passenger and posted to instagram right before the plane took off shows 298 innocent people were about to lose their lives. our condolences to their families. to honor all of them, we must seek justice. thanks for watching. i'm al sharpton. have a great weekend. "hardball" starts right now. >> the day after. let's play "hardball." good evening. i'm filling in for chris matthews. leading off tonight, looking for answers into what happened to malaysian air flight 17. tonight president obama said the plane was shot down by a missile fired through an area controlled by russian-backed separatists. the ukrainian government

released intercepted phone calls between pro russian are separatists talking about the atta attacks. nbc news has not confirmed their authenticity. all 298 people aboard were killed in the deadliest aviation incident since 9/11. among the victims were 80 children. also a number of the world's top aids activists and reare searchers on their way to a conference in australia. at least one victim was american. the majority, 189 passengers in all came from the netherlands. today that country is reeling from the news. friends and family remembered their loved ones. >> it's a young funny couple. always laughing, always together. hard work. now they're gone. >> president obama also mourned the victims and called it, "an outrage of unspeakable proportions". >> nearly 300 innocent lives were taken.

men, women, children, infants who had nothing to do with the crisis in you are crane. -- ukraine. their deaths are an outrage of unspeakable proportions. >> the fbi and ntsb are sending investigators to help international efforts. today at the site of the crash investigators reported being met with hostility by rebels who are in control there. president obama suggested those pro russian are rebels were key suspects. let's watch. >> evidence indicates that the plane was shot down by a surface to air missile in an area backed by russian-backed separatists inside ukraine. we know this is not the first time a plane has been shot down in eastern ukraine. over the last several weeks russian-backed separatists shut down a ukraine transport plane, a ukraine helicopter and they claimed responsibility for shooting down a fighter jet.

we know the separatists received a steady flow of support from russia. that includes arms and training. it includes heavy weapons. and it includes anti-aircraft are weapons. >> tom costello and steve evans join us. tom, the president in what we listened to laying out an awful lot of circumstantial evidence. almost persuasive circumstantial evidence saying this missile was launched inside ukraine in the area controlled by separatists. separatists who have in recent days been shooting down noncommercial flights. separatists backed by russia are. you heard it there. in terms of actually establishing this evidence on the ground, so it's more than circumstantial evidence, where does the process stand? >> i think this will be solved at the level of the military and intelligence agencies. you mentioned there is a small

team from the team headed to kiev. it's one single ntsb investigator and two fbi agents, one of whom is an expert on explosives. they are headed to kiev essentially to find out if they can join an international group going into the crash scene. most investigators say they don't see a lot the ntsb can provide here. we know what happened to the plane already. it was shot out of the sky by a missile. they would like the black boxes. that's proforma. they would like to get nailed down how fast the plane was traveling. the altitude, heading. they can learn if it broke apart in midair or if the explosion ripped off a wing for example, so it remained intact until it fell a good distance. all of that would come from the flight data recorder. that won't solve the main question which is who did this ft that's up to intelligence sources.

>> it is. i wonder, too, if you are able to get an inspection of the site and the wreckage could you not tell this is specifically the weapon, specifically the missile and wouldn't there be a fingerprint to trace it back to the origin? >> that will require metallurgy work, forensics at the scene to look for pieces of the missile that brought the plane down. the crash is a good distance from where the plane was hit by a missile. the zone look they are looking through was six to nine square miles. there might be missile fragments in the fields in that eastern ukrainian rebel-held territory. if the rebels shot the plane down it would be in their interest to find pieces and get rid of them before international teams are allowed in. that's important. so farther not allowing international teams in other than a small group of european observers today.

they claim they were threatened. in fact, that there were shots fired as they were in the vicinity. even a rescue team, government rescue teams told nbc news directly late this evening that they were ordered out of the area by rebels without explanation for the evening and told to come back at 6:00 in the morning. typically when you are involved in a major rescue or recovery or crash investigation it is secured and people work that scene often through the night with flood lights. clearly tonight that's not happening. the question is the evidence being compromised because the rebels are in control. >> that issue of access to the site is crucial now. at the united nations u.s. ambassadors said we couldn't rule out whether are russia provided, quote, technical assistance to the rebels. >> we assess malaysia flight 17 carrying 298 people from amsterdam to kuala lumpur was

