I have enjoyed his writing so far and haven't found reason to question his fact checking yet. Can you offer any example for someone curious about the sketchiness you mentioned?
The author has made a pretty big splash across the media in the past few weeks and has received some pretty damning criticism for his cherry-picking of stats, enough for me to doubt his claims as being accurate.
He wrote controversial articles around data he claimed to have gotten from another individual. This alleged source was his own fabrication. That itself is a serious violation of journalistic ethics. The fact that the data itself seems suspicious is the cherry on that stinking pie.
That’s a fair point. What I had meant to say was that Manjoo’s history of questionable articles (which, to be fair, are just a few selections from a very long and generally liked career) did not seem directly relevant to whether he is being misleading now, other than to imply that he is generally a poor pundit/writer. But you’re right that the argument refers to his work as evidence and not to Manjoo himself.
I specifically said it may be true. He has a public and indisputable history of exaggerating and lying about a whole bunch of stuff, though, so he is not a reliable source for much.
How exactly does "question the author's credibility" translate into "disregard everything he has to say"? Regardless of the author's political affiliations, I seriously doubt that his writing appealed to the likes of the people like Sarah Palin by being sane, rational, and thoughtful.
I mean, sure, there's a good chance he's really an intelligent and respectable guy, but I think the simplest answer is that he's a political shill and has no credibility. And that's the answer I'll stick to until I see evidence that I'm wrong.
There is so much disinformation from an apparently knowledgeable person, that it has to be intentional. No way an ignorant person would create all those falsehoods in the article by a random chance of being mistaken.
In fairness, the first part of my comment is a personal attack that could have been left out. But the second part is what you're agreeing with, that he doesn't have credibility because of making stuff up a bunch recently. And I think that's right.
So he’s biased. Does that mean him fact checking is wrong? Sure, we should demand accountability on both sides, but it’s hard to be completely neutral.
Saying it "has nothing to do with his credibility" sounds extremely naive.
It is totally within possibility that he is "writing about the information that the US intelligence offices were putting out" this time too, to make certain narrative that the US government wants.
That unpublished article was expertly crafted lightning rod contrarian bait.
He calculatedly spun two ‘sides’ very differently and held the ‘evidence’ to different standards, including specifically omitting multiple source facts inconvenient to his spin while seeming to invite them.
Example, from the top level article today:
> In the weeks leading up to the 2020 election, The New York Post obtained that laptop and published a series of articles about the Biden family’s business dealings in Ukraine, China and elsewhere.
‘Obtained’? Really? That word is doing a lot of work there. It’s not false, but really? Everything he writes now is like this — no precise word is dishonest.
His schtick is super well done, imperceptible to or even hotly denied by smart anti-mainstream readers. He’s very good.
I agree with all of this, but I just mean to show that his outlandish and outrageous claims have so far never been hyperbole, but plain unembellished documentation of outlandish and outrageous acts.
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