Yet More Propaganda...
This whole article reads exactly like a page straight the "Main Stream Media," well understood by thinking people to be filled with propaganda and spin, top to bottom.
Firstly, lets look at the "source". It stated that "Seven current and former U.S. government officials told Reuters" [whatever the U.S. propaganda machine would want said]. This is in no way a credible "source" that would have been allowed to get ink or air time in the mid 1970s. Without naming names, and without a damned good reason for keeping anonymity, it's nothing but a rumor mill.
Secondly, nowhere do we learn that "the plans" (which were clumsily equated with "documents") were actually in the hands of an "independent" entity, say, Reuters News, for example, to verify the claims of these seven mythical "leakers." And therefore, the article is guilty of presenting as fact the claims of Reuters without a single shred of any evidence to confirm it - or even that Reuters can say "with a straight face" that it has seen the documents (plans) and can confirm the interpretation of them.
Thirdly, even if we assume the first plan actually exists and its goal really was to "elect someone friendly to Russia", then the article is guilty of spreading propaganda due to the omission of the necessary context that ONE of the two candidates was actively advocating pursuing a hot, shooting war with Russia in the form of a "no fly zone" over Syria which several top-ranking military officials (Joint Chiefs, I think, I could go look it up if someone wanted) had said on camera would lead to direct military conflict with Russia A THERMONUCLEAR ARMED POWER. ...I don't know about you, but I happen to think that's insane and therefore I, personally WANT someone with a FRIENDLIER view toward Russia. Yet, the article makes it sound as if that's a bad thing! Additionally, using social media to influence anything doesn't sound so sinister to me. After all, maybe they're right!
Fourthly, the real problem(s) with the U.S. election for POTUS have absolutely nothing to do with "voter fraud", but rather election fraud, and you'd better believe that BOTH the Republicans and Democrats cheated heavily. Recall that when Jill Stein (foolishly) decided to try and get a recount, instead of showing Republican election fraud, it showed Democratic election fraud instead! Fraud, by the way, that nothing was ever done about. ... So, when we read here that Reuters is trying to get words in people's faces about "voter fraud," instead of addressing the real issues American Voters face, they instead speak to the idiotic claims from Republicans that are used to disenfranchise large numbers of American Voters. I guess they think we're all too stupid to know the difference between voter fraud and election fraud (and, unfortunately, I think they're largely correct).
Fifthly, the article states with the same level of factual support as the rest of the articles statements - namely none - the claim that U.S. intelligence did not discover these documents until after the election without bothering to point out that it was assumed by a great many powerful people Hillary would win, Trump's victory being a type of "upset," and therefore, it SHOULD have been pointed out to readers in the article that the timing of their "discovery" is questionable and that a more plausable explanation is that there was no need to "find" any such thing BEFORE Trump won because they didn't think he would, so now, after the fact, oh my, how convenient, we now find evidence that attempts to make the argument, no matter how back handed, that Hillary didn't lose a fair fight - in a desperate attempt to pretend she wasn't the worst candidate the Democrats have ever put on the ballot in anyone's living memory.
Nope, pure propaganda here.
I'll give the article credit, however, for at least citing the source - a REAL source for this one: "Sipher went on to say Russia has tried to influence German and Bulgarian elections."
And SIXTHLY, the article goes on to state with zero proof a claim of a break-in to the DNC by Russian hackers, conveniently leaving out that Julian Assange has made it perfectly clear it wasn't the Russians who gave WiliLeaks the materials and conveniently leaving out the fact that the most likely source was Seth Rich, a man murdered but not robbed under very strange circumstances. He had access... Further, the claim "the Russians did it" doesn't make any logical sense: If they'd broken in, firstly they could very well not be the only ones who did, and secondly, they have zero motive to risk letting it be discovered they'd done it. A President as sloppy with secrets as that would be an intelligence dream come true!
...I didn't read the Reuters article (it's sure to be full of propaganda), however, I take it that this part in the article was one of the few statements NOT from the article and therefore attempting, very weakly, to be in some way neutral:
"US government investigations into Trump team complicity in Russian tampering have thus far not produced any evidence Trump's associates were deliberately complicit in tampering."
However, that's WAY too little, WAY too late. Let's face it: this article is basically pure propaganda to try and convince the American public to dislike Trump and hate the Russians - more Red Baiting from 50 years ago. There was no honest attempt here of "neutrality", "balance", "No Point Of View" reporting; it was completely from the point of view of the DNC flavor of fascist.
Articles like this, that basically parrot the MSM, add zero value to the public discourse (we already have it on the MSM - why echo it here?), and I think discredit WikiNews.
People who are not accustomed to seeing neutral news often don't recognize it when they see it. The focal event here is not seven anonymous officials saying something; it is Reuters saying that seven anonymous officials said something, and we have extremely high confidence that Reuters did in fact say that. The idea that they're just making it up is, of course, deeply unlikely, but we have pointedly alerted the reader to that aspect of the situation, and if it later turned out to be the case that Reuters invented this story, that would be a huge story (exactly because it's so profoundly unlikely) and one really hopes we would cover it (and this article would then get an {{update}}).
The seventies was the decade of the Watergate scandal; pretending that anonymous sources were not used in the seventies is unadulterated bullshit.
Because we use published media articles as sources, our goal must be for each Wikinews article be exactly as biased the overall coverage of its subject. If there were a way for a crowdsourced project to fairly and efficiently be less biased than that, I'd love to give it a try.
That's not to say that there isn't room for improvement even without an overhaul of our system. If there is real bias here it's in which articles we do and don't choose to cover with our limited volunteer pool. As a liberal myself, I'm more likely to hear about liberal subject matter, and I write what I hear about. Do you know any conservative-minded people who might want to submit some drafts for review? Be the change you want to see.