likely downed by a surface to air missile sa-11 in eastern ukraine. because of the technical complexity of the sa-11 it is unlikely the separatists could effectively operate the system without assistance from knowledgeable personnel. thus we cannot rule out technical assistance are from russian personnel in operating the systems. >> what's striking is she's taking it further than the president did. we talked about the circumstantial evidence the president laid out. here's samantha power from his administration taking it farther saying, hey, the separatists couldn't have done it on their own. they need help. the she's pointing the finger at the russians here. >> i agree with everything tom said about the factors that matter. the piece of sbem sbel jens i want drilled in on is the signal intelligence of listening to phone calls between an individual they have identified who is both a leader in the donetsk region and also a senior

member of russian intelligence talking to senior intelligence officer of the russian federation's armed forces. when they go through and you have listened to this and look at the transcript and look at the fact they reported a plane shot down 20 minutes and then you hear the horror and shock of what they realize they have done and the anger that a commercial aircraft would have been in the zone. it's very, very compelling. what matters is the command and control of that. i think samantha power, ambassador power began to intimate and in this tragedy that the russians are not peripheral. they are central. >> i think we should point out the recordings that the you yan government put out. nbc news has not independently authenticated the recordings. it could be legit or the ukraine government has motives in addressing this. >> certainly splt. >> it raises a question about what's being raised publically.

their intelligence seems likely there is intelligence there we are not seeing we may never seen that's informing their thoughts and actions. they may be a lot further along in terms of exactly what happened here than they will say publically for the foreseeable future. >> i think our people are drilling into this. it raise it is question of what you do. if you go back to the soviets shooting down an airliner with a congressman on board and hundreds of others. reagan spoke harshly but showed a lot of restraint. this is the kind of incident that could take you down a dangerous path leading to a very difficult conflict. i think the real question is where is putin in this the. is putin really creating an uncontrollable monster now in eastern ukraine. the impri polyindications are

potentially game changing. this is a fragile moment. >> tell us more about what we know about the area where the missile was lauchbled from. the implication from samantha powers, the separatists on their own wouldn't have had the means or know how. it does occur to me, is it possible this is an area they have seized, formerly controlled by ukraine. could there be old military installations and equipment from ukraine that they have seized control of? how certain can we be just knowing the region that it had to be russian assistance here? >> i suspect that the united states government and certainly the president of the united states and the ambassador to the united nations won't go out in front of cameras and say we believe this missile came from ukraine, rebel held ter toni unless they know more than they are saying. i suspect they can pinpoint the street corner or field where this missile was with fired

from. they also know this appears to have been a soviet-era buk missile readily available to ukrainian forces and soviet and russian forces. independent reporters reported seeing that missile vehicle moving across the russian are border in recent weeks into rebel-controlled territory. this will be -- many view this all as a composite smoking gun that paints the picture of if not direct russian involvement, certainly russian participation insofar as they are supplying rebels with the equipment. most experts say they would have had to have taught them how to fire the weapon. one important distinction, the point was made to me today if the russian military had fired this weapon, that seems more unlikely. they have sophisticated radar systems that would tell them it's likely a commercial

airliner on that track. the suggestion was because it was fired from rebel controlled territory and it took out an airliner that perhaps nobody wanted to happen. that would suggest unsophistication or somebody without available resources to determine that it was, in fact, a commercial airliner. >> if russia was as directly involved as we are trying to figure out it would not be in their interest to take down a commercial airliner with all these people on board. thank you tom and steve. appreciate it. coming up, the investigation the reck kaj is in rebel-held territory and the rebels have interfered with the search. how do you conduct an investigation in the war zone? and the reaction. the world is pointing its finger at vladimir putin. the fact that the victims were from so many countries will increase the pressure on him. it may be just the beginning. plus, the politics. speaking of pointing fingers, it was inevitable but some

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welcome back to "hardball." more now on the investigation into what happened to malaysian air flight 17. president obama called for an international inquiry. that's easier said than done since the site of the crash is in a war zone. international investigators trying to explore the site met with hostility by the local rebels in charge today. said they weren't granted access nor did they have freedom of movement. they said they would need to negotiate for more time tomorrow. how can the world find out what happened if investigators have to negotiate with the rebels who are the prime suspects? robert hager is an nbc news contributor and seth caplan from airline weekly. bob, we talked in the last segment about the possibility of evidence being compromised for the issues we just raised in the intro. how serious of a concern is it

to you now? >> it is a serious concern. it may not be as much of a concern as it would be in some domestic airline accident here where the wreckage is supremely important and what's on the black box is supremely important. where everybody is certain it was a missile shoot-down, the physical confirmation of that by examining the wreckage is important but not as paramount as, say, spy satellite pictures, infrared images of the missile being launched, those things. the black boxes. you want them certainly bf the rebels get them. what's on the black box may not be crucial. in the case of the soviet shood of the korean airliner in 1983, that tape went on for a minute and 45 seconds after it was hit by a missile.

