The conceit that there's some objective "not fake news" out there to which "fake news" doesn't measure up is fake news.
News reporting is integrally and inextricably laden with bias, motive, and perspective.
The 20th century corporate media monopoly which purported to be the ministry of truth is dead, and lamenting over its grave won't bring it back to life.
> a random article on the BBC and Alex Jones saying the kids in Sandy Hook were crisis actors
A tiny fraction of people follow Alex Jones and the vast majority disagree (or have no idea who he is). I have yet to see someone who actually believes the kids in Sandy Hook were crisis actors.
The reality is that the US corporate media (literally billion dollar media companies like NY Times or WaPo) are angry about losing their monopoly on what the "truth" is.
Now, they have to compete with independent journalists publishing on Substack/YouTube (read how critical the NY Times is of Substack. It's absurd.). They're trying to get YouTube/Facebook/Twitter to censor anyone who's not "an expert", where they get to decide who counts as an expert.
So, the media is trying to push a narrative that Alex Jones is a bigger threat than he really is. They're also trying to paint all independent media as Alex Jones-type so they can maintain their monopoly on the truth.
Meanwhile, they continue to run million dollar marketing campaigns where they're trying convince everyone that they're the truth ("Democracy Dies in Darkness").
Frankly, the media did the exact same thing with Trump in 2016 (and continue to do so). Trump was a fringe character during the beginning of the RNC for the 2016 election and Jeb Bush was the frontrunner.
The media (left especially) proceeded to talk about Trump 24/7 and give him unlimited free air time (and they got a ratings bump in return). They took someone who was a fringe character and made him seem like the mainstream. The Streisand Effect kicked in and Trump immediately shot up in the polls.
Then, when Trump ended up winning, the media pretended they had 0 culpability and spun up a false narrative that the Russian interference gave Trump the victory (The Russians interfered, but their interference wasn't what swung the election, it was a laughable attempt if you read their strategies. The media talking about Trump 24/7 was what gave him the victory).
Ok? Again, this is an extremely fringe view. There are a couple thousand people who believe the sandy hook children were actors. The rest of the US thinks those people are abhorrent.
Censoring independent media and giving the US corporate press a monopoly on truth as a response to this incident (or other fringe incidents like this) would be a massive mistake.
I don’t think the prosecution of Alex Jones is an example of independent media being censored. He harmed some people with lies and is being held accountable.
Nobody here is suggesting US corporate press has a monopoly on truth.
Thank you for stating it so clearly. If the media was not building narratives and, in effect, household recognition of some profiles around none of this would be an issue. But we have narratives, because they do sell and old media has to compete with new entrants that are not as bogged down by quaint rules that governs old media ( and that includes stream of Alex Jones ).
I do not blame just the old media though. They just responded to the reality the best way they could. There is a reason most articles are now a litany of clickbaity titles. I blame us.
> The media (left especially) proceeded to talk about Trump 24/7 and give him unlimited free air time (and they got a ratings bump in return). They took someone who was a fringe character and made him seem like the mainstream. The Streisand Effect kicked in and Trump immediately shot up in the polls.
your post is chock full of simply ridiculous claims and this one is the crowning piece. please supply *any* actual documentation for any of these made up ideas. Trump shot up in popularity because he ran in primaries, he had plenty of money to do so as well as a lot of backers (both domestic and foreign, we were to learn) all around the country and conservative voters liked his ideas (mostly the anti-immigrant rhetoric, which is the oldest song in the conservative catalog, as well as a deep well of hatred for HRC that had been developed by conservative interests for literally decades) the best, plain and simple. FOX news would have built him up ahead of time as they are a right wing propaganda outlet that most certainly did want to create a Trump candidacy, sure. however "Left wing media" or even "mainstream" media outside of FOX did not "pre-choose" Trump ahead of his popularity by any means. As he continued beating everyone in polling and later in actual primaries by crazy numbers, the (non-FOX) media appropriately noticed and reported on it, and he became the center of attention as is actually appropriate. There is absolutely nothing new about that in conservative politics (except for the novel opportunity to run against a female candidate who had been built up as a focal point of anger for 25 years).
