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Vincent Van Goatse posted:With the greatest possible respect, could you please clarify who the gently caress could possibly qualify as a "worthy victim" of genocide? And please let me know if I'm confused somewhere because I just got home from watching the Padres win a game of baseball so I'm probably not operating on all cylinders. The point of bringing this up is to question whether the propaganda model necessarily leads to skepticism towards the reality of events. MC doesn't question the factual basis of the assassination of Father Jerzy, yet recognises that the relative attention and significance given to this event in proportion to others is indicative of a political line. This is a rejoinder to the claims that the PM necessarily implies a factual rejection of stories reported in mainstream media. Rather, it explicitly presents the "worthy" / "unworthy" lens as an illustration of how the reality of events is a distinct question to how events are leveraged narratively in the media.
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Jun 23, 2021 08:31
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Sekhem posted:It's not a normative judgement, it's a thesis from MC that describes relative media presentation of victims of violence. An example given in the book is the assassination of one Polish priest in the Socialist Poland paralleling the execution of untold numbers of dissident priests by right-wing death squads in Latin America during the same period. The former is deemed a victim "worthy" of persistent media attention, while the latter is "unworthy" of the mainstream media and relegated to a marginal concern. OK, fair enough, I just found the terminology extremely disconcerting.
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Jun 23, 2021 08:52
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:OK, fair enough, I just found the terminology extremely disconcerting.
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Jun 23, 2021 13:04
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:Shouldn't repeated denial/downplaying of actual literal genocide by Herman count as an equivalent to "poor scientific rigor or something else that calls the process into question"? I mean if ignoring or minimizing genocide doesn't qualify as a serious mistake in the social sciences, what in God's name does? Although I don't know Herman's exact position, I did some reading last night on Chomsky's idiosyncratic use of 'genocide', and my understanding is that Chomsky ironically enough buys into the Holocaust-uniqueness framework that is frequently used in pro-imperial rhetoric. Basically, if it isn't a deliberate campaign of extermination by a de facto state actor against an ethnic minority, Chomsky prefers other terms, though when asked about this in an interview about Rwanda he claims that he doesn't have a serious issue with others choosing to use the term, and he doesn't deny the factual atrocities. To be clear I don't think that this distinction is worth the argument, but I guess Chomsky is a linguist and has opinions about the use and misuse of terms, but I also don't think that he's 'denying' genocide in the sense that, say, Holocast deniers do; he's making a fussy little point about terminology.
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Jun 23, 2021 15:36
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A Buttery Pastry posted:A model that groups victims into a "worthy" and "unworthy" category based on how the perpetrating group aligns with Western interests can not transform a victim into a perpetrator. If someone uses it that way, they're using it wrong. Even if it is one of the authors. Though as has been mentioned, was that the model used to determine the veracity of genocide claims? Or did the author use other methods to arrive at faulty conclusions? The answer should be self-evident: the authors having repeatedly misused their own model, both in Manufacturing Consent itself and their future works, is a strong indication that they created it primarily as a framework to legitimize and support their pre-existing biases. This makes it fundamentally flawed as a tool to identify media bias: if you wear gold-tinted glasses, of course you will see everything in shades of yellow. You have not gained some sort of profound or even useful insight about the world, or in this case, the media.
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Jun 23, 2021 16:11
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Slow News Day posted:The answer should be self-evident: the authors having repeatedly misused their own model, both in Manufacturing Consent itself and their future works, is a strong indication that they created it primarily as a framework to legitimize and support their pre-existing biases. This has been stated repeatedly, but no one has shown anything as far as I can tell. Where have the authors misused their model?
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Jun 23, 2021 16:22
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fool of sound posted:Although I don't know Herman's exact position, I did some reading last night on Chomsky's idiosyncratic use of 'genocide', and my understanding is that Chomsky ironically enough buys into the Holocaust-uniqueness framework that is frequently used in pro-imperial rhetoric. Basically, if it isn't a deliberate campaign of extermination by a de facto state actor against an ethnic minority, Chomsky prefers other terms, though when asked about this in an interview about Rwanda he claims that he doesn't have a serious issue with others choosing to use the term, and he doesn't deny the factual atrocities. To be clear I don't think that this distinction is worth the argument, but I guess Chomsky is a linguist and has opinions about the use and misuse of terms, but I also don't think that he's 'denying' genocide in the sense that, say, Holocast deniers do; he's making a fussy little point about terminology. Chomsky posted:All of that is incomparably more significant than the question of how many people Serbs “executed” at Srebrenica as distinct from killing them in combat (the issue between you and Herman, once your misquotation is corrected: and the fact is that you don’t know, he doesn’t know, and we will probably never find out) and whether the huge number slaughtered in Rwanda (Herman’s estimate is higher than yours) were mostly Hutu or mostly Tutsi. genericnick posted:I bowed out of the thread since I thought it beyond my abilities to keep the focus on media criticism without stumbling into a discussion of our whole Weltanschaung. However, since I'm myself guilty of going down the road of conflating the PM, Herman and Chomsky's other writings and the use a media reader would put it to I'll try to state my earlier point in a more consistent way:
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Jun 23, 2021 16:34
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Slow News Day posted:The answer should be self-evident: the authors having repeatedly misused their own model, both in Manufacturing Consent itself and their future works, is a strong indication that they created it primarily as a framework to legitimize and support their pre-existing biases. This makes it fundamentally flawed as a tool to identify media bias: if you wear gold-tinted glasses, of course you will see everything in shades of yellow. You have not gained some sort of profound or even useful insight about the world, or in this case, the media.