it didn't have much important to say about what went on. it is a factor that the investigators can't get in there. >> there were some problems the international investigators are facing. the monitors were given access for 75 minutes and are negotiating on a day to day basis for time at the site. a spokesman for the investigators described on cnn what they saw today. >> we saw a lot of debris. the debris doesn't look like it's been manipulated. there is lots of it. the crash are area is very, very big. we were given a small area to monitor. we were greeted with hostility. it wasn't a visit that was done under the best conditions. we hope to continue again tomorrow. >> the u.s. ambassador to the united nations samantha power tweeted her annoyance today,

quote, seeing reports monitors investigating were harassed by separatists. russia must use influence to ensure unimpeded investigation. seth, bob talked about the limited utility here of the black boxes. when there is a plane crash we think the black box will be the rosetta stone and answer everything. in the last segment tom costello told us to take the public statements, the incredible intelligence that's allowed the u.s. to pinpoint where this was fired from. does it matter who controls the evidence that's on the ground at this point or is it overridden by the intelligence gathering we have now? >> no question. it's not really an airline story. you certainly want to get the black boxes bob mentioned with the korean airliner. in the end the black boxes did

record but weren't that useful. the sov yent yet union held on to them for years and didn't release them. in the end they weren't that helpful. in this case, they may or may not are have stopped recording when the incident happened. and that the pilots were totally unaware of anything until the incident. it would be useful to know if the pilots had concern about where they were flying. no evidence of that. or for example did they have any unusual communication. it would be useful to know but no indication yet that it happened. >> i wonder, too, seth in terms of when you start connecting the tragedy, the human tarn tragedy with governments looking for official responses and the long term geopolitical effect could be. if the black boxes are recovered and the harrowing final hometowns of life for people. i imagine from almost -- i hate to see it. but a public relations

perspective that's a powerful tool for people trying to organize an official response to this. >> it does. that's exactly what happened with that korean airliner. you know, korean airline flight 7 when the recordings came out. first transcripts then recordings. you know, you have the sense of what happened in the moments when the pilots knew that things were unlikely to turn out well. an emotional angle and by the way in terms of who is to blame, there is little doubt that whoever shot the missile is to blame. there are questions about should the aircraft have been flying where it was. it would be useful to know if, in fact, there was any chatter in the cockpit about that as well. just in terms of, you know, is the airline -- certainly not primarily at fault, but at least partly to blame for flying in a place some airlines were

avoiding. >> that's a question people are asking. on the issue of flight 007, the korean air flight 30 years ago, you say this is an interesting bit of history about the search for the black box there illustrating the international tensions that spill into these things. >> it was incredible. the soviets knew you wouldn't here airline pilots talk about being off course. that they had innocently wandered off course. there is a race to find the black boxes. out in the ocean not far from the soviet union. they had 19 boats out there. the u.s. was out. south koreans, japanese. and the soviets put fake pingers in the water to lead the u.s. to the wrong place. the soviets found the black box and spirited them to moscow in a

hurry. the western world didn't find out what was on them until ten years later when the break-up of the soviet union occurred. >> there are shades of that in the stories we are getting now from the scene of the accident. thank you, bob hager and seth caplan. up next, the world is angry and fingers are pointed at one man -- vladimir putin.

welcome back to ha"hardball" in one moment the world has turned on vladimir putin. all the reliable intel paints a picture of what killed those aboard flight 17. one was an american. it was a russian missile in an area controlled by pro russian separatists who received training from russia. all as part of a conflict in the ukraine that russia provoked.

the outrage from the international community has been swift. today the u.s. ratcheted up pressure on a number of fronts with president obama leading the charge. here is the president addressing reporters today. >> he and the russian government have to make a strategic decision. are they going to continue to support violent separatists whose intent is to under mine the government of ukraine or are they prepared to work with the government of ukraine to arrive at a cease-fire and a peace that takes into account the interests of all ukrainians. >> meanwhile, moscow remains defiant. yesterday putin blamed ukraine saying, "without question the state over whose territory this took place bears responsibility for this awful tragedy." today the russian ambassador to the u.n. escalated the the are rhetoric saying, "kraib chose the wrong path and their western colleagues supported them.

