MonsieurChoc posted:

It is kinda relevant as it point show willing people are to ignore the many many links between American media and the darkest parts of American govenrment. You twisted yourself into a pretzel to somehow say the tweet was inaccurate when it is. She was a high-ranking Reuters director who also worked for the CIA for 30 years.

The fact that you have these massive media conglomerates that own a lot of medias and are staffed with intelligence and military adjacent personel should lead you to doubt a lot of what you're told.

MonsieurChoc posted:

It is kinda relevant as it point show willing people are to ignore the many many links between American media and the darkest parts of American govenrment. You twisted yourself into a pretzel to somehow say the tweet was inaccurate when it is. She was a high-ranking Reuters director who also worked for the CIA for 30 years.

The fact that you have these massive media conglomerates that own a lot of medias and are staffed with intelligence and military adjacent personel should lead you to doubt a lot of what you're told.

Discendo Vox posted:

She is, again, not at Reuters. Nor is TR a "media conglomerate"; I linked the sort of services she was associated with.

Solkanar512 posted:

Look at all these massive generalizations!

How about instead of making things up, you actually quantify the "many" links, and define what exactly you mean by "American Media".

Discendo Vox posted:

https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1419409348128874496

https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-57928647

I want to briefly highlight this low-competence effort at antivaxx propaganda, almost certainly coming out of Russia and targeting a variety of populations. The full article is worth a read, but I want to highlight this part:

The practice of spreading the same false claim across multiple sources, then re-aligning them in secondary mediators, is a common and effective method of introducing falsehoods into discourse and creating the illusion of consensus around them. I'll write about this in further detail (with charts!) in a future effortpost.

comedyblissoption posted:

For those unaware, there was an alleged CIA program to infiltrate the media.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird

The CIA had a vested interest throughout the cold war to spread propaganda and would directly create and fund institutions like Radio Free Europe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Europe/Radio_Liberty

Given this history, speculation is warranted that the CIA would continue to have a vested interest in influencing the media and why this would matter.

Solkanar512 posted:

More generalizations, nothing specific, once again!

And now we're playing the "things never change" gambit without any evidence.

It's incredibly telling that those challenged with specific questions refuse to answer them.

MonsieurChoc posted:

If you wanna play the Media Analysis game, you gotta doubt EVERYTHING. All media is made by humans with an agenda, so start from a position of doubt and of looking at it with a critical eye. Trust has to be earned, not assumed.

quote:

“Think for yourself” doesn’t mean rationalize more
A core issue with many people’s approach to media literacy is they think of it as finding a single, true lens through which to understand information and the world- a rule or worldview or rubric that they can use to decide what sources are good or bad. This is often couched in the language of universal skepticism, or seeing through the “mainstream media.” “I’m skeptical of every source” and "all media is biased" is bullshit. No one can be skeptical of every source equally, and all too often it means rejecting good sources that are just communicating challenging or unappealing information. Taking these positions actually makes a person even more vulnerable to disinformation, because disinfo campaigns actively target such individuals and prey upon their biases. The Intercept article I cited above OANN will both tell you- they will give you the stories no one else will.

Similarly, a single theory (including, or even especially, “crit” theories that provide an overarching narrative telling you what sources are good or bad) will instead steer you toward messages that appeal to you for all the wrong reasons. There’s a reason these posts are a bunch of material pulled from different sources- a toolkit will make you much more intellectually versatile than a single mythological correct way to understand media.

MonsieurChoc posted:

You didn't ask specific questions, you just said "None of this is true!" like a petulant child. Now if you have specific questions we can start looking for mroe specific sources/info, but right now you're not actually asking anything. If you wanna play the Media Analysis game, you gotta doubt EVERYTHING. All media is made by humans with an agenda, so start from a position of doubt and of looking at it with a critical eye. Trust has to be earned, not assumed.

As for your specific claim, you're the one who should prove that something has magically changed in the media landscape, because you're the one with the wild claim that somehow things magically changed while we weren't looking.