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Jun 23, 2021 16:43
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Epinephrine posted:Manufacturing Consent provides an intellectual framework to deny genocide and has been used, by its authors no less, to deny genocide. And yet, you have consistently failed to provide even one concrete example of either Herman or Chomsky using the Propaganda Model to "deny genocide". Something which literally can't be done, because as you have been repeatedly told, the PM predicts aggregate media behavior. It cannot be used to predict whether an individual news story is true or false, and never has been used to make such a prediction. Red and Black fucked around with this message at 16:49 on Jun 23, 2021 |
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Jun 23, 2021 16:47
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Red and Black posted:And yet, you have consistently failed to provide even one concrete example of either Herman or Chomsky using the Propaganda Model to "deny genocide". Something which literally can't be done, because as you have been repeatedly told, the PM predicts aggregate media behavior. It cannot be used to predict whether an individual news story is true or false, and never has been used to make such a prediction. Maybe you missed my post, but Herman does that in his book on the Rwandan genocide. Part of the evidence he uses to argue that the genocide as we understand did not take place (and that the Hutus were the victims, not the Tutsis) is how the genocide was covered in Western media in line with his Propaganda Model. His argument hinges on using the context of the coverage - how it was framed, what happened - as prima facie evidence that we should distrust the content of the coverage and question the facts of the reporting. And from this first principle he then gives inherent credence to alternative viewpoints, i.e. the viewpoint he shares, which is that there was no genocide of the Tutsis, because those facts are untainted by Western imperialism, and therefore must be true. You could argue that this is an incorrect application of the model, because the PM makes no judgement on the veracity of facts, just describes how those facts are reported, but in practice that is not how Herman has used the model. His entire book is an example of this. Edit: Another excellent example is anything Chomsky has said on the Cambodia genocide pre-1995 or so. Also, to add, I think its absurd that we are debating the connection between the one of the author's of the PM model and a later book by that same author called "Enduring Lies: The Rwandan Genocide in the Propaganda System". Its self-evident, and frankly a little gross that you're trying to carve out the "good" contributions by someone who has denied three genocides. Three! Spoiler fucked around with this message at 16:59 on Jun 23, 2021 |
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Jun 23, 2021 16:54
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Spoiler posted:Maybe you missed my post, but Herman does that in his book on the Rwandan genocide. Part of the evidence he uses to argue that the genocide as we understand did not take place (and that the Hutus were the victims, not the Tutsis) is how the genocide was covered in Western media in line with his Propaganda Model. His argument hinges on using the context of the coverage - how it was framed, what happened - as prima facie evidence that we should distrust the content of the coverage and question the facts of the reporting. And from this first principle he then gives inherent credence to alternative viewpoints, i.e. the viewpoint he shares, which is that there was no genocide of the Tutsis, because those facts are untainted by Western imperialism, and therefore must be true. That's fine, just provide quotes from his book then showing the application of the PM
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Jun 23, 2021 16:58
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Red and Black posted:And yet, you have consistently failed to provide even one concrete example of either Herman or Chomsky using the Propaganda Model to "deny genocide". Something which literally can't be done, because as you have been repeatedly told, the PM predicts aggregate media behavior. It cannot be used to predict whether an individual news story is true or false, and never has been used to make such a prediction. genericnick posted:This has been stated repeatedly, but no one has shown anything as far as I can tell. Where have the authors misused their model? Red and Black posted:That's fine, just provide quotes from his book then showing the application of the PM Are you guys doing a bit? Look here.
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Jun 23, 2021 16:59
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Red and Black posted:That's fine, just provide quotes from his book then showing the application of the PM I'm not going to buy a book and give money to the estate of someone who denies genocide, but I would encourage you to read this passage:  What do you think the "propaganda system" is?