i'm talking about the united states. they actually pushed them to escalate. now they are trying to blame russia." p.j. crowley and michael weiss join me. p.j., start with you. no one now seems to suspect that vladimir putin said let's take out a commercial jetliner. certainly as we said the suspicion here is strong about, you know, a russian weapon, pro russian are area of ukraine where it happened. potentially, as susan power suggested, training are from russians for this to happen. let's say that's what is proven. say the united states investigators are able to prove that. what happens then? >> it's still an open question. there is no question that russia's policy is to destabilize eastern ukraine to gain leverage over the new ukraine government. how close russian fingerprints

get to to the shoot-down will be important in terms of how significant the reaction is, particularly how significant in euro europe. there is a disadvantage to the relationship. ukraine is more important to russia than to the united states. to the extent that the challenge is to impose costs on russia for the foreign policy, for actions to work with the separatists and destabilize ukraine, that burden will fall most significantly on europe than on the united states. getting at the strongest possible evidence, i think, will be vitally important to crystallizing particularly european political action to impose real costs and re-evaluate russia are's relationship with europe. >> from that standpoint of looking at europe's reliance from an energy standpoint on russia, what would it take? what is the threshold for europe? i would imagine if you're in europe you're saying, you know,

i will ask having energy price gos through the roof. for what, territory in ukraine nobody in my country cares about? >> it depends the area you are talking about. angela merkel has a close relationship with mr. putin. she always has done. russia and germany have grown closer. i would say their relationship and alliances have been stronger than that between germany -- >> what would it take to break them from putin? >> that's a good question. i think what europe has done for itself -- and i lived in the uk for years. i saw first hand and reported on the influence of russian money and politics on the british political and economic establishments. >> relying so much on what is essentially dirty money, the u.s. state department referred to russia as a virtual mafia state. one-third of the gdp is estimated to be stolen, corrupt money. much of the money doesn't stay

in russia. it pours into banks, offshore shell companies. most of the kremlin elite keep their accounts outside of russia. they understand the russian economy is so volatile it could go up at any moment. this is where the pressure lies. the european union made it clear they are more reluctant to impose sanctions on russia, much less anything approaching sectoral sanctions. we haven't done that, by the way. the last suite of sanctions were powerful but fell short of sectoral sanctions. the information we have and the information we had already disclosed, are remember. when we first issued sanctions against russia the important thing was disclosure that vladimir putin himself, the president of the russian federation has assets in a swiss commodities trader called gunvore. there was a disclosure by a

whistleblower in russia who showed putin was building a palace for himself estimated at a cost of $1 billion for himself on the black sea. i guarantee the construction materials and everything in the palace didn't all originate in russia. this is where you go after the russians. hit them with the money. >> the flip side is there are numbers saying vladimir putin's approval rating sits at 83%. this is the highest it's been since 2008. it seems every time there is a confrontation with the west. every time the west is pointing fingers at vladimir putin he gets more and more popular. he gets stronger in his country. i understand the pressure that michael outlined. but the counter is this makes him beloved in russia. >> for the moment, yes. this is the challenge for the united states and the challenge for europe -- imposing real costs not only on putin but his inner circle to where it hurts

them where it counts. not just in terms of money but there are a handful of countries in europe that get 100% of their energy from russia. it's easy for the united states to talk a strong game. there are things the u.s. can do. you've got to have the case be as strong as possible to get the political consensus you need. >> thank you. appreciate your time tonight. up next, we used to say the politics stopped at that time water's edge. not anymore. and not today.

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i'm richard lui. earlier today president obama spoke with israel's prime minister about the situation in gaza. he expressed concern about the escalation of the conflict with hamas and the loss of civilian lives there. the president is expected to meet with central american leaders next week to discuss the flood of children crossing the u.s. border alone. in washington state, 2000 firefighters are battling blazes that burned more than 260 square miles. one has destroyed about 100 homes. now back to "hardball." we are back. if you think politics is suspended in times of tragedy, think again. some republican war hawks are using the tragedy of malaysian flight 17 to attack president obama and to call for an escalation in american forces

overseas. last night arizona senator john mccain called the president, "cowardly" for, you guessed it, keeping the u.s. out of the war in ukraine. >> it's just been cowardly. it's a cowardly administration that we have failed to give the kraib ukraines weapons with which to defend themselves. first give the ukraines weapons to defend themselves and regain their territory. second of all, move some of our troops into areas that are being threatened by vladimir putin. other countries like the baltics and others. move missile defense into the places where we got out of like the czech republic and poland and other places. and impose the harshest possible sanctions on vladimir putin and russia. that's just for openers. >> republicans have criticized obama for not taking a position

