Zero Hedge loses whatever credibility it once had

LOL. Look, oversampling is a basic in the polling literature. Don't like the Wapo? Fine.

Here's Pew explaining it:
http://www.pewresearch.org/methodology/u-s-survey-research/sampling/#oversampling

 

http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2016/10/11/wikileaks-eilperin-warning-podesta/
http://www.americanthinker.com/arti...ck_outs_hillary_shill_at_washington_post.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry...lary-clinton-over_us_57930be0e4b0e002a3134b05

That about covers the spectrum of media from conservative Breitbart to loony left Huffington.

You need to spend a few minutes getting up to speed.

 

Where is that Pew report?

 

The Zero Hedge blog put "Oversamples" in quotation marks. Why would a writer do such? Writers do this to designate that they mean the usage of the word in a nonstandard way, descriptively, colloquially, sarcastically, etc. Ninth graders know this, yet somehow OP and Co. do not. It would be sad if it weren't such an amusing, repetitive habit with this OP to make such mistakes in their posting. Maybe OP should consider giving less credence to blatantly biased partisan sources and instead thinking for himself for a change.

Thread fails utterly on that alone, but there's more!

Apparently, "oversample" has several accepted meanings, some having nothing to do with statistics, and WAPO picked the most narrow, pedantic one for its nitpick. Don't take my word for it, check out 5-10 different sites and draw your own conclusions. If the way in which Zero Hedge uses the term fits within one of the -several- legitimate definitions of this term, then it may not matter whether they used the quotation marks or not. Thread fails yet again!

Finally, the irony in this thread title is rich. Zero Hedge "loses all credibility it once had."

Seems to me that a national newspaper like WAPO may be the one that is actually "losing all credibility it once had" by "going after" and nitpicking a backwater internet manosphere blog. Again, draw your own conclusions.

As opposed to WAPO, though, OP is unfortunately not in a position to lose any credibility here on this forum.

 

Nice try, when a CNN or MSNBC poll for example, samples 100 democrats and 50 Republicans, the results showing Wall street Hillary as leading, is pure bull(*)(*)(*)(*) and misleading,. masses or no masses, Twinkies or Donuts.

 

spoken like a true Clinton supporter, it all depends on what you mean by oversampling, do you really think Podesta e-mail was talking philosophically? if so, I have a bridge to sell you real cheap.

 

Jeebus. Trump supporters.

Again, "oversampling" is a completely accepted polling technique, designed to ensure you've accurately captured the responses of a small target demographic. If you want to include the results in a larger poll, you just weight the oversampled population back down to their share of the poll population.

Never mind that:
1. The email is neither to or from Podesta. So the claim that is is a "Podesta email" is wrong;
2. It's talking about the campaign's INTERNAL polls. Why would they want to skew their own internal polls?

The Zero Hedge description of the email is OBJECTIVELY WRONG. This is not a matter of opinion; they are simply wrong. It is not an example of, nor evidence of, poll skewing. You have to be WILLFULLY IGNORANT of polling methodologies to claim that.

 

It's objective truth.

"Oversampling" is a TECHNICAL TERM in polling. They were using a technical term when discussing the design of their internal polls. There is no "it depends what you mean".

Where did I ever suggest anyone was "talking philosophically"?

Jeebus. Trump supporters.

 

A "simple sentence" that ignores everything he actually said and tries to replace it with a more easily dismissable canard. You know, there's a phrase for that.

 

he led off with "in recent years" as the beginning of his statement, which means at one point it was not the horrible evil place he now describes them as... he then spins into his tirade of demeaning and belittling them, but apparently, according to him, it wasn't always that way, because he said "in recent years" which means he clearly must have been watching and consuming the source and only recently has he decided to stop because it changed...

I don't see how you can not see the quite simple summary of mine was immensely accurate at this point... do you churn your own butter or do you just buy it?