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Jun 23, 2021 17:11
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It certainly does seem to have led Herman astray to an extent that 1) should absolutely give people pause and 2) goes way beyond 'making a fussy little point about terminology', Herman says, for instance, "the majority of victims were likely Hutu and not Tutsi." I'm actually at a loss for how you'd even describe that, it's not even denial, it's straight up accusing the victims of being the actual perpetrators of the genocide (he even clarifies that he isn't describing the retaliatory killings, but suggests that it was the Tutsi's genociding the Hutu from the beginning. There of course exists no credible evidence of this timeline and he cites as his source for this two rpf officers who participated in the genocide. Or as one reviewer puts it (and indeed you can go read many of the reviews from when it came out, it caused an uproar because they were writing 15 years after the Rwandan genocide when the facts were very much discernible and not obscured by the fog of war) quote:In 2010, the longtime leftist critic Edward S. Herman joined with a blogger, David Peterson, to produce a book, The Politics of Genocide, for Monthly Review Press. The authors went so far as to contend that the depiction of a Hutu genocide of Tutsis was the reverse of what had actually occurred in 1994; that the principal agent of genocidal killing was the RPF; and that Hutus constituted a majority of victims. As I argued upon the book’s appearance, this was “the equivalent of asserting that the Nazis never killed Jews in death camps—indeed, that it was really Jews who killed Germans.” I accused the authors of “the most naked denial of the extermination of at least half a million Tutsis by agents of ‘Hutu Power’ that I have ever read in an ostensibly scholarly source.” This radically revisionist—one might say fantasist—stance was based “on ‘evidence’ that, even on cursory examination, proves to be the sheerest gossamer, when it is not simply hearsay and idle speculation." I do think it is reasonable for people to wonder how tf Herman got to this point and how Chomsky ended up writing the forward for this. I don't generally find it possible to separate the art from the artist, particularly when the failure of it is so relevant to their body of work.
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Jun 23, 2021 17:29
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Slow News Day posted:Are you guys doing a bit? Look here. I've read the cited bit of the Politics of Genocide on Rwanda at least and Herman does not use the PM model to come to his conclusion. His argument rests on testimony before the ICTR like this: "Herman" posted:During testimony at a major trial of four Hutu former military officers before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), Des Forges acknowledged that by April 1992 (i.e., a full twenty-four months before “the genocide” is alleged to have been implemented), the “government in charge of Rwanda [had become] a multiparty government, including Tutsi representatives, and it is for that reason alone that it is impossible to conclude that there was planning of a genocide by that government "Herman" posted:Acceptance of this line also requires the suppression of a key verdict in a December 2008 Judgment by the ICTR.115 This seven-and-a-half-year trial of four former high-ranking Hutu members of the Rwanda military produced an acquittal of all four defendants on the Tribunal’s most serious charge: That they participated in an alleged conspiracy to commit genocide against the country’s Tutsi minority. I can't really find anything about media coverage before he made his case, such as it is. And then he goes on to talk about the media treatment of the same which of course uses the PM model. So no, I don't see any examples of him using it to draw conclusions, but I'm also not going to read the whole book.
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Jun 23, 2021 17:30
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Spoiler posted:I'm not going to buy a book and give money to the estate of someone who denies genocide, but I would encourage you to read this passage: Slow News Day posted:Are you guys doing a bit? Look here. What you have claimed is that the Propaganda Model has been used to deny genocide. But what you're linking to are quotes, the majority of which make use of references to a propaganda system. That the media produces propaganda is indeed a conclusion of the PM, one heavily supported by evidence which opponents in this thread continue to ignore. But saying that the media produces propaganda isn't an exclusive conclusion of the PM (other models can produce the same result), nor is the conclusion itself the model. In short, what you're arguing isn't that the Propaganda Model entails denying genocide, but that any belief in that the media is a propaganda system, and that we should be skeptical of what it reports, entails denying genocide. I think it's obvious why this argument is invalid. But all this is an attempt to further derail this thread and endlessly re-litigate everything ever written by Chomsky and Herman, bleating "genocide denial" instead of engaging with the arguments being made and the evidence offered wrt the PM.
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Jun 23, 2021 17:37
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The Propaganda Model cannot really be used as a media analysis tool predict media behavior, just like "it is the will of God" cannot be used to predict future events. Both are totalizing in nature and unfalsifiable. The Will of God can justify any event by attributing it to interest or non-interest by God, and the Propaganda Model can justify virtually any statement or instance of media coverage by attributing it to interest or non-interest by "elites". In other words, the way religious people switch between "God wanted it" and "God is too busy to care about such trivial matters" to make events fit their worldview, proponents of the Propaganda Model use "the elites want media coverage to be this way" and "this outlet is too marginal for elites to care about" to make all media coverage fit their model.