in syria, iran and russia. david corn is a washington bureau chief from mother jones and msnbc political analyst. ryan grimm is here from the huffington post. david, mccain is spelling it out there. sounds like he says this is all solved if we had american troops on the ground. >> well, john mccain hasn't seen a situation where he didn't want to make it more aggressive and send in troops and whether it's in syria, iraq, and now ukraine. what's interesting about the republican party, you will see not everybody has rushed out on the republican side to join john mccain. i think the republicans saw with syria while they were not eager to vote in favor of any military action there, they realized the president can pay a political price for not solving the

problems that maybe he can't solve. they are happy to throw brick bats at him and without putting anything down about what they want to do. they saw his approval ratings drop a little bit last summer out of the syria business. i think we are seeing the days ahead. a lot of people not calling for russian troops to the ukraine but calling the president weak, ineffective, feckless without saying what should be done in these foreign policy dilemmas. >> part of this is what we have been seeing for six years which is the attempt by the mccain types in the party to tag the president every time something happens over seas like david is saying. failure, too weak. i wonder if we are hearing about a battle taking place within the republican party. we are hearing about the rand paul adherence versus the old neocons. if this is an opportunity for

mccain and others to say they are attacking the president for this and also telling republicans, hey, this is the kind of failure you get with rand paul's foreign policy, too. >> mccain hears rand paul's foot steps here. he's not going to miss the opportunity to reinforce the muscular side of republican foreign policy here. i believe mccain was on tv making these arguments within half an hour of the plane going down which is impressive if you consider what it takes to get behind the camera. you have to book it, get there, get mic'd up and have an idea. apparently you don't need a lot of evidence. this shows a little bit of the intellectual conflict going on within the republican party. and mccain saying, no, we are not going back to this policy we have had in the past.

>> so there is crimea and putin wants crimea. the mccain position is the united states stood up right then. i guess maybe put boots on the ground to stop it. that doesn't happen. russia gets crimea. now it is the russian speaking areas of eastern ukraine. in mccain's mind it's the great sell out that will lead to wider scale contest by putin. how do you think what is a genuine threat for a world leader. it's just a small area in eastern ukraine. >> >> what do you go to war for? mentioning rand paul he said in terms of iraq, i don't want to send my sons to fight isis on behalf of a corrupt government

in baghdad. he's been clear. when it comes to putin, the thing is mccain talks as if we are in a bipolar world with russia and the united states and russia is evil. when negotiating we need russia's involvement with iran. we needed them to get rid of assad's chemical weapons. it's not as if we have the luxury of going to war with russia, for whatever reason. we still want to engage them in other parts of the world. u.s. credibility in the region will probably decrease because most people see us as supporting this. >> thank you to david corn and ryan grimm. appreciate your time tonight. up next, the area hit hardest by the tragedy. a couple years ago my little artist made me this...

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setback in the fight against aids. of the 298 victims on mh17. many were scientists, researchers and activists headed to the aids conference in melbourne, australia. among them a distinguished hiv researcher and former president of the international aids society. he and his colleagues dedicated their lives to finding a cure. today, president obama paid tribute to their service and their sacrifice. >> these were men and women who dedicated their own lives to saving the lives of others. they were taken from us in a senseless act of violence. in this world today we shouldn't forget in the midst of conflict and killing there are people like these, people focused on what can be built rather than what can be destroyed. people focused on how they can help people that they have never met. people who defined themselves not by what makes them different from other people, but by the

humanity we hold in common. >> joining me now, dr. kent sepkowitz of the daily beast, an infectious disease specialist. it's been a a little over 30 years since this disease first emerged and there's been so much progress made, still, though, there's no cure on it. just in terms of that, you know, hunt, that hunt for a cure, what does this tragedy do? how much does it set that back? >> i think that dr. longa was a leader in a couple very important things and his loss will set things back although i don't think we will be totally without momentum here. he really brought the community of aids researchers together which was a novel idea at the time. he made people check their egos at the door and made this a united front against a common enemy, not the usual disagreements that sometimes happen around, in professional societies and with scientists. the other thing he did, very importantly, was he defined aids as a humanitarian crisis. it's not really a medical