The bigger problem with this notion that Trump was "fringe outside the mainstream" is this attempt to distance US conservatism from the deeply nativist, anti-immigrant stance of the Trump presidency. But that is exactly a core value of the conservative base, which I have personally observed for my whole life amongst the many conservatives in my large extended family as well as in the communities I live in. He is exactly what "regular" conservatives want. Trying to pin it on a "the media made us do it!" is a dangerous lie in that regard.
> your post is chock full of simply ridiculous claims
State exactly which claims are ridiculous and why they're ridiculous.
> please supply any actual documentation for any of these made up ideas
Here's a study by the Shorenstein Center on Media/Politics/Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School.
"The report shows that during the year 2015, major news outlets covered Donald Trump in a way that was unusual given his low initial polling numbers—a high volume of media coverage preceded Trump’s rise in the polls."
"Neither of these indicators, however, explains Trump’s coverage. When his news coverage began to shoot up, he was not high in the trial-heat polls and had raised almost no money. Upon entering the race, he stood much taller in the news than he stood in the polls.[8] By the end of the invisible primary, he was high enough in the polls to get the coverage expected of a frontrunner. But he was lifted to that height by an unprecedented amount of free media."
"The Democratic race in 2015 received less than half the coverage of the Republican race. Bernie Sanders’ campaign was largely ignored in the early months but, as it began to get coverage, it was overwhelmingly positive in tone."
"The Shorenstein Center study is based on an analysis of thousands of news statements by CBS, Fox, the Los Angeles Times, NBC, The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. The study’s data were provided by Media Tenor, a firm that specializes in the content analysis of news coverage."
Of course, you provide 0 "documentation" for any of your own claims and are just dismissing whatever I said as "made up".
> As he continued beating everyone by crazy numbers, the media appropriately noticed and reported on it, and he became the center of attention as is actually appropriate
Completely false. You provide 0 evidence whatsoever. I gave you a study conducted by the Harvard Kennedy School that shows the exact opposite.
The media gave Trump disproportionate airtime at the start of the primary when he was polling far behind other republican candidates.
> State exactly which claims are ridiculous and why they're ridiculous.
the media did not give Trump free air time as a nobody, fringe candidate. Especially left leaning media. Trump ran for president many times before and he was always treated as the joke he is. What changed in 2016 was he had HRC to run against as well as a potent backlash in conservative politics that was brewing after the Obama presidency.
> "The report shows that during the year 2015, major news outlets covered Donald Trump in a way that was unusual given his low initial polling numbers—a high volume of media coverage preceded Trump’s rise in the polls."
your statement is: "The media (left especially) proceeded to talk about Trump 24/7". The above report does not break down anything about "left leaning media" vs. centrist media vs. FOX news. I'm a consumer of left leaning media. In that world, Trump was a total nobody until he began winning.
> Of course, you provide 0 "documentation" for any of your own claims and are just dismissing whatever I said as "made up".
the burden of proof is on you to show "left leaning media" reporting on Trump "24/7" *before* his polling dominance and electoral wins occurred.
I'm not going to waste my time if you refuse the read the study.
> The above report does not break down anything about "left leaning media" vs. centrist media vs. FOX news
It literally does. Read the study...
"When critics have accused journalists of fueling the Trump bandwagon, members of the media have offered two denials. One is that they were in watchdog mode, that Trump’s coverage was largely negative, that the “bad news” outpaced the “good news.” The second rebuttal is that the media’s role in Trump’s ascent was the work of the cable networks—that cable was “all Trump, all the time” whereas the traditional press held back."
"Neither of these claims is supported by the evidence. Figure 2 shows the news balance in Trump’s coverage during the invisible primary. As can be seen, Trump’s coverage was favorable in all of the news outlets we studied. There were differences from one outlet to the next but the range was relatively small, from a low of 63 percent positive or neutral in The New York Times to a high of 74 percent positive or neutral in USA Today. Across all the outlets, Trump’s coverage was roughly two-to-one favorable."
