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Actually, it is The Free Press and LettersFromLeo that are making such assertions.
Well yeah, if they don't want to actually bother and go to the writers to find an answer to the question they apparently have, they don't have to. But their choice is their choice! "I don't want to" isn't the same as "therefore you must be wrong". If they want to go question it, it's not hard to shoot The Free Press team an email or something.
Bari Weiss is a pretty reliable centrist who is friendly to the Trump admin in many areas. I doubt she would be letting through blatant lies on her main journalism site right? Maybe you have different ideas on how trustworthy her and her staff are, but there's probably something behind these accusations. Else Bari Weiss and her staff are risking all the good will they've built up for a relatively minor story in the grand scheme of things. And if it was completely fake, the Vatican might denounce it too and the story would fade away into nothingness while damaging their credibility in the long term. I see no reason to believe Weiss would be doing that.
By making it "your assertions" like above, you hinge the entire credibility on me, an internet stranger. And not the established journalists who broke the story.
Sure but if they can't be bothered to even read what is there (like they missed a collective five references to the original story being from TFP), what's the point? There has to be some sort of baseline before meaningful discussion occurs. I think "read the words that are on your screen and in the link" is the bare minimum.
You wrote:
That reads to me like a person making a factual claim, and presenting evidence to back up their claim. The problem is that the evidence you've presented is "someone somewhere said it", and that you appear to be trying to frame the discussion as though you have no actual position to defend in it. The latter bit, in particular, I am very sure should not be tolerated here.
Bari Weiss is a journalist. Why would I conclude that she would not print blatant lies on her main journalism site? That is something that Journalists have been frequently doing since the invention of the profession. Further, whatever additional status Bari Weiss has for herself is attenuated by the fact that she did not write this piece, and I would be most surprised if she edited it in any meaningful way. Some guy I've never heard of wrote it, and Weiss's site published it.
I have just attempted to read the piece, but it is behind a paywall. Does the free press piece cite any sources other than the Letters from Leo blog? Has the Vatican confirmed the Blog's account? If not, my prior would be that this rumor was posted by the blogger, the Free Press journalist repeated it in his article with no further verification, and it proliferated from there through the rest of the press ecosystem. In which case, your attribution would be incorrect: if the Free Press got it entirely from LettersFromLeo, then it is just from LettersFromLeo, not from both them and the Free Press. Further, this exact method of laundering baseless allegations is the entire basis for the "journalists very rarely lie" meme.
Show me an instance of a press outfit losing "all the goodwill they've built up" due to repeating someone else's lie uncritically. If this event turns out to not have happened, people such as yourself will simply say "well, they never said it happened, they only reported that someone else said it happened, which was entirely true!" I know this, because this is exactly what people like yourself have done in the many, many, many previous incidents where journalists were caught blatantly lying. Your apparent reluctance to stake a position for yourself on the claim's truth or falsity telegraphs the maneuver.
You, an internet stranger, have considerably more credibility than an "established journalist", in that I do not know for a fact that you earn your paycheck through professional dishonesty. Further, I can have a discussion with you about the facts of a matter, and I cannot do this with most journalists. Further, I can maintain a running tally of previous conversations with a person like you, which I generally cannot do with most journalists. You are part of the reputation economy here; you stand to lose much more from this being a lie than the journalist in question does. That makes direct conversation with you a much better filter than consuming journo-slop directly.
In what sense does "the original story" belong to The Free Press? Did they investigate and present corroborating evidence? ...Have you yourself actually read TFP's article, or did you read one of the hundreds of free articles repeating the story uncritically, and attributing it to "The Free Press and Letters From Leo"? If you yourself aren't actually clear on where the "original story" actually came from, aren't @omw_68's questions warranted?
In any case, I would say that the point is to discuss what we believe and why. Hence my previous questions, and I think they're pretty good ones given your responses so far.
There does indeed need to be some sort of baseline. One part of that baseline is to speak plainly, and a major part of that is to take an actual, personal position in the matters you discuss. Likewise, from the introduction at the top of the thread:
I aim to understand what you think and why. Digging in to how you evaluate evidence on an issue is part of that. On the other hand, neither your OP here nor your subsequent replies nor your previous participation here that I've noted indicates to me that you have a good grasp on what the point of this place is. Certainly it does not seem like you make a habit of arguing to understand, which is a shame.
I think this response was intended for someone other than me.
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"Someone somewhere said it" is an interesting way to describe something being reported on by a journalist from an established centrist (and often Trump friendly) media organization.
Bari Weiss is in charge of it, and what goes on would have been approved by either her or people she put in charge of approvals. As for if they lied, I invite you to this ACX post. It's possible it's fabricated from whole cloth, but that would be odd. And for what purpose?
Trump has already openly threatened both Canada and Denmark, certainly no one would think "Ah, an undersecretary vaguely threatening the Vatican behind closed doors will hurt him significantly" right? That behavior is less unhinged and damaging than what Trump has already done on multiple occasions to what might be even stronger and important allies (our regional neighbors and NATO).
Ok so you also didn't read a single thing said then, because the free press does not cite Letters from Leo. TFP was first. You got the basic timeline wrong, you do not even understand even the simplest elements of this story and yet try to dismiss everything about it. That doesn't suggest you're participating in good faith, if anything it makes me doubt if you even tried to read the Letters from Leo piece to begin with cause even in the pre paywall section he makes it clear that TFP was first.
I don't want to accuse you of lying here, but it is questionable when the fourth sentence is "That scene, broken this week by Mattia Ferraresi in an extraordinary piece of journalism for The Free Press, may be the most remarkable moment in the long and knotted history of the American republic’s relationship with the Catholic Church." and the literal subheading is "The Free Press has documented a closed-door Pentagon meeting in which a senior Trump official lectured Pope Leo XIV’s ambassador on American military supremacy.". If you aren't lying and actually tried to read it, how did you not see either of those?
Because they're the ones who first reported on it! You also don't seem to understand the basics of journalism here either.
If the point of the place is "don't read a single thing, don't even understand the most basic timeline of what order things were published in, and just cast doubt on anything that could make the government look bad" then yeah, I didn't understand it. But I thought it was for intelligent and meaningful discussion, so if anything my bar of "at least know the most basic details and actually read the words" is incredibly low.
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