Trump Threatening the Press Again

Trump doesn't like the bad press he has been getting, and his administration is now considering changing the libel laws we have in place so that he can sue any press outlet or journalist who criticizes him.

I fail to see how this is presidential.

Full Story Here.

It's a darned good thing he can't write laws, then.

I'd like to see CNN and MSNBC get sued.

Pay someone that can.

@Gaming-Planet: Trump is usually on the receiving end of payments these days.

When a story can get front page coverage and destroy someone's life and then later an apology where the media explains "ups we got it wrong" get´s a page 20 note.

I can agree with Trump on the issue that it should be easier to hold media responsible for their neglect. And they should not be able to hide so easily behind the first amendment.

But i do not and never will be for censorship or anything but a free press, just that media be made more aware of their power and responsibility and if they fail to live up to the high standard they should have, they are liable for any short comes.

As an aside, if this statement was made by anyone else, people would be calling him an sjw who can't handle criticism.

More akin to a cry baby who can't handle criticism.
Every president have had criticism, it comes with the territory when there's a two party system. The other party will highly criticize the president if they aren't from the same party.

Democrats criticize Trump

Republicans criticized Obama

Democrats criticized Bush

Republicans criticized Clinton

Etc.

Slander and libel are already illegal and not protected by the First Amendment, that little fact was recently displayed when the Daily Mail had to pay millions to the First Lady after a story they published claimed that she used to be an escort.

However, I would never agree with a law that would censor the press from revealing the truth, assuming that they got the information legally and aren't putting national security in jeopardy just for a scoop.

Before anyone accuses me of implying it, no, I do not think that covering up corruption committed by government officials is a matter of national security.

Trump is a loser President who hasn't passed anything of note 100 days into his administration. I wouldn't be worried.

Down with fake news.

Fox, Limbaugh, Breitbart, etc. would be sued considerably more by Democratic politicians if these libel laws ever passed. While MSNBC can be laughably biased, it doesn't begin to be the Nationl Inquirer level of loon as those.

CNN isn't nearly as biased as either of those, most of their Trump reports that got "fake news" flack ended up being 100% factually true.

Now would be a good time to post that pic of the kid crying with the caption; "Leave Trump alone!" lol

This won't get passed.... another L for trump soon

Facebook is going to fix fake news. Apparently we need to be spoon fed our news.

Britain has very different laws regarding media than we do in America.

While i do support expanding those laws (or i should say, "similar") to America, i feel a companion series of laws along side these would be (criminal) legal consequences for politicians/elected officials lying during interviews, speeches, campaigns, etc. If we are to hold media legally responsible, than we need to hold politicians legally responsible. Of course a second companion could/would be a required weekly Q&A with the voting base.

That said all of these things simply point toward the direction of a functioning government for the people over corporations or political careers, which we know is not going to happen.

This is the most disgusting, unAmerican administration in the history of our nation. Wow...

Isn't he the one who is still going around calling Pelosi "Pocahontas" though, due to her hypothetically running in 2020? That sounds like defamation of character (libel) to me...

Using FB to do this is rather dangerous. I expect them to give us news based on what it believes are our interests.

Facebook is dangerous in general. You are not a customer to facebook. You are the product facebook sells it's customers. While their business model is predicated on your continued participation, better serving you doesn't make them more profitable. Like all for profit entities they exist to cater to the people who give them money. They do this by manipulating you in ways desired by their customers, even if you are hormonal teenager having a particularly rough time.

Facebook is predatory and it is inherently designed to use the secrets and the vulnerabilities of it's users against them. At the end of the day the only thing you can trust a predator to do is feed off of the most helpless thing it can find in abundance.

"Facebook announced partnerships with fact-checkers in the U.S., such as Snopes and PolitiFact; striking similar deals with news organizations, like Agence France Presse and Correctiv, in France and Germany, respectively; and introducing tools to allow people to dispute the veracity of news items appearing on the site's News Feed."

http://fortune.com/2017/04/12/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-fake-news/

The race to control the media is on!

Does this apply to Trump as well? Is he to be held accountable and made aware of his power and responsibility? The man willingly lies through his teeth, spewing blatant falsehoods that are easily disprovable yet no "I got it wrong" is ever given for them (he either doubles down, deflects, or blames others), and the potential damage he can inflict by stating whatever new outrageous brain fart he comes up with is far greater than what the press could ever accomplish.

"Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my "wires tapped" in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!".

"How low has President Obama gone to tap my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!"

I don't understand why Trump isn't prosecuted for these as they are serious allegations presented without evidence in an obvious attempt to smear Obama's reputation. I would think there'd be clause that if the president accuses a prior president or any elected official of such serious crimes without sufficient backing, he will have to answer for it in court and face harsh punishment if he's wrong. It's highly ironic and amusing that Trump and his supporters believe he holds any grounds to hold others accountable in what they say when he is the least accountable person on the planet in doing so himself, to much worse consequences that the world will have to deal with.

Slander already exists.

Yeah, because people should be allowed to choose what they believe in order to comfort themselves rather than hear the facts they need to hear. That's definitely how we can have a free and just society.

We can agree that the news can be slanted either conservative or liberal for news-breaking stories, but if a news page is spreading misinformation (i.e. Obama is getting deported because he's a Muslim Kenyan, Trump is giving billions in taxpayer money to legal citizens) without any evidence to make the case, that's a whole different story that needs to be addressed.

I suggest visiting facebook pages like "conservative post" and "occupy democrats" to get an idea of why fake news needs to be stopped. It spreads misinformation and creates a society ignorant of what's really happening.

The Weimar Republic is a great example of a society with free speech only to be consumed by falsehoods and hate from a would-be tyrant and his minions in order to take over. Once in power, free speech was no more. Other factors led to the downfall of the Weimar Republic but free speech can be its own worst enemy and make way for tyranny and stupidity to take over, therefore destroying free speech in the end.

@drunk_pi: Journalism could use some regulation. Fake news needs a disclaimer that it is fake or get sued for making stories up and trying to pass it as true. Information is like water we don't need it dirty. Germany and the rest of Europe have strict internet regulations they can ban content they don't like.

He's not going to respond to this. He put himself in a corner.

@playmynutz: What pains me is that this should not be necessary. When someone reads a story like pizzagate or the rumors about FEMA camps, chemtrails, or flu vaccine conspiracies, alarm bells should be going off in people's heads like mad telling them, "Perhaps I should investigate this a little more before believing it."

Everyone is going to be wrong about something at some point, and that's fine. But people have filled their heads with nonsense despite spending years training how to filter out bad information from the good.

I can't understate just how critical I think this skill is. I made a point to teach my son how to do this, and although he's only 8 he's reasonably good at it already - it blows my mind that people who have lived lives 10 times as long as his are significantly worse at it than he is.

Well, goodbye to Sam Bee (Canadian) and John Oliver (English) should Drumpf gets what he wants.

Libel already exists too, I'm not sure I'm following your point. Aren't those tweets libel? They're published, not stated.

Obviously this isn't even about accountability to Trump, it's about being able to weave his own false narrative with little to no consequence or opposition. I'm 100% for the press being more responsible, but anybody who honestly believes Trump's doing this for such a noble reason is nothing but naive and gullible. He couldn't care less about the media's "responsibility" as long as it tows his constant bullshit front and center. Then he'll sing their praises. I don't understand how anyone can even begin discussing the responsibility of the press when we don't even have the responsibility of the president, and that "president" certainly holds no right to speak about the value of the integrity of truth and accuracy, stated or written, until he embraces it himself.

@MirkoS77: Oh I was just saying he can be liable for slander.

Oh yea sorry I misread. Slander many times over already.

@mattbbpl: Pizzagate was dangerous because someone acted upon the conspiracy and showed up in DC with a gun looking for Hilary Clinton's sex slaves.

There is a government agency for most industries and professions like the US Security and Exchange Commission who investigate accounting fraud among other things. Journalism could use more auditors who their sole duty is to fact check news. It's asking for a lot of regulation but other professions such as doctors already go through rigorous hoops to certify their work.

Facebook is cooking up something to filter fake news. Trump probably won't get his way in making stricter liable laws.

I don't want more regulation like Europe but their is a market of people that do who don't feel safe and want to be spoon fed their news. A market meaning Facebook sees potential revenue in making their product safe. There's money to be made in stopping fake news.