Slow News Day fucked around with this message at 17:50 on Jun 23, 2021 |
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Jun 23, 2021 17:44
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Red and Black posted:What you have claimed is that the Propaganda Model has been used to deny genocide. But what you're linking to are quotes, the majority of which make use of references to a propaganda system. That the media produces propaganda is indeed a conclusion of the PM, one heavily supported by evidence which opponents in this thread continue to ignore. But saying that the media produces propaganda isn't an exclusive conclusion of the PM (other models can produce the same result), nor is the conclusion itself the model. No. What I'm saying is that the specific type and purpose of propaganda described by the PM - a unified media conglomerate serving the interests of Western imperialism that actively suppresses any counter narratives that don't serve Western imperialism - leads to a pattern of its authors dismissing the facts of genocides while ostensibly critiquing their media coverage. There is a world of difference between discussing how the media covered the Rwandan genocide in contrast to other genocides and dismissing the facts of the Rwandan genocide to such an extent that you're arguing the victims are actually the perpetrators. You seem to think the PM is only "valid" when used in the former context - and I am saying that, based on the work of its authors, it inevitably results in the latter: in using uniformity and reach of coverage as prima facie evidence to doubt not just the tone and framing of an event, but the facts of the event itself. We can see this again in practice with Chomsky and Cambodia: he dismissed survivor testimony from The Killing Fields and argued the Western media was reporting a genocide without any direct evidence to serve Western imperialism. This isn't just critiquing the tone and extent of coverage, its critiquing the facts of what's reported, and denying them. And this is specific to the Propaganda Model, because the Propaganda Model specifically frames this media coverage as a tool of furthering American imperialism. That is starkly different than arguing that media functions as propaganda, or that all media is biased to some degree; instead, the Propaganda Model not only identifies this bias, it argues that a specific bias exists which serves a specific purpose. That's the issue here. If you instead want to simply point out that bias exists, media companies have mixed incentives that shape their coverage, and sometimes the media interests can align with those of the government to promote a singular message, then yes, that is largely uncontroversial. But because its uncontroversial and even universal it's not particularly meanignful, and its remarkably different than what Chomsky and Herman are claiming.
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Jun 23, 2021 17:45
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Herstory Begins Now posted:There of course exists no credible evidence of this timeline and he cites as his source for this two rpf officers who participated in the genocide. If these conclusions were as inexorably linked to his faulty analysis of events in Rwanda as people are claiming, we would expect to see him founding his claims with critical speculation based on reports in the MSM. But that's not what he's doing, he's just conducting the same banal methods a million hack scholars have used before him: a shoddy and selective tabulation of first hand reports. Nothing to do with the field of media analysis at all. Sure, it's possible that he used a framework of media analysis to come to a conclusion and retroactively used ancillary methods to cover for that fact. But that's a far more convoluted process than just assuming he simply conducted some shoddy scholarship based on his existing political biases. I don't think requiring some additional motivation than simply him having existing flawed partisan intuitions adds any explanatory value. I'm not sure how you would even verify it in the first place.
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Jun 23, 2021 17:47
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Herstory Begins Now posted:It certainly does seem to have led Herman astray to an extent that 1) should absolutely give people pause and 2) goes way beyond 'making a fussy little point about terminology', Herman says, for instance, "the majority of victims were likely Hutu and not Tutsi." I'm actually at a loss for how you'd even describe that, it's not even denial, it's straight up accusing the victims of being the actual perpetrators of the genocide (he even clarifies that he isn't describing the retaliatory killings, but suggests that it was the Tutsi's genociding the Hutu from the beginning. There of course exists no credible evidence of this timeline and he cites as his source for this two rpf officers who participated in the genocide. Slow News Day posted:The Propaganda Model cannot really be used as a media analysis tool predict media behavior, just like "it is the will of God" cannot be used to predict future events. Both are totalizing in nature and unfalsifiable. "God wanted it to happen" can justify any event by attributing it to interest or non-interest by God, and the Propaganda Model can justify virtually any statement or instance of media coverage by attributing it to interest or non-interest by "elites". In other words, the way religious people switch between "God wanted it" and "God is too busy to care about such trivial matters" to make events fit their worldview, proponents of the Propaganda Model use "the elites want media coverage to be this way" and "this outlet is too marginal for elites to care about" to make all media coverage fit their model.