"By our estimate, Trump’s coverage in the eight news outlets in our study was worth roughly $55 million. Trump reaped $16 million in ad-equivalent space in The New York Times alone, which was more than he spent on actual ad buys in all media during all of 2015. In our eight outlets, the ad-equivalent value of Trump’s coverage was more than one-and-a-half times the ad-equivalent value of Bush, Rubio, and Cruz’s coverage, more than twice that of Carson’s, and more than three times that of Kasich’s. Moreover, our analysis greatly underestimates the ad-equivalent value of Trump’s exposure in that it’s based on only eight media outlets, whereas the whole of the media world was highlighting his candidacy. Senator Cruz might well be correct in claiming that Trump’s media coverage was worth the equivalent of $2 billion in ad buys."
They only included positive/neutral coverage when analyzing ad-equivalent purchases.
I read the whole thing. "By our estimate". Where is the data? When did it happen and at what rates? What news sources are called "the left"? note that while I dont consider the New York Times to be very "left", that sentence is using the NYT as an example of how much advertising space costs, not that the NYT itself ran $16 million of coverage directly. Also, the images on this page don't seem to load (example https://shorensteincenter.orgwp-content/uploads/2016/06/figu... . host not resolvable here).
Trump ran for president many times before. Why didn't "the media" create his candidacy all those other times? It's because there were many factors working in favor for him this time, that both matched the message he was giving, as well as that he had himself honed his message with the help of foreign agents like Paul Manafort. Of course "the media" was essential to his win, as they would be to any candidate running at a national level, but they didn't just pick him out of thin air and decide to create a candidacy on a whim.
I don't have any data to have this up other than personal observation, but I would wager that CNN (for example) covered trump much more than other candidate simply because he was their best seller. They are a for-profit entertainment company after all.
I'm not necessarily saying that they set out to help him win, but they sure did help him win.
Personally, I'm not too keen on either of your takes. I do remember Trump getting an unusual amount of attention, but it was mainly because the media was mocking the idea of him running. Whether this had the Streisand effect I think is pretty irrelevant.
NYT is "left" as far as an every day citizen is concerned; how left the NYT is I think is a non-sequitur. There's a pattern on the left of unclaiming anything anyone raises about "the left" that's negative. You unclaimed the NYT but I've also heard this done rhetorically with Antifa. People will say they don't exist because there's no one leading it or that "they're not left" in a no-true-Scotsman fashion. I don't think these are helpful or truthful positions to hold.
There are pretty thoughtful takes on what motivated Trump supporters. I'll leave a few for both of you.
tldr: The areas Trump won in were rural areas, those were key to capturing the presidency in a tight race. I lived in one of these areas at the time; not a single Democrat showed up. There were no ads, there was nobody shaking hands, at that point I doubted people would even know what a Democrat or a left-leaning Libertarian were. QAnon and Neo-Nazis certainly did vote for him, but that doesn't make up the huge swing needed for him to win in a race as close as that one.
There's a rather easy fix for this: Send the fucking Democrats. Show up in the primaries in rural areas. Make policy and plans for improving rural areas. Speak directly to these people without telling them that you aim to take their jobs. Show them a trajectory to a better life and I'll bet they'll follow. People forget that many of these areas are historically Democrat or swing states.
You're not wrong, but I personally would like to see the job of being a reporter like public defendant, a lawyer, judge. Sure none of those are non biased either, but at least people try to hold on to that ideal.
This seems like a lazy defense of bad reporters who turned out to become propagandists instead.
> Government has no business censoring him or anyone from making spurious claims
The argument is if enough people suffer Sandy Hooks and get harassed by Alex Jones type sycophants, they lose trust in freedom of speech narrowly, democracy broadly, and become more inclined to support a change of pace.