Solkanar512 posted:

How about instead of making things up, you actually quantify the "many" links, and define what exactly you mean by "American Media".

Solkanar512 posted:

You need to stop lying about what I'm posting.

Nix Panicus posted:

So, if a high proportion of stories about a topic can be sourced back to a handful of people (or, more worryingly, just one guy) or a state actor with an axe to grind we should question the truthfulness of those stories and examine them for signs of propaganda, right?

quote:

Fazze's brief told influencers to share a story in French newspaper Le Monde about a data leak from the European Medicines Agency.

The story was genuine, but didn't include anything about vaccine deaths. But in this context it would give the false impression that the death rate statistics had come from the leak.

The data the influencers were asked to share had actually been cobbled together from different sources and taken out of context.

It presented the numbers of people who had died in several countries some time after receiving different Covid vaccines. But just because someone dies after having a vaccine doesn't mean they died because they had the vaccine. They could have been killed in a car accident.

In the countries the statistics were from, greater numbers of people had received the Pfizer vaccine at that time, so a higher number of people dying after having a Pfizer jab was to be expected.

"If you don't have any scientific training, you could just say, 'oh, there are these numbers, they are really different. So there must be a link.' But you can make any spurious correlation as you want really," Léo says.

The influencers were also provided with a list of links to share - dubious articles which all used the same set of figures that supposedly showed the Pfzer vaccine was dangerous.

When Léo and Mirko exposed the Fazze campaign on Twitter all the articles, except the Le Monde story, disappeared from the web.

Slow News Day posted:

Claims about the state of glaciers in Antarctica and the rate they are melting can often be sourced back to a handful of geologists and glaciologists (who spend long months in the region for measurements and analyses), and they certainly have a deep interest in spreading that message. Does that mean we should question the truthfulness of what they are saying?

James Garfield posted:

As someone who isn't deeply immersed in the field, you get better information if you come up with a framework to work out whom to trust (eg. major international scientific organizations are more reliable than a press release) and then trust them. If you try to doubt all sources you end up believing the sources that agree with whatever your preconceptions were.

quote:

“Think for yourself” doesn’t mean rationalize more
A core issue with many people’s approach to media literacy is they think of it as finding a single, true lens through which to understand information and the world- a rule or worldview or rubric that they can use to decide what sources are good or bad. This is often couched in the language of universal skepticism, or seeing through the “mainstream media.” “I’m skeptical of every source” and "all media is biased" is bullshit. No one can be skeptical of every source equally, and all too often it means rejecting good sources that are just communicating challenging or unappealing information. Taking these positions actually makes a person even more vulnerable to disinformation, because disinfo campaigns actively target such individuals and prey upon their biases. The Intercept article I cited above OANN will both tell you- they will give you the stories no one else will.

Similarly, a single theory (including, or even especially, “crit” theories that provide an overarching narrative telling you what sources are good or bad) will instead steer you toward messages that appeal to you for all the wrong reasons. There’s a reason these posts are a bunch of material pulled from different sources- a toolkit will make you much more intellectually versatile than a single mythological correct way to understand media.

Thorn Wishes Talon posted:

You don't want a single framework, you want a toolkit. Requoting the same part from the OP:

Thorn Wishes Talon posted:

You don't want a single framework, you want a toolkit. Requoting the same part from the OP:

Ytlaya posted:

This is basically a fancy way of saying "if I can find multiple 'good' media sources that don't directly contradict my assumptions about things, it means I'm correct." (never mind how bizarre it is to link a post by some goon like it's an authoritative source)

In practice, what generally happens (and in fact is what happened in the discussion about the interaction between CIA/US intelligence and media) is that people have certain assumptions about topics, and this influences what they consider to be "necessary evidence." So to use the earlier example, you have people whose default assumption is "the CIA doesn't do the sort of things it did in the past." Solkanar512, in his earlier post, directly implies that it's ridiculous to use an organization's past actions to predict its current actions (this might sound uncharitable, but there isn't really any other way to interpret that post). This is naturally going to influence what they consider to be "necessary evidence" - they're going to want some sort of recent concrete proof of activities, while the alternative view is going to want completely different proof - proof that the CIA has become a fundamentally different organization than it was in the past. And absent any concrete proof (which is going to frequently, if not usually, be the case when discussing something like contemporary CIA activities), both sides are going to come to completely different conclusions, because they have completely different ideas about the nature and activities of the CIA.