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Jun 23, 2021 17:51
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Sekhem posted:I think this directly indicates that it's not the PM which is leading him to these conclusions. It's just poor scholarship. A biased political analysis based on collecting first hand reports isn't using the framework of media analysis, it's a completely different methodology. I think my argument comes down to the fact that in practice the Propaganda Model has been used by its authors not only to assess how an event is covered (its tone, how its framed, the extent of coverage) but to doubt the facts of the event itself. I do not think you can do the former without also doing the latter - or at least laying the groundwork for someone else to do so. Spoiler fucked around with this message at 17:56 on Jun 23, 2021 |
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Jun 23, 2021 17:51
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A Buttery Pastry posted:The last bit contradicts the first. Citing (false) first-hand accounts is not using a model designed to analyze articles in aggregate. It's probably fair to say that Herman is reflexively anti whatever he considers US propaganda, to the point that he believes the opposite what that concludes, but that says nothing about the model he had a hand in creating which directly contradicts his approach/conclusion. The Propaganda Model doesn't predict anything, its not a predictive model. Its a descriptive model which describes specifically how and why events are covered in the media in the United States, namely that this coverage serves the interests of American imperialism. Beyond what we're discussing here, the other two critiques of the PM are that it is wrong in thinking that this type of propagandistic coverage is unique to the West (its not), and that it assumes a homogeneity and intention in coverage that does not exist. But I think those are less important critiques than pointing out that, in practice, it leads to genocide denial. And again, this isn't the same thing as pointing out that media can be biased, or act as a propaganda organ or the government, etc. The PM makes a specific claim. Rejecting this claim, or the model, does not mean you uncritically accept all media coverage, or that you do not think that US media often aligns with the interests of the federal government, or even that the US media can support imperialism. Spoiler fucked around with this message at 17:56 on Jun 23, 2021 |
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Jun 23, 2021 17:54
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Spoiler posted:No. What I'm saying is that the specific type and purpose of propaganda described by the PM - a unified media conglomerate serving the interests of Western imperialism that actively suppresses any counter narratives that don't serve Western imperialism - leads to a pattern of its authors dismissing the facts of genocides while ostensibly critiquing their media coverage. So you admit you're criticizing the conclusions of the model and not the model itself. Good. Now that we've established that, the only thing remaining is to ask: is that conclusion true? Is there a system of private media serving the interests of Western imperialism (still not exclusive to the PM, by the way)? If it is true, it doesn't matter if it "leads to a pattern of dismissing genocides", because it's the truth regardless and the truth is by definition valid. If it's false then I guess there's an additional reason not to believe on top of it being false? In any case, you need to argue and provide evidence for the truth or falsity of the Propaganda Model. Your attempt to link the belief that "the Western media is imperialist" to genocide denial does nothing to advance your case and is a desperate attempt to evade the real argument. Red and Black fucked around with this message at 18:00 on Jun 23, 2021 |
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Jun 23, 2021 17:58
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A Buttery Pastry posted:It predicts media trends, not individual pieces. Which seems fine if you're intending to read multiple different articles on the same incident, rather than sourcing all your news from a single source. Saying the Propaganda Model predicts media trends and not individual pieces is like saying The Will of God Model predicts droughts, not whether it will rain in any individual location tomorrow. The same logical flaws apply.
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Jun 23, 2021 18:06
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Red and Black posted:So you admit you're criticizing the conclusions of the model and not the model itself. Good. Now that we've established that, the only thing remaining is to ask: is that conclusion true? Is there a system of private media serving the interests of Western imperialism (still not exclusive to the PM, by the way)? If it is true, it doesn't matter if it "leads to a pattern of dismissing genocides", because it's the truth regardless and the truth is by definition valid. If it's false then I guess there's an additional reason not to believe on top of it being false? Not to be a jerk, but I am somewhat confounded with your reply. I have offered three specific criticisms of the model: 1. it assumes a level of intention and homogeneity in American media which I do not think exists; 2. it argues that the PM is specific to the US/the West, which I do not agree with; and most importantly, 3. that in practice and use the PM leads to people conflating the coverage of an event with validity in doubting the facts being reported, which unfortunately in several notable instances have led its author's to denying genocides. The first two criticisms have been around for decades, and the last criticism has emerged when people have seen how Chomsky and moreso Herman have used the idea of Western propaganda as prima facie evidence that a reported genocide did not occur. If you're arguing that the PM cannot fail, people can only fail the PM, then I don't really know how to counter that belief. If in practice a model leads to horrific conclusions, then that model has no value. (Also, as an aside, in general the burden of proof is on someone who is arguing that something is true, not on those who do not believe it is. If I came in here and said "all newspapers are controlled by sentient lizard brains who are communicating their lust for badminton rackets" there would be an expectation that I would provide some evidence that this is happening.) Spoiler fucked around with this message at 18:12 on Jun 23, 2021 |
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Jun 23, 2021 18:08