We’re seeing rising support for authoritarianism in part because our system isn’t working for some people. I’m still unsure if the solution is less democracy (to temper swinging majoritarianism) or more, but that unsureness is sort of symptomatic of the argument around not being able to trust institutions. (There are also zero authoritarian regimes in history that tolerated broad freedom of speech.)
You could argue that we tend to move in cycles ( things are too loose, up the authority; things are too tight, loosen up ). I am personally horrified that US appears to be somewhat ok with gutting its freedom of speech as much as it can with support of some rather naive helpers, who think that power will not be used against them.
It's not about allowing or not. Anyone can say whatever they want. Then they get sued for fraud.
Free speech != allowing fraud in the legal system. (or any other consequence from speech).
So strictly speaking, yes, you are ALLOWED to say whatever you want, but be prepared for a lot of shit if you lie to people or are wrong. Or be prepared to go to jail if you incite violence or yell fire in a crowded space. (and btw, Alex Jones is bankrupt because of Sandy Hook, to the other posters above).
This free speech = speech without consequences is a silly lie invented by people who want to control speech.
A lot more would believe the BBC article. I don't believe that the BBC would do too many direct lies, but you can get very far by selective sourcing and we know the BBC is willing to go very far on issues of omission: they never mentioned Saville being a pedo rapist, fx, probably because it would look bad for them.
I agree with that, but let me add, for the benefit of younger viewers:
The term "fake news" was originally used to refer to small advertisements that would get people to click on them by showing a text saying something like "The pope has been assassinated! Latest pictures!". Anyone who clicked on the small advertisement would be shown a big advertisement for porn or gambling or whatever; there was no serious attempt to make people believe that the pope had been assassinated. "Fake news" was a good description for that practice. But then journalists decided that "fake news" should be a pointless synonym for propaganda.
These are probably the same journalists who decided that a "hacker" is a criminal, a "troll" is someone who spreads propaganda or harrasses an individual, and a "selfy" is any photograph showing someone's face. (That last one didn't really catch on but for a while the BBC was repeatedly using the word "selfy" in that sense.)
"all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others" - George Orwell
I think it comes back to the fact that some views are absolutely wrong in all cultures at all times. However those are often not what is being discussed.
Many popular topics are actually collections of trade offs vilified by the opposing parties.
Wrong. There is an objective truth, and there is a lie. Sometimes it's hard to distinguish. But the difference is always there. Nowadays people are caring less and less about the truth. Look at Russia, they're even trying to build a parallel, fake reality.
> News reporting is integrally and inextricably laden with bias, motive, and perspective.
To be honest, I think it’s usually obvious when a ‘news’ source is deliberately telling falsehoods to a less than well-informed audience in order to further a political and / or ideological agenda.
The issue seems the belief that attempting to run an objectively true and reasonably balanced news service is itself ideologically biased, in that it interferes with the desire to conduct ‘the politics of narrow interests’ - something that often requires one group to discount the interests of the others using dishonest speech.
If you believe either the Russian or Ukrainian estimates of casualties in the active conflict, then you've failed the basic critical thinking skills challenge.
Humans are not all scientists. Heck, even scientists who specialize in the hard sciences very often find a way to inject their biases, motives, and perspectives into their work.
Its as if they dont realize that fake news is not only the product of crazy people online. How many hoaxes from recognized institutions like the NYT do you need before you stop trusting just anything?
Alternatively, one can think critically on a case-by-case basis, instead of either trusting nothing at all or giving uncritical trust based on a source.
> one can think critically on a case-by-case basis
That's easy to say. If all of your sources are poisoned with narratives and misrepresentation (in one way or another), you basically don't have any anchor to make proper judgment.
The NYT does run, centrally, what they call "narratives" which I think is what people are referencing here. This has apparently been in practice for quite some time but only has been a point of discussion as people leave.