P.S. but I get it, you want to defend your little buddy, you're his online wing-man... maybe the two of you can go churn some butter together and tell everyone how complex butter making is... despite it being quite a simple process, just labor intensive... it'd be even easier if you just bought it from the store, like I suspect you already do...

 

Or you could read the whole sentence, maybe even diagram it if you are bored. "In recent years" modifies "has become a source of ideological comfort food for conservatives." That's what he is describing happened in recent years, not what you are trying to shoehorn.

lol, back up my buddy? I seriously doubt he and I are even voting for the same candidate, I just hate desperate straw man attacks. But I get it, you can't actually address anything in the OP.

. . . o . . . k?

 

*Sigh.* You've never worked in journalism. And, I suspect, you've never given a second's thought to the day-to-day mechanics of reporting. Yet you feel fully qualified to comment on the topic.

I was a newspaper journalist for 18 years.

How do you think reporters get stories and scoops? By cultivating sources. That means finding people in a position to know things, getting them to trust you, and then milking them for information.

Why would anyone in a position to know stuff blab to a reporter? Sometimes, it's a matter of principle. Sometimes, they like feeling important. Most often, though, it's because the relationship is a two-way street: having a direct connection to a reporter makes it easier for that person to get their own message out when they want it.

In the end, it's a negotiation. The source has access to information that the reporter may want; the reporter controls access to the pages of the publication they work for. Both use their power to negotiate access to the others' area of control.

It's also a relationship built on two-way trust. The source trusts that the reporter won't burn them unnecessarily, and the reporter -- while still cross-checking any information they receive -- generally trusts that the source won't screw him/her over with flat-out lies or forgeries. If a reporter doesn't trust a person that far, they won't use them as a source.

All of the above means that reporters will be chummy with sources; go drinking with sources; shoot the breeze with sources. How else do you think a human being establishes a trusting relationship?

It means reporters will sometimes do a story as a favor for a source, in the expectation that the source will return the favor somewhere down the line. It means sources will preferentially leak information to their favored reporters, or give a reporter they like first crack at a piece of information they have.

Reporters quite often come back and check the veracity of information with a source. They will ask the source to confirm stuff, or ask questions like "If I write this, will it be accurate?" They will sometimes strategize with sources about the best way to get necessary information from third parties.

Sources also can be useful in waving reporters off of stories that aren't as solid as they appear at first glance.

That is how the reporting sausage is made. It's necessary.

Because of the nature of these relationships, there is a risk of reporters being "captured" by their sources. When I worked at a paper in New Jersey, we had a cops reporter who was totally in the pocket of the police department. He had astonishing access, but he never wrote anything negative about the department. When the department was accused of racial profiling, he took the department's side: they had to get another reporter to cover that story.

Here in Minneapolis, the Star Tribune has a sports columnist named Sid Hartmann. He is totally non-objective. He is a fixture in the local sports scene. He was a co-owner of the Minnesota Lakers NBA team (before they moved to L.A.). He does nothing but cheerlead for Minnesota sports teams and figures.

The paper kept him around for one primary reason: his access. If he called the coach of the Vikings, the coach would answer the phone. Every time. So when there was a big story, they'd get Sid to place some phone calls, tell him what questions to ask, and have their regular sports reporters do the rest.

This happens, but it's a known risk, there are professional strictures against it, and when it happens, editors (usually) end up removing the reporter and putting them on a different beat. It is strongly frowned upon within the profession. The key bit here is that some chummy communications are not evidence of such co-opting: usually, they are just evidence of a reporter doing his/her job, and cultivating a source.


Okay, with that out of the way, let's go through your links.

THE HUFFINGTON POST LINK
This story is primarily about the DNC leadership being anti-Bernie. The only thing in that entire article that involves the campaign talking to a reporter is this email exchange with Chuck Todd:
https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/5508

That is not evidence of collusion. The DNC wanted to get their perspective to the Morning Joe team, and offered (through Todd) to set up a meeting between the team and DNC officials to discuss their concerns with a story the Morning Joe folks were working on. Todd asked if that was still a good idea -- politely pushing back on the idea of a meeting. This is not collusion: this is discussion. The sort of thing that goes on between reporters and sources all the time.