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It seems to be that there is a distinction between what the "propaganda model" purports to claim or prove, and how it is used in practice. It claims to show that what the media will focus on or report vs not report is affected by the media's interests. Call it american imperialism, whatever, who cares. The crux of the argument is that certain things will be reported, certain things not, certain things given emphasis, certain things not, and to the extent there is an editorial slant, it will be in one direction. Importantly, none of this purports to claim that it shows the media will lie. to take the "dead priest" example: it does not claim that the media will report a fake death of a priest in poland, nor report that there have been no deaths of priests in us client states. Instead it claims that one will be reported and/or given more emphasis, and one will not be reported and/or downplayed. Not reported is very different from "claimed did not occur" = for example, the new york times did not report on any of the myriad random hearings in the eastern district of new york bankruptcy court yesterday; but did not claim no such hearings occurred (or if no hearings did occur yesterday, the last time any did, I didn't bother to check because virtually nothing important ever happens there). So in essence the "propaganda model" may claim that a reader of the targeted media may be left with the wrong impression based on the implicit assumption that all newsworthy things were reported equally - but it does not appear to claim that the media will lie. All of that is not terribly meaningful and rarely relevant for evaluating a specific piece of media to determine its factual accuracy. It is relevant for reminding people that the availability heuristic (what you see is a reasonable slice of the world from which to extrapolate) frequently steers you wrong. It steers you wrong in much simpler, basic issues - like "it bleeds, it leads" and other aspects of media biasing what will be presented. However, in practice people use it to try and do precisely that: to disregard media that gives them facts they find unpleasant. for example, a facially valid use of the "propaganda model" might be to claim that the ongoing genocide against the Uighurs gets greater attention than other similar genocides due to whatever grab-bag of interests you want to point to. But in practice, the people who look to chomsky and the propaganda model use it to discredit the factual reporting to attempt to minimize or disregard the evidence of the ongoing genocide and claim it is not reliable - which is not what the model purports to allow you to do. In practice, it is simply used to provide a simple way to shunt undesired information away. A model that is consistently misused - even by its creators - is a bad model in practice even if the instruction on the box say not to misuse it in that way; if people given the model consistently misuse it, then find a better model that doesn't suffer from that. it is much the same as putting a warning label on the "eats small children and pets" peloton: you need to consider the real world and getting correct results, instead of slapping a blame-shifting warning label. I think that's what Vox was getting at when he says that all of the aspects of Chomsky's work that have validity are done better by other people. It is the correct approach for a model that has potentially useful insights, but is consistently misused: to take those insights and put them into a model that does not get consistently misused.
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Jun 23, 2021 18:08
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Spoiler posted:I think my argument comes down to the fact that in practice the Propaganda Model has been used by its authors not only to assess how an event is covered (its tone, how its framed, the extent of coverage) but to doubt the facts of the event itself. I do not think you can do the former without also doing the latter - or at least laying the groundwork for someone else to do so. I want to make clear that I'm not suggesting Chomsky or Herman are never making factual claims or critique of evidence. It's that, by and large, when they do so they're using sources and methods unrelated to media analysis. The fact that they developed the PM doesn't make it some omnipresent feature of everything they write. I don't see how tabulating the first hand testimony of RPF officers even really has anything to do with the field of media critique. It's hardly anchored to any particular conceptual framework or discipline at all, it just seems like pretty straightforward lovely scholarship.
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Jun 23, 2021 18:09
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Spoiler posted:The Propaganda Model doesn't predict anything, its not a predictive model. Its a descriptive model which describes specifically how and why events are covered in the media in the United States, namely that this coverage serves the interests of American imperialism. Beyond what we're discussing here, the other two critiques of the PM are that it is wrong in thinking that this type of propagandistic coverage is unique to the West (its not), and that it assumes a homogeneity and intention in coverage that does not exist. I am so glad you have finally decided to make arguments about the Propaganda Model. I don't think the intention of the authors was to say the PM can only be applied in the West, it can be applied in any society where the fundamental conditions are similar to the United States. That is, a large degree of private ownership in the media, a dependence on advertising, etc. What do you mean when you say "it assumes a homogeneity and intention in coverage that does not exist"? A few pages ago someone said something similar. The media isn't considered monolithic under the propaganda model, if that's what you're getting at.
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Jun 23, 2021 18:12
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Kinda seems like it's a poorly defined model with a mount everest sized pile of baggage and that likely is why Chomsky isn't really academically relevant outside of the field of linguistics beyond people reading him in survey classes or w/e
Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 18:26 on Jun 23, 2021 |
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Jun 23, 2021 18:14
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Of course, to the extent anyone believes the Propaganda Model does offer a way to believe or disbelieve factual reporting or to evaluate its truthfulness (as opposed to simply evaluating what it will show vs not show, emphasize vs not emphasize), I struggle to think of a way that you could disprove it more significantly than its authors making three massive, indefensible, errors in claiming to disbelieve factual reporting. Not like, minor slips of the tongue, but "we believed firmly enough in our denial of these genocides to write a book about it."