Let's face it, the only reason that 'fake news' exists in its current form is because the corporate media has done such a piss-poor job of holding to journalistic ethics, which has been declining steadily for decades. If people actually had an alternative that they thought they could trust, there would not be a market for 'fake news' (which sometimes turns out to just be the whole, unbiased facts presented in opposition to the agenda-driven and manipulated 'news' of the legacy media).
I don't disagree, but I have two issues when people bring up Fox and news radio.
Fox is a single entity, and let's be fair in terms of conservative/Republican vs liberal/Democrat, the split between media outlets is like 80/20 in favor of the latter. So when people focus on Fox they're ignoring 80% of the lies and half-truths that are put out there. Because that's done by outlets like MSNBC and CNN and your local outlets.
The second issue is that, unlike many liberal outlets, Fox at least brings on actual liberals to push back or give differing opinions. On the other hand you have companies like the BBC who are literally banning opposing views on topics like the environment and coronavirus.
Fake news is the responsibility of anti-revolutionary forces, wreckers and saboteurs, unenlightened reactionaries attempting to subvert Progress.
Right? That's the usual line.
Why does the Emperor brag about his birthday suit? To demonstrate and exercise power, to remind those who dare not say the truth why they won't call out his bare ass; and bait those who will into a conflict on his terms.
"This paper argues that online fake news threatens democratic processes because it undermines citizens’ epistemic trust in each other. This in turn threatens to undermine the perceived legitimacy of democratic institutions as a whole."
"Major democratic institutions have correctly identified fake news as a threat to their values and processes. However, the danger posed by these online falsehoods does not primarily lie in their power to convince readers of the veracity of their factually incorrect content. Rather, the primary danger fake news poses to democratic values and institutions lies in the corrosive effect it has on trust among citizens and thus on citizens’ trust in their democracy."
"online fake news threatens democratic values and processes by playing a crucial role in reducing the perceived legitimacy of democratic institutions. This decrease in perceived legitimacy is the outcome of the primary effect that fake news has on citizens: even if its content is not believed, fake news can be a major cause of a loss of citizens’ epistemic trust in each other’s political views and judgment. Such a loss of trust in each other is problematic for democratic institutions since these rely for their acceptance and functioning on citizens seeing them as morally justified. Critiques of fake news often focus on citizens’ loss of trust in their mainstream media. While this is indeed part of the problem, I will argue that the main threat of fake news pertains to the loss of epistemic trust citizens have in each other. Fake
news is thus a moral problem insofar as we think of democracies as a morally special, or at least a particularly valuable, form of government. This paper is significant because unlike most discussions of fake news that assume that citizens are likely to accept these falsehoods as true it takes seriously the empirical studies that assert that most people do not believe the content of fake news and explains why we should nonetheless consider fake news a morally significant problem."
The problem with fighting "fake news" is that I've not seen a coherent definition of what "fake news" even is, much less a consistent definition among the media of what "truth" is or if it's an objective or relative standard. "News" sources these days have to get ratings/views/clicks/engagement in order to sell advertising which is an inherent conflict of interest against the idea of simply informing the reader/listener/viewer. As dependent as news outlets are on advertising do you think they are going to run afoul of their biggest buyers of ads (Big Pharma and the defense industry)?
"Fake news" cannot be fixed until the funding model for news is fixed.
Especially problematic are so-called "fact-checking" services which often rely on technicalities to declare something true or false. "It was so hot everyone went to the beach" False, there are reports a few grandparents did not go to the beach.
"Not everyone received the reimbursement" False, although not everyone received the re-imbursements, you can re-apply for the re-imbursements in order to receive them.
And this is why few people use them to change their minds and either serve to reinforce what they believe or reinforce their belief to not believe their conclusions.
While I don't disagree, the paper defines fake news in the context of the paper in section 1 :
"“Fake news” has become a term that is used to denote very different things: it is employed to discredit political opponents or the respectability of particular news outlets, and it is used colloquially to simply refer to untruths in any given context. However, the phenomenon that public institutions like the European Commission and the British Parliament are concerned about most plausibly entails at least three features:
1. Fake news contains false information.
2. Fake news is created with deceptive intent.
3. Fake news is presented as resembling traditional news items (even though it is not produced in accordance with editorial standards)."
and they list three examples of 'fake news' which are stories that are demonstrably false and created intentionally with the sole purpose to mislead.