THE AMERICAN THINKER
First, I'd like to note that American Thinker is a terrible source of anything. Not because they are conservative, but because they are highly partisan idiots, leaping to illogical and unsupported conclusions, and routinely misunderstanding whatever data they are writing about.

They are talking about Greg Sargent, an opinion blogger at the Washington Post, and basically portray him as nothing more than a conduit for posting DNC press releases.

This may well be true. But I don't know, and the emails the Thinker cites don't prove that one way or the other. All they do is show that Sargent had a good relationship with his DNC sources, and they would preferentially steer stories to him. It also shows some emails displaying normal, non-controversial journalistic behavior: respecting embargoes on the release of information, bragging about stories the reporter or his publication published that might be of interest to the source (and might lead to improved access for the reporter). The Thinker, of course, sees all sorts of dark meaning in such workaday items.

Then they go completely off the rails, by claiming that if Greg Sargent is compromised, so is the entire Washington Post. Which is utter nonsense. The Post has 740 reporters and editors. Claiming that the actions of one political OPINION BLOGGER automatically mean the other 739 journalists are compromised is ridiculous.

BREITBART
Don't get me started on what a completely compromised information source Breitbart is. They are a joke at this point, totally in the tank for Trump, abandoning any pretense of actual journalism.

They, like American Thinker, try to make a mountain out of routine journalistic practices. Their lead is about a WaPo reporter giving Podesta a heads up that he was going to be mentioned in a story about lobbyists. When you have a valued source, and you are going to mention them in a story, it's not unusual to give them a heads up -- it's part of that "trust" bit. It doesn't change the story -- just avoids blindsiding them. Heck, most subjects of stories know they will be in the story -- because they were interviewed or otherwise questioned by the reporter who was writing the story, or at least called and offered the opportunity to comment. If a subject DOESN'T know they're going to be in a story, it's often a sign that the reporter isn't doing their job.

So no, none of the above show "collusion" between the media and Democrats. They show reporters going about their work of cultivating sources, working to get scoops and trying to make sure that what they write is accurate. It is suspicious only to people who have never given a moment's thought to how reporters do their jobs.

 

so basically, your attempt to have me diagram the sentence actually proves exactly what I just got done saying that you replied to... he in fact recognize "in recent years" there was a change, in order for him to recognize there were changes "in recent years" he must then have been consuming this information source, otherwise he would not be aware that "in recent years" they have changed one way or the other, it would purely be new to him and he would have no basis for stating "in recent years" they changed... so why would someone consume a source of information for years, if they were not appreciating the information being presented, and for this change "in recent years" to become a point of conversation, it must have upset him enough to point out that "in recent years" they have changed enough to warrant his mocking and demeaning... so no matter how you attempt to defend your little butter churning wing-man, everything I stated still remains immense true and accurate... he's simply upset that they no longer agree with his way of thinking, which is why "in recent years" he's come to loath them and is now pointing out to the world this fact they changed...

P.S. but hey I get it, you like spooning him when the two of you are churning that butter... are you big spoon or little spoon? or is that too personal, I don't want you writing a long tirade about how "in recent years" I have started to demean and belittle your tandem butter churning skills...

 

Seriously? The "thread fails utterly" because Zero Hedge used quotation marks? Wow.

What you appear to have missed is that Zero Hedge's use of the word "oversample" in the first half of their post is explicitly tied to the use of the word in hacked Clinton campaign emails as described in the second part of their post. So the operative thing here is what did "oversample" mean in the context of those emails?

And in those emails, they were using it as the technical polling term.

This isn't even opinion. Zero Hedge was OBJECTIVELY WRONG. The fact that Trump supporters are no longer able to recognize when a story is flat-out, provably wrong -- is depressing.

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Uh... what I was saying is that it "has become a source of ideological comfort food" in recent years. There was no opinion expressed, pro or con, as to the quality of Zero Hedge as an information source in prior years.

