shot or severely beaten long ago. There's no justice for the victims in this case.

so maybe the other news sources are more correct. But again, is that all he is? It takes the persons lowest level and communicates that. Was he a reformed molester? I was molested by someone, I wouldn't want them getting away, but if they revised their life I wouldn't want that to be the headline.

what happened to fair and balanced...

[goaded]

Fair and balanced was a lie Fox News used to tell, but they've even dropped the pretense.

He was not "reformed", he might have stopped. He exhibited no remorse or acceptance of what he'd done: "When investigators confronted Hastert about the money, he told them he was being blackmailed over a baseless claim of sexual abuse. The judge said that was a lie, and he used it as an aggravating factor to hit Hastert with a stiffer sentence."
www.nbcnews.com/.../dennis-hastert-ex-house-speaker-arrives-sentencing-wheelchair-n563401

How many children do you think someone should be allowed to molest before it defines them? Do you think his "good acts" like supporting the Iraq war made his crimes any less heinous?

[lightbulb27]

One is a major factor in defining. I may or may not use that as the main line in the obituary anymore than I'd say on Clinton's he cheated with a of age 19yr old intern.

But it is a severe issue. Again, I'm not digging more into the mud of it, not worth my time. I answered your question.

[goaded]

Not really. Would you be saying the same sort of nonsense if he''d murdered someone? "Oh, sure, he murdered someone, but he was a very successful Speaker".

[Snakeyes7]

To be fair to fox, they just simply said what happened in the headline. They probably have details in an actual article. The rest are just there to smear him right off the bat. Whether they are accurate or not, I have never heard of this guy so I don't know enough to say.

[goaded]

They did an in Memoriam for him, and the closest they came to mentioning his crimes was to say “His reputation was later tainted by allegations he had molested athletes during his career as a teacher and wrestling coach. He spent more than a year in prison.”.

At Hastert’s 2016 sentencing, U. S. District Judge Thomas Durkin called the former Republican speaker a “serial child molester.”

Hastert admitted in court that he had “mistreated” athletes and apologized to victims. He was sentenced to 15 months in federal prison after pleading guilty to illegally structuring bank withdrawals connected to the hush-money scheme.

[Snakeyes7]

well in that case, then I guess he won't be missed, certainly not his victims. If he went to prison then he was clearly proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law, so I don't feel bad for him.

[purplepoppy]

Why does his criminal past need to be part of the headline? That isn't the story and if it needs referencing put it in the article or have a separate article on it all together where his shame can be better highlighed

[goaded]

Deterrence, perhaps? If powerful people know they won't be able to hide their wrong doing and will be remembered for their worst actions, maybe they''ll be less likely to sexually assault children. (The "banking laws" CBS mentioned were regarding the hush money payouts.)

[Ill_made_Knight]

I would argue that you won't be successful in getting many Americans to read anything more than the headline, so there is that. It's quite possible many won't even read the entire headline if it's very long. Current Americans have the attention span of a goldfish so good luck getting them to read a linked article about his criminality, after all past advisors to this current president claim that daily briefings are a challenge to get through to him, and must include lots of pictures and mention his name frequently to keep him interested.

[purplepoppy]

I get what you're both saying but based on similar cases in the UK you already get a lot of articles about their crimes after death anyway.

[Ill_made_Knight]

That's true, and the worst partisans won't ingest any bad news about past heroes regardless... so

[goaded]

@Ill_made_Knight There's a perfect example right here!

[Ill_made_Knight]

why who EVER could you mean? 😮 😂

[NaultD]

You should have multiple news sources and understand their individual leanings. Its not rocket science it's personal journalism. A level of heart is needed but that comes with industrial perspective.

[goaded]

I won't argue with that, but isn't the fact that Hastert was an admitted sexual abuser an important detail about his character? Fox News didn't even mention that he was a convicted criminal at all!

[NaultD]

What's the alternative? A big brother arbiter you need to hit all key points.

It's a scary situation where we are as a a society too stupid for a democratic government.

[goaded]

Apparently, the Fox News alternative is to pretend the crimes were just accusations, not his own admission in court. Democracy needs an informed population, which is why the billionaires are buying up as much media as they can (and Trump is illegally disregarding the law on media ownership).

[exitseven]

It is hard to say. I never heard that he was a perrv or was arrested for bank fraud so given their past track record th first thing I think of is that CBS and the other thing are lying because he was a Republican.

[goaded]

OMG. Did it occur to you that you haven't heard that he was a perrv or was arrested for bank fraud because Fox is lying to you?

The difference is that the other two outlets have court records on their side. He was convicted of bank fraud because of the way he went about paying hush money to his (boy) victims.

[exitseven]

is that right? or did they just feel like lying? Why do the two "news" outlets have different stories?

[goaded]

Fox is pretending to you that it didn't happen, that it was just "accusations", after spending a decade avoiding telling people like you the truth. Wake up!

It's the same story - CBS softened it, presumably out of undeserved respect for the dead.

Hastert was sentenced to 15 months in prison for how he paid hush money to a child victim.

"He was released after serving 13 months, becoming the highest-ranking elected official in U. S. history to serve time behind bars."

"The scandal stripped Hastert of many of the honors from his career. His state pensions from his work as a teacher and Illinois lawmaker were revoked, and the U. S. Capitol removed his official portrait." upolitics.com/.../

[exitseven]

Fox simply said he was dead. No need for the rest

[goaded]

Clearly there is, because Fox went on to talk about what a wonderful Republican Speaker of the House he was, and because you not only never heard about his sordid past, but actively suggested the sources were lying.

That's how propaganda works, by convincing people to disregard the truth.

[GothEgg]

I wouldn't believe legacy media.

[moddy_the_mod]

All three say he’s dead.

[msc545]

CBS of course

[goaded]

Don't you think that Hastert being an admitted sexual abuser is an important detail about his character? It seems fairly important, to me.

[msc545]

I don't really care. I have other things to worry about that are much more important to me.

[goaded]

By the way, isn't CBS the station where Bari Weiss took over and killed the 60 minutes investigation into CECOT and has generally ensured nothing bad about Republicans gets reported?

[msc545]

Don't know and don't care.