This isn't true. "Fake news" is an imitation of news. News is what we all know news is. A product that presents information. There is entertainment news, celebrity news, movie news, music news. But "the news" is usually current events or politics.
Everyone knows "fake news" means fake political news. An imitation of a format we all recognize.
Pretending you cant tell the difference is "fake commenting". You are pretending to discuss coherence and truth and objectivity. But really you dont care. You aren't defending fake news on the merits. You are saying, "there isn't any such thing as news, so how can this other stuff be fake." Its crap and not a real comment. It isn't even an original thought.
Simply having a scoop before everyone else can get you labeled as fake news. Happens almost daily in the world of sports news where some journalist reports on a tip that such-and-such player is going to be traded or is injured or going to be suspended but the official team PR people will deny it -- not because they are lying but because they simply don't know (yet). So in this case the team's official PR person denying the story causes the reported tip to be deemed "fake news" until the truth of the matter comes out later. My point in this example is that the accusation of fake news is by no means limited to politics or hard-news per se: it can apply to any situation where the speed at which people learn something happens at different speeds, especially before the official news/PR people for an organization even know.
Because whether something is deemed to be "fake" can depend entirely on a subjective point of view. In fact it could be argued that it's more the rule than the exception that a subjective point of view determines what is fake.
Nonsense. When have people not trusted others to tell them what's true? When have they not been manipulated as a result? If that kills democracy, then it was dead from birth. Democracy persists, imperfect though it is, despite these facts. If it dies, it won't be because someone "invented" fake news. It's more likely to die because people believe it can't safely be practiced because of things like fake news.
Do you think it might be useful to post one of these threads a month later with the intent being for people to engage in a meta analysis of the discussion here, the intent of the delay being to establish a state of "cooler heads"? Something like forced/intentional mindfulness/abstraction?
I think it'll just be a retread of the same discussions and talking points as last time. There's never "cooler heads". If there were, you'd see when articles do get recycled and someone posts all of the previous discussions. Or when similar topics get brought up.
This is not the first time that "fake news" has been brought up here. And yet, every time, the same voices can be counted on to make the exact same points despite all evidence saying they are wrong.
There are topics that probably should just be not allowed on HN due to how they bring down the overall level of discourse. But you know that would be the bogeyman of mean ol censorship. But you know, the comment threshold, flagging, shadow-banning, etc are somehow not. If you're going to moderate, moderate.
I think we're not completely on the same page: I'm not saying we should repost the article itself, but rather repost discussions threads about articles (perhaps with names anonymized and the non-anonomized original post delisted temporarily to prevent cheating), and the task at hand being: nitpick the silliness of our former selves.
> And yet, every time, the same voices can be counted on to make the exact same points despite all evidence saying they are wrong.
Indeed, and many of them are surprisingly silly considering the intelligence on this site. Certain topics can throw very powerful minds into disarray and delusion, and this phenomenon plausibly can cause great harm, why not study it!!?? Do we really care about the wellbeing of humanity, or are we just here to concern troll?
> There are topics that probably should just be not allowed on HN due to how they bring down the overall level of discourse. But you know that would be the bogeyman of mean ol censorship. But you know, the comment threshold, flagging, shadow-banning, etc are somehow not. If you're going to moderate, moderate.
Alternatively, this community (and its leadership) could be a little daring and see if it can walk its impressive talk.
From prior conversations I'm pretty confident leadership "wouldn't be interested" in this sort of thing, but it would be fun to see a grassroots effort at it, and even more fun if it got shut down for "reasons".
