This is just about as real as it gets. Seventeen American
intelligence agencies and nearly every reputable domestic and overseas
news outlet have independently verified the broad strokes of the Trump-Russia
story, as well as the grittier details, by way of countless sources and what
must be hundreds of articles, backed with accompanying documentation when
available.
Knowing what we know, it’s difficult to accept a series of takes
in which anyone who engages in Trump-Russia speculation is scolded for engaging
in “conspiracy theories” and “fake news.”
One of the most recent examples of such scolding appears in an
article for Vox by Zack
Beauchamp in which he called out a team of independent investigators,
specifically a former Conservative member of the British Parliament named
Louise Mensch, along with former National Security Agency analyst John
Schindler (also a conservative) and others. A previous article by Aaron Maté
for The Interceptsimilarly chastised Rachel Maddow’s (award worthy) coverage of
the story. Both Beauchamp and Maté have done considerable research, yet they
nevertheless play games with what constitutes conspiracies and fake news, while
failing to debunk any of the speculation or reporting they criticize.
Before we continue, I’d like to be perfectly
clear about my personal position on what we’re hearing from Team Mensch. Simply
put: I’m taking everything with a grain of salt — as should we all — until more
sources and official accounts emerge. Until then it’s better to regard the
Mensch reports as highly speculative, as hints and clues that will perhaps
serve as potential springboards to future traditional journalism with better
sources. In the case of a site called the Palmer Report, also mentioned by
Beauchamp, it’s worth noting that Bill Palmer, its proprietor, formerly ran the
pro-Hillary Clinton site Daily News Bin, which routinely published unsourced, shoddy posts about the
election, making his current reporting automatically suspect. You probably
shouldn’t bother with that one.
read the complete article at http://www.salon.com/2017/05/23/no-the-russia-scandal-isnt-fake-news-or-conspiracy-theory-its-a-national-crisis-we-dont-fully-understand/
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