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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. What did she do as a high-ranking Reuters director and do you mean Reuters itself or the parent company? I agree that massive media conglomerates are bad and the cause of many of our issues, also your complete lack of any evidence or anything but condescending accusations make me doubt what your are telling me as well.
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# ? Jul 29, 2021 03:00 |
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# ? May 28, 2024 16:32 |
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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. She is, again, not at Reuters. Nor is TR a "media conglomerate"; I linked the sort of services she was associated with.
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# ? Jul 29, 2021 03:02 |
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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. Thomas Reuters, a company you describe as: “a massive conglomerate that includes a bunch of companies contracting with the US government for information and publishing activity.” That’s media, baby.
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# ? Jul 29, 2021 04:49 |
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Solkanar512 posted:Look at all these massive generalizations! 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. comedyblissoption fucked around with this message at 09:35 on Jul 29, 2021 |
# ? Jul 29, 2021 09:20 |
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Discendo Vox posted:https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1419409348128874496 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?
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# ? Jul 29, 2021 14:12 |
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comedyblissoption posted:For those unaware, there was an alleged CIA program to infiltrate the media. 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.
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# ? Jul 29, 2021 15:24 |
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Solkanar512 posted:More generalizations, nothing specific, once again! 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.
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# ? Jul 29, 2021 15:32 |
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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. Literally from the OP: quote:“Think for yourself” doesn’t mean rationalize more
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# ? Jul 29, 2021 15:47 |
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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. You need to stop lying about what I'm posting. And no, you don't get to make claims, then shift the burden to me to prove them wrong. You make the claims, you back them up. Solkanar512 posted:
How many links, and a definition of "American Media" are specific questions. Stop posting in bad faith and engage in the material.
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# ? Jul 29, 2021 15:49 |
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Solkanar512 posted:You need to stop lying about what I'm posting. But I didn't lie. I accurately described your posts. Edit: The two questions you asked are, well, not real questions. American media is not an hard concept to grasp, if you can'ty even udnerstand that you don't have a place to talk about media at all. As for "How many links", that mgiht be one of the dumbest question I've ever read. Do you think there's like one or two bad actors and that's it? We're talking about a huge sphere here, with a lot of individual agents but also lots of fuzzier concepts and links. You can't "count" the conenctions between, say, Hollywood and the military on your hand! I can point to a poo poo-ton of examples, from the Iraq War to the Joe Bidne coverage to individuals like the one that started this derail, but when dealing with a sphere as huge as media asking for a specific number of conenctions is like asking for a specific number of atoms or something. It's dumb and shows a complete lack of undestanding of the subject. Can you tell me the specific number of times police were protrayed sympathetically by the media when they acted maliciously? No, because it's both a huge number and also has fuzzy borders. But you can certainly give plenty of examples and there's a ton of studies on the phenomenon. MonsieurChoc fucked around with this message at 16:02 on Jul 29, 2021 |
# ? Jul 29, 2021 15:53 |
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Stop slapfighting. Reset the conversation and reiterate your specific points please.
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# ? Jul 29, 2021 15:56 |
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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? 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? No. The tweet/article you quoted in your gotcha attempt talks about a shady company that offered money to influencers to pretend they are deeply passionate about Covid and to use their platform to spread fear and doubt about the vaccines. They were also explicitly asked not to mention they had a sponsor, and they disappeared when the influencers told the media about it. Here's the most relevant bit: 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 difference between this and the Chinese genocide/ethnocide of Uyghurs is that our knowledge of the latter is not based on mere stories and anecdotes anymore. We now have an overwhelming amount of evidence for it, coming from different sources and corroborated by many Uyghur refugees who have managed to escape. CCP officials themselves have referred to "washing brains" and "cleansing hearts" to "cure" Uyghur's "extremist thoughts" in leaked government documents, and even Xinjiang regional law openly outlines some of the mentioned "de-extremification" practices such as the banning of names and even beard styles (that are deemed to be "too Muslim"). So at this point it is undoubtedly a "where there is smoke there is fire" situation, and the only question pertains to the specifics of what is going on in the Uyghur concentration camps. It's worth noting that what you are espousing — doubting and distrusting information based solely on a single superficial quality (i.e. that it is purportedly aligned with Western interests with regards to "containing" China) — is the very opposite of media literacy. The term I've come across elsewhere that describes the practice is "mid-brow dismissal": rejecting information based on what appears to be deeply profound insight, but is actually rooted in the person's preconceived notions (i.e. America is evil and bad, therefore China/Russia must actually be good, and anything America claims about them is probably just propaganda).