People do post the discussion threads. Although I doubt a lot of people go back to read them. Some, of course, but not all. I do kind of like the idea of posting the discussion thread as the item of discussion itself. Anonymization is probably needed although personally, anything I wrote 2 to 3 months ago always feels like it was written by someone else.
I've always liked Slashdot's attempt at moderation. Moderators chosen at random with a limited set of options/votes to give to posts.
There's very little you can do to game that system.
> anything I wrote 2 to 3 months ago always feels like it was written by someone else.
It's a bizarre phenomenon eh?
Have you experimented with psychedelics at all? To me, there's no better vantage point on the theatrical production we're all unwittingly involved in than that. Scaling it up into something particularly useful seems like it might be a bit problematic though.
Is it much different from "Trump's actions benefited Russian interests" when he had to be aware of the outcomes or he was incompetent? Either is damning to me.
There are far too many coincidences within the campaign and staffing, his personal venture funding, and his attempted blackmail of Ukraine to just dismiss the Trump-Russia connection.
What Trump actions benefited Russian interests? Arming the Ukrainians? Demanding Europe spend more money on their military? Blocking the construction of the nordstream2 pipeline with threats of sanctioning anybody who worked on it? Bolstering the US energy industry
Trump would have been public enemy #1 for Russia. It's still leftover nonsense from the steele dossier hoax that caused this sort of thinking. It's extremely frustrating, and is an example of why fake news is so dangerous.
Withdrawal from Syria. The G7 invite. Pulling out of Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty.
Attempting to blackmail Ukraine for his own political gains. Imagine they actually complied and were later found out. Even now Ukraine has to fight back against a reputation of corruption, and he was adding fuel to the fire.
For your example, the approach of denigrating European allies to get them to pay more fomented division. You might also recall he called for the US to withdraw from NATO.
When he still denied Russian activities relating to the election, despite the Mueller report and Senate investigation confirming it, all based on a chat with Putin.
When he held water for Putin's claim of Russia not shooting down MH-17 and instead muddied the waters with his doublespeak.
These are extremely thin. I'm not trying to get into a political debate since we could go on forever, but here goes:
>Withdrawal from Syria.
He withdrew from Syria, and also started the withdrawal process from Afghanistan because he was vocally against engaging the US in forever wars. GOOD. That's hardly a position that supports Russia.
>The G7 invite.
Again trying to prevent global conflicts. He talked extensively about Russia as a threat to Europe. This is in alignment with his work on things like the Abraham accords (middle east peace) and the work he did on Korean peace deals (which he made massive progress on).
>Pulling out of Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty.
I don't know anything about this, but pulling the US out of a treaty hardly seems like a legitimate concern unless you want to say the same thing about Obama literally just ignoring the agreement we had with Ukraine that would have obligated us to support them when Russia invaded in 2014.
Obama definitely wasn't a "Russian asset" for not starting a war over Ukraine.
>Attempting to blackmail Ukraine for his own political gains.
This is an absurd overstatement of what happened. Aid was never withheld from Ukraine (unlike the previous administration, which was also not run by Russian assets). Also: anti corruption efforts are hardly "his own political gains" unless you want to frame "anti corruption" as a strictly Trump-aligned idea.
>You might also recall he called for the US to withdraw from NATO.
Hardly. He said that if European countries weren't going to pay their legally obligated contributions to NATO, then the US wouldn't either. Obviously this is a bargaining technique to get them to uphold their obligations. I fail to see how negotiating to get European countries to increase their defense budgets explicitly to defend against Russia is aligned with Russian interests.
>When he still denied Russian activities relating to the election, despite the Mueller report and Senate investigation confirming it
Again I think you've been bitten by fake news here, and this highlights, again, the problem: what do you think "Russian activities relating to the election" were? Some memes on 4chan? A few thousand dollars worth of facebook ads?
>MH17
MH17 was shot down by Russia during Obama's term, and Obama did nothing. He also continued doing nothing while Russia invaded Ukraine, refusing to even send them weapons. Obama wasn't a Russian asset either.