crisis. it's -- we have 35 million people with a treatable disease and we -- he focuses on the fact that we are really duty-bound to take care of one another. so as president obama said, this is really about a huge humanitarian being lost. really much more than a leading scientist. >> and what was he -- what was he sort of at the time of his death here, what was he most focused on, and what was his sense of where all the research and all the, you know, progress in this, where was it heading? was he optimistic we were getting close? >> he was optimistic we were going to be able to provide care to people. he started out as a research scientist looking for ways to diagnose hiv and moved quickly into therapies, but really for the last 20 years of his career, he focused on access to people who otherwise would not have access. mostly the problem of enormous number of people infected in sub-saharan africa. so his most recent big-time endeavor was called pharm access

where he was going to make drugs available to people who couldn't afford them by pressuring big pharma and others to bring costs down and make drugs available. so, again, he was about treating people with the stuff we have. he was not really a visionary in terms of what the next therapy's going to be, test about making what we've got at hand from a practical perspective available to those who desperately need it. >> and we should say, i mean, he's probably the most prominent of the people going to this conference identified so far. he was not the only one who had given his time and given his life. it's such a loss to begin with, tragedy to begin with, this plane going down, a double-barrel tragedy when so many people on there were doing so much good. thank you to kent for taking a few minutes to tell us about it. when we return, terror in the age of twitter.

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in the "washington post" post today, reflected on the use of social media in the aftermath of a tragedy like downing of flight mh-17. on served how graphic photographs of the victims made their whey online instantly. smoldering bodies were tweeted and retweeted appearing in the feeds of thousands of twitter uses. raises an age-old question that's become complex in the digital age. "news organizations have forever struggled with determining the line where news value ends and shock value and sensationalism begin. the graphic photo of video, after all, can pack an emotional impact and be truthful of

depiction of the event and sanitize images or can be just revolting and insensitive." joining me now is the author of that piece. so, paul, i remember the debate that took place right after 9/11 about some of the worst and most jarring and horrific images that came out of that, media outlets debating should we run it today, we'll never run it again. we made our point we never want to be using this repeatedly. i also wonder if that debate is out of date, passe. anybody with a camera phone at any scene, put it on facebook, twitter, social media. whether "the new york times," broadcast networks say they want to put it on or not, everybody in the world sees it anyway. >> that's right. there's two tracks. there's the edited kind of photo and image where editors are standing around saying should we show this to people or should we not? then there's the free for all, where journalists, individuals, can post anything they want. and they do. and that's what we saw yesterday

both in the ukraine and in gaza with the shelling of these children on the beach. it's, you know, beyond the ability of gatekeepers anymore. everyone is their own gatekeeper. everyone's their own publisher. >> but you think, too, about the history of these images, you think of the protesters, you know, vietnam war or something, some of these are resting images in history in a lot of ways have changed history. the images have been so strong and provocative and reached people in a visceral way. they're images that literally changed history. when those images are so widespread, so easily attainable, does it just have an overall desensitizing effect where we don't respond the way we used to to some pretty chilling stuff? >> that's right. the world is flooded with imagery now because we can and we do and it's cheap and it's easy. so no individual picture stands out truly the way it once did when things were edited, when things were mediated. there really is no mediator

anymore. we're all our own photographers and our own publishers. we can put these things out anywhere and any time and or theers reporters on the scene are seeing some of the worst of it. they want to get that news out and that news is often not very pretty at all. >> so what, in your mind, given all the realities of sort of social media today and the democratization of photography, what does it take to reach an audience, really reach the audience the way they used to with a picture? >> well, i mean, audiences are being reached in many ways now, in thousands and millions of ways. everybody has their own twitter feed. everybody has their own facebook. you can reach your own discreet audience without having a newspaper, without having a tv station. again, there's just endless ways to show people things that they never could see before. youtube as well, vine. all these social media, instagram. there's just no stopping it. it's a flood. that's why we had editors.

that's why we had people to stand there and make a decision for you. should we or should we not show this to you? >> yeah. now everyone's their own editor. anyway, that's "hardball" for tonight. thanks for being with us. though y thank you for the time. "all in with chris hayes" starts right now. tonight we are "all in." >> we don't doctor time for propaganda, don't have time for games. >> all eyes on russia, case against russian-backed separatists is on the world stage. >> russia can end this war. russia must end this war. >> separatists obstruct investigators at the crash site of malaysia airlines flight 17 while mourners across the globe grieve for the lives of nearly 300 people on board. plus, ground invasion in gaza. israel's prime minister warns of a larger ground offensive. i'll talk with his spokesman. >> the israeli rules of engagement are clear. if you see civilians are going to get killed, you cannot pull the trigger.