Here's a pretty simple summary about how one should actually think about these kinds of issues:
- What do I think are reasonable assumptions to make about this issue, and why do I think these assumptions are reasonable? (this is where the actual core ideological differences are)
- Based upon these assumptions, what evidence is needed for the claim in question? (this is where the disagreement usually happens in discussion - one side has a different idea of where the burden of proof lies and what sort of proof is necessary)
- Then you finally reach the stage of "is the evidence from these specific media sources reliable"

This might not be as satisfying for someone who wants to be able to claim they're objectively correct about things, since it requires actually clearly defining one's beliefs and maintaining some level of consistency.

Ytlaya posted:

Solkanar512, in his earlier post, directly implies that it's ridiculous to use an organization's past actions to predict its current actions

The Kingfish posted:

You demanded that a poster provide evidence that the CIA hadn’t changed its policies w/r/t infiltration of media.

E: and described the idea that an institution would continue to act as it did historically as a “gambit.”

quote:

“We started learning how to spell in school today, Mom! ‘A is for AK-47,’ the kind of gun the Revolution used to kill the Yankee traitors at the Bay of Pigs!”

That was the report of an American first-grader attending school in Havana, whose parents were diplomats at the U.S. Embassy in the communist island nation. The bilingual Hispanic couple wanted their young son to have a Spanish-language-based education and so had decided to send him to a Cuban school. Instead of learning the alphabet the way we do in the U.S. (think “A is for apple, B is for banana”), the child came home with “A is for assault rifle.” The Cuban teacher had even provided a line drawing of an AK-47 for the children to color for homework.

That is indoctrination.

...

Cautionary tales from countries that have been unwilling to face up to unpleasant elements of their history abound. Russia and the former Soviet Union are excellent examples. The Russian government takes an aggressive policy stance about what is taught in Russian schools concerning Russian or Soviet history. The Kremlin mandates, for example, that Stalin be portrayed as a strong leader who provided a firm hand when the Soviet Union faced the existential threat of Nazi Germany. Never mind that Stalin also sent untold millions of his own citizens to their deaths in the Soviet Gulag system. Never mind Stalin’s use of the Soviet security services to conduct murderous purges of his political adversaries and allies, and never mind that Stalin authorized show trials and propaganda to justify his murders. Little if any of that is taught in Russian schools. Today, over half a century later, Stalin continues to be named one of the most popular leaders in Russia.

Hopefully, Americans fighting against critical race theory do not intend to proceed down the path Stalin’s U.S.S.R. and now Putin’s Russia have taken. Russia and other authoritarian regimes (think China, Iran, North Korea) are quick to defensively point out that Western democracies are far from perfect. Indeed, China and Russia both actively advocate that their forms of government are valid and even superior to democracy, despite horrific human rights records, a lack of many basic freedoms, and unacceptable international behavior. The correct response to these assertions is that while it is certainly true that no democracy has an unblemished history, democratic nations can and should be truthful about the dark parts of their pasts. In fact, the critical study of history, free of political interference, is a key distinction between democratic and authoritarian traditions. A willingness to engage in fact-based scholarship on even the worst elements of a nation’s past is a good indicator of a healthy democracy. Germany’s educational policies regarding the Nazis and World War II are perhaps the best example of this.

quote:

Bergman has found no evidence directly linking the flood of fake AIS tracks to any country, organization, or individual. But they are consistent with Russian tactics, says Todd Humphreys, director of the Radionavigation Laboratory at the University of Texas at Austin. “While I can't say for sure who's doing this, the data fits a pattern of disinformation that our Russian friends are wont to engage in.”