Again: the entire idea of Trump as having anything to do with Russia came from a hoax. That was fake news, and it is still interfering with people's ability to make informed decisions about the US government. It's extremely frustrating.
Your stated position of it being a 'hoax' is not a conclusion I could ever reach. Trump's ties to Russia despite being inflated by the news aren't a 'hoax'. His campaign members entanglement in foreign affairs wasn't a 'hoax'. I can agree some of those actions have possible alternative motives, but they are listed because the outcomes Trump encouraged were also favorable outcomes for Russia. You can weight their severity however I guess.
I don't know what to say about your denial of the Ukraine blackmail. First you change my answer to being about whether the aid was held instead of the fact that he tried to pressure Ukraine into releasing information about his political opponent. Aside from that it was clear funding was held after the White House initially determined conditions were met. Mick Mulvaney even excused it as Trump being "not a big fan of foreign aid", and claimed Trump said Ukraine was a corrupt place (Oct. 17 2019 press briefing). It doesn't make sense to try and excuse it like this if no aid was withheld.
I don't know why bring up Obama as relating the MH-17. Trump's comments were after the investigation that concluded from Dutch authorities, and the conclusion of his own intelligence apparatus. We can write it off as just Trump's style to say words that only benefit a rival, but that just makes him to be rather incompetent as I said before. Still damning.
edit: I wrote incorrectly about the Dutch investigation time. That was concluded before the election, not during Trump's term.
He was impeached for withholding military aid to Ukraine. Which Russia is now invading. Does it matter if he was literally an asset or not, given he pretty much played the part anyway?
This is exactly the problem with fake news. It sticks around, and you've been caught by it. It seems likely that this fake news has influenced your ability to make rational decisions about how you vote, etc. This is a huge problem for democracy.
No he did not withhold military aid from Ukraine. In fact in the initial offensive, the javelin missiles that they were effectively using against Russian tanks came from the Trump administration. And in fact Trump was highly critical of the previous administration for "only sending blankets", which was something he was called a hawk for.
AND NOT ONLY THAT but one of the major points of Trump's presidency was criticizing European/NATO nations for not spending enough on their defense; specifically warning that Russia was going to use their dependence on Russian natgas, and lack of military spending, to Russia's advantage.
"Mulvaney added: "Did he also mention to me in the past the corruption related to the DNC server? Absolutely. No question about that. But that's it. And that's why we held up the money."
ABC News' Jonathan Karl immediately followed up and asked Mulvaney to confirm that "the demand for an investigation into the Democrats was part of the reason that he ordered to withhold funding to Ukraine."
Mulvaney replied affirmatively, saying that "the look back to what happened in 2016 certainly was part of the thing that he was worried about in corruption with that nation."
The claim was that Trump withheld funding and was impeached for it. You claimed, incorrectly, Trump did not withhold funding. I'm not sure what your other questions are about.
You should be more careful of accusing people of falling for fake news when you are having such a hard time distinguishing fact from fiction.
"The inquiry reported that Trump withheld military aid[a] and an invitation to the White House to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy in order to influence Ukraine to announce an investigation into Trump's political opponent Joe Biden"
My claim is that the aid was ultimately not withheld, which is an objective fact.
As far as the impeachment, if you don't see this as nakedly partisan, then I would advise you to try and expand the perspectives you look at current events from.
It has nothing to do with partisanship when a President pressures a foreign aid recipient to announce an investigation into his political rival. It was just plain wrong.
That the outcome of the Senate trial was partisan has more to do with party politics. Republican Senators weren't on the floor arguing that Trump did the right thing. They intentionally worked to minimize how much of the trial was able to reach the news cycle because they also knew what occurred was wrong. The whole thing was over in 4 days and it was run on a weekend to minimize exposure. You might recall the upset over how the Senate even voted to not call witnesses.
News reporting is integrally and inextricably laden with bias, motive, and perspective.
The 20th century corporate media monopoly which purported to be the ministry of truth is dead, and lamenting over its grave won't bring it back to life.