Not sure how trying to overparse my writing leads to any meaningful rebuttal, but hey. You do you.

 

I get it, you got caught with your hand in the cookie jar, and now you want to try and twist out of it with a deny and dismiss... I would suspect someone who was in journalism for 18 years would be far more savvy than you, you just got done ridiculing the other person for not having 18 years in journalism, and you as a result of that are dismissing their comments and criticism... is that your measuring stick, whoever has more years in something, is automatically qualified to dismiss the comments of others? is that the logic you want to work with and cite on this website? because I bet there are many people you've worked with over 18 years who had vastly more experience than you, and you didn't think they had any right to dismiss or disagree with you on many things, but since you want to make that your measuring stick, he who has more years is automatically qualified to dismiss people merely based on his years in something, its quite likely I could dismiss almost anything you write about since I have likely far more years than you do in life... so using your logic, I now dismiss all you write is trivial garbage and you'll just have to accept it, since I have more years in...

 

So, just about ALL the polls are from propaganda outlets?

Don't you think that even a few of them want to put out honest results, so as to keep their reputations for making good predictions and so having people read them in the next election? Then again I think that if we elect Trump there probably won't BE a next election, so maybe you're right.

 

If you honestly don't know what an adverbial phrase is or how it works, I can link you to some resources. The sentence says that it became an source of ideological comfort food for conservatives in recent years. That's it. We're talking grade school grammar skills here.

First grade school grammar errors and now grade school playground "insults" -- anything at all to avoid the points made in the OP at all costs.

 

WikiLeaks is far more credible than any MSM news source. ZH, is far more credible than the Washington Post which has a long history of publishing fabricated "news".

 

????

What "cookie jar" was I caught with my hand in? Your inability to parse or understand a sentence would seem to be your problem, not mine.

Incoherent babble.

Jeebus. Trump supporters.

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Er ... okay.

It's not about credibility. It's about ZH being OBJECTIVELY WRONG. Laughably so.

Jeebus. Trump supporters.

 

In fact WikiLeaks, and by extension Zero are right. You and the Washington Post are objectively wrong - that happens a lot.

 

This is just flat-out false. It's not even a matter of opinion. You are claiming down is up, and that night is day.

Apparently, denial of reality is all that Trump supporters have left.

 

It just appears that Zero Hedge's credibility is higher than any other media outlet under liberal control. The liberal media is not reporting on this. Obama has also been caught red-handed blatantly lying to Americans. It's simply unforgivable. He's taken millions of Americans for complete idiots. He needs to publicly apologise.

Wikileaks Shocker: Cheryl Mills Tells Podesta "We Need To Clean This Up - Obama Has Emails From Her"

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-...ls-podesta-we-need-clean-obama-has-emails-her

...So just how did Mills and Podesta "clean up" the fact that Obama lied to the American people, a tactic some could allege is evidence of an attempt to cover up a presidential lie to protect Hillary Clinton.

Since we are confident others will also demand an answer, in light of the latest revelation hinting at a collusive cover up extending to the very top of US government, or as Cheryl Mills dubbed it a "clean up", perhaps it is time for the State Depratment to unveil just what was said between the president and the Clinton campaign?

 

And here's Pew, explaining (again) what oversampling is:
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tan...-to-study-small-groups-not-bias-poll-results/

Zero Hedge made a ridiculously stupid claim. They were objectively, provably wrong. The real question is why so many people on this site are no longer able to recognize objective error.

 

The real questions are

1. How you managed to get through school (presumably) without realizing how quotation marks are used to signal nonstandard usage or intent... as Zero Hedge did when it put "oversampling" in quotation marks in its blog post title;

2. How you managed to get through school without realizing that words very often have many meanings and colloquial uses, and citing to a single meaning (from Pew or where the F ever) doesn't exclude others. Oversampling has lots of meanings. FACT.

Once again, you are the only one here who would be losing credibility... if you had any on this forum to start with.

 

Clears up so much, thanks.