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Jun 23, 2021 18:17
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Red and Black posted:I am so glad you have finally decided to make arguments about the Propaganda Model. I don't think the intention of the authors was to say the PM can only be applied in the West, it can be applied in any society where the fundamental conditions are similar to the United States. That is, a large degree of private ownership in the media, a dependence on advertising, etc. The Propaganda Model makes a very specific claim on the purpose and organization of media in the West. I disbelieve that claim. There are many examples of a breakdown between the ostensible imperialist goals of the American government and coverage of events that would justify those goals, and clear differences in coverage between different media outlets, despite those outlets both being privately owned by large corporate media conglomerates. See: later coverage of the Vietnam War, the Pentagon Papers, changing coverage of the Iraq War, etc. The PM dismisses these distinctions as simply existing on the margins and therefore insignificant in shaping public opinion, which I think is incorrect - they are often front and center, especially over the last decade. If you instead want to argue that the Propaganda Model does not make this specific claim, that instead that it more generally points that that the media can be biased, or that the government can influence direction and scope of coverage, or that for profit media organizations look towards their shareholders first, not the validity or purpose of coverage when making editorial decisions, than I would agree with all those claims, but at this point they're both universal and tautological, so I don't think they're particularly useful for this discussion, which is supposedly about deciding which sources are appropriate to use on SA and which aren't. If all sources are biased and can function as propaganda organs, then you can't really make specific distinctions along those lines, and have to look elsewhere for judging what sources are "valid" and which are not. I also think there are just simply better media theories and critiques, including the work of Walter Benjamin and the Frankfurt School. Spoiler fucked around with this message at 18:29 on Jun 23, 2021 |
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Jun 23, 2021 18:26
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Spoiler posted:The Propaganda Model doesn't predict anything, its not a predictive model. Its a descriptive model which describes specifically how and why events are covered in the media in the United States, namely that this coverage serves the interests of American imperialism. Beyond what we're discussing here, the other two critiques of the PM are that it is wrong in thinking that this type of propagandistic coverage is unique to the West (its not), and that it assumes a homogeneity and intention in coverage that does not exist. A methodology or heuristic involved in making descriptive claims with any reliability will also produce predictive claims. With the PM, that would be something like "given x political occurrence, the structures and processes of these media institutions are going to present in aggregate y narratives in a statistically significant sense." In spite of Slow News Day's objections, that seems like a fairly straightforward and falsifiable predictive claim to me. MC even provides a lot of direct and quantifiable empirical metrics that would support or negate such predictions. I disagree with your understanding that it assumes homogeneity and intention. MC is concerned with how a heterogeneity of institutions and perspectives manage to coalesce to unified results, and his framework of analysis is concerned with organisational and institutional problems of media production that lead to such results rather than attributing them to clearly intentional activity. Herstory Begins Now posted:Kinda seems like it's a poorly defined model with a mount everest sized pile of baggage and that likely is why Chomsky isn't really academically relevant beyond people reading him in survey classes or w/e I certainly won't deny the mountain of baggage. But we already had this discussion about academic relevance, and I think your claim is very far from the truth - his works in media analysis remain enormously cited in the field, they're used in syllabi right to the graduate level, they're included in readers of the field, etc. etc. Sekhem fucked around with this message at 18:42 on Jun 23, 2021 |
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Jun 23, 2021 18:31
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evilweasel posted:Of course, to the extent anyone believes the Propaganda Model does offer a way to believe or disbelieve factual reporting or to evaluate its truthfulness (as opposed to simply evaluating what it will show vs not show, emphasize vs not emphasize), I struggle to think of a way that you could disprove it more significantly than its authors making three massive, indefensible, errors in claiming to disbelieve factual reporting. Not like, minor slips of the tongue, but "we believed firmly enough in our denial of these genocides to write a book about it." fool of sound posted:This thread is intended for goons to cooperatively improve their ability to navigate the fraught modern media landscape; assisting one another separate fact from editorial, guiding each other to quality information, and teach each other to avoid the pitfalls of confirmation bias.
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Jun 23, 2021 18:33
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Epinephrine posted:So, if as claimed by some here, the Propaganda Model "cannot be used to predict whether an individual news story is true or false," then it is useless for the purposes of this thread. Understanding biases in reporting is a valid topic for the thread, though I agree that there are serious flaws in how MC is applied, and I've been pretty blown away by its misuse by its own authors.
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Jun 23, 2021 18:38
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fool of sound posted:Understanding biases in reporting is a valid topic for the thread, though I agree that there are serious flaws in how MC is applied, and I've been pretty blown away by its misuse by its own authors. It is valid for the thread, yes, but I thought the purpose of the thread itself is to inform more general guidelines regarding what types of sources can be used in D&D, and what types of criticisms can be applied to those sources in a way that will help goons separate fact from fiction. Again, from the OP: fool of sound posted:This thread is for analysis and potentially debunking of competently constructed articles. So if the Propaganda Model does in fact not allow us to determine facts, or even predict coverage of issues by individual outlets, then it is completely useless as a tool to debunk anything.