Just two days after the HMS Defender had its AIS track faked, Russian forces allegedly fired warning shots at the destroyer during a transit close to the Crimean coast. “Imagine those shots hit their mark and Russia claimed to show that NATO ships were operating in their waters,” says Humphreys. “The West might cry foul, but as long as Russia can flood the system with enough disinformation, they can cause a situation where it's not clear their aggression was wrong. They love to operate in that kind of nebulous territory.”

quote:

Research Sponsors
National Science Foundation, ENG Directorate
DARPA
U.S. Department of Energy
U.S. Air Force, GPS Directorate
U.S. Department of Transportation
U.S. Navy, NAVAIR
Samsung Research America
Northrop Grumman Corporation

Solkanar512 posted:

Nope, I did not. Once again, you can't even quote where I said these things because I did not.

XMNN posted:

tl;dr the CIA doesn't have to infiltrate the Western media establishment to control it, they're perfectly capable of being the lying fake news media all on their own

quote:

Take, for example, this article in the Washington Post where they just let a CIA agent ramble on about how Cuba and Russia are evil because of some frankly ridiculous sounding claims about indoctrination of school children (which, of course, would never happen in a liberal Western democracy).

quote:

As a result, in 2014, his government shut down the last independent TV station, “Rain,” after it asked viewers whether they thought Stalin should have surrendered Leningrad rather than subjecting it to the 872-day Nazi siege, during which more than 1 million inhabitants — including Putin’s elder brother — died.

A new law subsequently made it a crime to “spread false information about the activity of the Soviet Union during World War II.”

The 70th anniversary of the end of the war in 2015 saw more lavish praise for Stalin, with Putin even approving of the decision to sign a nonaggression pact with Nazi Germany in 1939. Critics complained that Putin was “making Stalin great again.”

Putin’s most direct discussion of Stalin came in a 2017 interview with filmmaker Oliver Stone. Putin compared Stalin to Oliver Cromwell and Napoleon Bonaparte, saying that “Stalin was a product of his time,” which can be understood as excusing his flaws. Putin complained that “excessively demonizing Stalin is a means to attack Soviet Union and Russia” — though he did go on to say “that does not mean that we should forget the horrors of Stalinism.”

quote:

Cautionary tales from countries that have been unwilling to face up to unpleasant elements of their history abound. Russia and the former Soviet Union are excellent examples. The Russian government takes an aggressive policy stance about what is taught in Russian schools concerning Russian or Soviet history. The Kremlin mandates, for example, that Stalin be portrayed as a strong leader who provided a firm hand when the Soviet Union faced the existential threat of Nazi Germany. Never mind that Stalin also sent untold millions of his own citizens to their deaths in the Soviet Gulag system. Never mind Stalin’s use of the Soviet security services to conduct murderous purges of his political adversaries and allies, and never mind that Stalin authorized show trials and propaganda to justify his murders. Little if any of that is taught in Russian schools. Today, over half a century later, Stalin continues to be named one of the most popular leaders in Russia.

quote:

Indeed, China and Russia both actively advocate that their forms of government are valid and even superior to democracy, despite horrific human rights records, a lack of many basic freedoms, and unacceptable international behavior.

Thorn Wishes Talon posted:

Before I respond, let me ask: are you going to actually stick around this time and engage in the conversation, or are you going to pull your usual "make one or two posts and then disappear" schtick that you have openly bragged about elsewhere on the forums? Because so far, that's all you have done in this thread: you post something vaguely condescending, then disappear for anywhere from a week to a month, then come back and do the same thing.

Mellow Seas posted:

Hall's op-ed is kind of weird, because it's not really disputable that he's likely done a lot of terrible things in his life, but we should consider the intended audience of the piece as much as we consider its author.