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Jun 23, 2021 18:44
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Slow News Day posted:or even predict coverage of issues by individual outlets
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Jun 23, 2021 18:56
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Sekhem posted:You're repeatedly saying that it can't reliably make predictive claims, is unfalsifiable and can justify anything, etc. but I simply don't see how this is true. The PM, to me, clearly seems to provide falsifiable claims about what narrative framing and what level of attention are going to be given to current events in a statistically significant aggregate sense. MC makes very clear direct quantifiable metrics that could be used to assess these predictions, such as number of stories, their relative wordcounts, placement of such stories in the outlet's pages, frequency of use of particular terms and designations, etc. I think where I see the disconnect is what claims does the model make that anyone would ever care about? Let's just accept it as true. It is proven that the media will select what is reported and what is not, and what goes on page 1 vs what goes on page 13, based on "what promotes US imperialism." It's a silly claim, but we accept it as proven beyond a doubt, and then seek to use it. What does it tell us of any use? The overarching "whatever you're reading is slanted towards US imperialism"; ok, it's a model that produces only one result, indistinguishable from a flashcard with that result printed on both sides. It's not a model you use for things, it is a "proof", such as it is, and you just use the conclusion and never need to work through the model ever again. But remember, it only claims that in the aggregate, and based on what is reported/not reported, vs emphasized/not emphasized. So I guess you could conclude that you cannot and should not believe the information reported in the media is an unbiased sample of events in the world. But that's trivially true and this conclusion here adds very little compared to much better-known biases, like "if it bleeds it leads", "man bites dog", novelty, "does the story involve sex or scantily clad attractive people" and other well-understood biases that give specific events undue focus in the media that are far, far stronger than some amorphous general pursuit of american imperialism. If you are trying to predict which priest's death will be reported in the news - well, that's sort of an irrelevant prediction for most people. It's not clear what possible value it could have, and it slots well below the other biases. Ultimately, the reason it is used is to take that flashcard conclusion and misapply it - by claiming that the mainstream media is biased towards american imperialism in what it reports on and emphasizes, and then in practice completely drop that last part and use it as a generic "i choose not to believe this genocide" talisman. And it's not completely unreasonable for people to do so because people assume a model someone bothered to write a weighty book about must be useful in some way, so they assume the model produces any result that is useful rather than what is essentially pointless trivia - though, of course, they probably should have had second thoughts when they saw where the model was leading them, and double-checked. But the authors didn't, and thus wound up denying multiple genocides, and that's a little harder to charitably assume away as the result of a silly bias towards assuming the model must be useful because they know it's not. Again, that's all just assuming the model is correct, not even bothering to poke at it. There's no reason to poke at it because it doesn't really matter if it's right or wrong.
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Jun 23, 2021 19:45
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evilweasel posted:I think where I see the disconnect is what claims does the model make that anyone would ever care about? Let's just accept it as true. It is proven that the media will select what is reported and what is not, and what goes on page 1 vs what goes on page 13, based on "what promotes US imperialism." It's a silly claim, but we accept it as proven beyond a doubt, and then seek to use it. Also, you presuppose that other stronger biases matter here, but I would contend that they don't. Firstly, the stories where the model is relevant are part of the subset of stories that are covered without falling into the "scantily clad man bites dog" category. That there's bias towards those stories is then irrelevant, as that effect should be equally strong for all stories of genocide or other crimes against humanity. The last bias, "If it bleeds, it leads", is of course also not an obvious source of bias when we're discussing topics like genocide - all genocides bleed. Basically, those biases have no explanatory power for why the treatment of crimes against humanity varies depending on the perpetrator, while the PM does.
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Jun 23, 2021 20:06
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A Buttery Pastry posted:I mean, if you didn't dismiss it out of hand ("It's a silly claim"), it might have the use of making you question the narrative that ends up in newspapers in a way that makes you less open to US propaganda. The issue is that it still boils down to: who cares? The conclusion is the same: any media is not providing an unbiased sample of what occurs in the world, so try to avoid falling prey to the availability heuristic. That's just a basic fact of how to consume media, and the fact this offers another reason not to do it just adds a little bit of weight to an already-heavy pile. To the extent you try to do more (as you try to suggest in your first sentence) you are leading towards the precise error that I'm talking about that makes the "propaganda model" not useful - "question the narrative" and be "less open to US propaganda" falls into the "questioning the facts reported, not their selection or emphasis" that is a misapplication of the Propaganda Model (or, if you contend it's not, then you have the whole "consistently wrongly denying genocides" problem).
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Jun 23, 2021 20:12
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evilweasel posted:The issue is that it still boils down to: who cares? The conclusion is the same: any media is not providing an unbiased sample of what occurs in the world, so try to avoid falling prey to the availability heuristic. That's just a basic fact of how to consume media, and the fact this offers another reason not to do it just adds a little bit of weight to an already-heavy pile e: I also think it's certainly a lot more useful than the other biases you talk about. This is a forum generally about discussing current global political events. I don't disagree that there are huge incentives for "man bites dog" or "can we insert pictures of scantily clad women in this" in a lot of media reporting, but they're not particularly represented in geopolitical coverage. When we're directly questioning ourself about what where we think biases might lie or where coverage might be insufficient to give us a full scope of events, I think the PM model is at the very least relevant even if you disagree with its relative effectiveness. Sekhem fucked around with this message at 08:01 on Jun 24, 2021 |
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Jun 24, 2021 04:28
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