Like, his point seems pretty explicitly not to be "we should invade Cuba because they worship Stalin," but rather that the US should stop whitewashing its own history. Hall is framing this in a way that has theoretical appeal to right-wingers - "authoritarian communists have taught revisionist history, so we shouldn't." I don't think it's very likely to move opinions on the right very much, because that's not really how politics works, but the goal of the piece is not particularly ambiguous.

(As for "would the WaPo post op-eds from former Cuban or Russian spies?" - I mean, maybe they should? I imagine their perspectives on both the US and their home countries would be potentially very illuminating, as long as we consider their biases, right? The problem is more that the media are not representing those POVs than that they are representing Hall's.)

So if we're discounting Hall's opinion because he worked for the CIA, isn't it then reasonable to ask, "how is this op-ed advancing the goals of the national intelligence community?" and "are those goals in conflict with a more just society?"

The Kingfish posted:

Hall’s is an opinion piece in the Washington Post, meaning it is directed at the Post’s liberal-centrist readership. With that in mind, the way his op-ed advances the goals of the national intelligence community is obvious: its framing places Cuba and Russia in opposition to CRT and contrasts their indoctrination-based education system with our own, which is predicated on a good-faith effort to provide children with unvarnished facts. The fact that Hall’s piece is ostensibly directed towards conservatives is a spoon full of sugar to help liberals swallow the pro-American propaganda.

As for you aside about whether or not the Washington Post would run an op-ed written by a pro-Kremlin Russian, a pro-Havana Cuban, or (as another example) a pro-Hamas Palestinian. Of course they wouldn’t. Strict limitation on the breadth of political discourse is a defining characteristic of American media.

The Kingfish posted:

Hall’s is an opinion piece in the Washington Post, meaning it is directed at the Post’s liberal-centrist readership. With that in mind, the way his op-ed advances the goals of the national intelligence community is obvious: its framing places Cuba and Russia in opposition to CRT and contrasts their indoctrination-based education system with our own, which is predicated on a good-faith effort to provide children with unvarnished facts. The fact that Hall’s piece is ostensibly directed towards conservatives is a spoon full of sugar to help liberals swallow the pro-American propaganda.

As for you aside about whether or not the Washington Post would run an op-ed written by a pro-Kremlin Russian, a pro-Havana Cuban, or (as another example) a pro-Hamas Palestinian. Of course they wouldn’t. Strict limitation on the breadth of political discourse is a defining characteristic of American media.

Pharohman777 posted:

'advancing the goals of the national intelligence community' is urging conservatives to do the right thing and accept the teaching of the various crimes and atrocities that went on in americas past by using their language?

Mellow Seas posted:

quote:

Indeed, China and Russia both actively advocate that their forms of government are valid and even superior to democracy, despite horrific human rights records, a lack of many basic freedoms, and unacceptable international behavior. The correct response to these assertions is that while it is certainly true that no democracy has an unblemished history, democratic nations can and should be truthful about the dark parts of their pasts.

quote:

So if we're discounting Hall's opinion because he worked for the CIA, isn't it then reasonable to ask, "how is this op-ed advancing the goals of the national intelligence community?" and "are those goals in conflict with a more just society?"

Raenir Salazar posted:

They should consider something like a Ministry of Media, not that it actually controls the media or anything of course; as that would be awful. But provide a forum for which representatives of all the major outlets can come together and come to mutual agreement to avoid a race to the bottom in their headlines and click bait articles? Because right now even if one outlet wanted to be responsible they're losing viewership and potential money if another outlet preempts them.

XMNN posted:

I think the whole discussion of media conglomerate and parent company of Reuters, Thomson Reuters, hiring a career tool of American imperialism was getting a bit lost in the weeds, e.g. with discussions of whether the media conglomerate Thomson Reuters is a media conglomerate, whether taking some time out from the CIA to work for the State Department should count towards time served in the imperialism factory, and whether being a tool of American imperialism in the past meant you were definitely one currently