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# ? Jul 29, 2021 16:56 |
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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? Also, the "doubt all sources" method fails badly here because it takes a lot of specialized knowledge to evaluate those claims, and trying to self learn enough to evaluate them isn't worth the effort. It's also an open research question, and some misinformation comes from people who appear to be credentialed, so "trust the scientists" isn't guaranteed to work. 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.
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# ? Jul 29, 2021 18:54 |
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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. You don't want a single framework, you want a toolkit. Requoting the same part from the OP: quote:“Think for yourself” doesn’t mean rationalize more
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# ? Jul 29, 2021 19:03 |
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Thorn Wishes Talon posted:You don't want a single framework, you want a toolkit. Requoting the same part from the OP: Yeah that was bad wording on my part, I meant that the glacier retreat is a good example of a place where doubting everything is harmful (because you doubt everything that disagrees with what you already thought) The international organization isn't automatically right where it disagrees with press releases, but if a piece of science journalism cites one press release as the reason international organizations are wrong that's an important bit of information that should probably affect how you read it.
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# ? Jul 29, 2021 19:37 |
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Is this a discussion of how to determine fact from falsehood, or a discussion on how to critically analyze media? Even the most insidious propaganda can be, strictly speaking, true. To my mind, the better topic for a discussion on media is framing and presentation of true facts.
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# ? Jul 30, 2021 15:56 |
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Thorn Wishes Talon posted:You don't want a single framework, you want a toolkit. Requoting the same part from the OP: 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.
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# ? Jul 30, 2021 22:58 |
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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) 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. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST) (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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# ? Jul 30, 2021 23:09 |
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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 I didn't do this. You don't get to put words in the mouths of others. I asked specific questions about generalizations that were made and have still received no specific answers.
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# ? Jul 30, 2021 23:29 |
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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.” The Kingfish fucked around with this message at 23:37 on Jul 30, 2021 |
# ? Jul 30, 2021 23:34 |
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The Kingfish posted:You demanded that a poster provide evidence that the CIA hadn’t changed its policies w/r/t infiltration of media. Nope, I did not. Once again, you can't even quote where I said these things because I did not. Look, let me know when you folks are done taking turns fabricating strawmen and want to provide specific evidence for your claims. In the meantime, Vox put a poo poo ton of time and effort into their posts. The fact that their points keep getting ignored is a bit of a slap in the face. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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# ? Jul 31, 2021 00:02 |
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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 I think the salient point really is that Thomson Reuters felt comfortable hiring a confirmed US spy to any role in their company, and particularly that one, which is a pretty good indication of where their interests, agenda, and ideology lie. For example, I suspect they wouldn't have hired a "former" FSB or MSS agent for the role of better integrating their services with the needs of (Western) governments. Like, I think we can all get a little caught up in the idea that in order for an individual or group to participate in advancing an agenda, there must be a meeting in a smoke-filled room or a telex from Langley with instructions, when more often than not the simple alignment of ideological beliefs and/or material interests is sufficient. I think pretty much any major media source in a Western country needs to be read in light of the fact that it is owned by capitalists, generally staffed by capitalists, and operates within a capitalist society with all the attendant preconceptions and indoctrination. 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). https://twitter.com/washingtonpost/status/1418901380387979267 Do they publish articles by Cuban spies explaining how the US is a bourgeois dictatorship with weird, scary, nationalistic flag worship and such? 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!” The Washington Post published this article by a guy who worked for an absolutely horrific organisation because fundamentally their world views are sufficiently similar that they don't see a problem with it. Another article I thought was an interesting example of how an agenda can be advanced without the story being personally written by the director of the CIA or whatever is this one from Wired. https://twitter.com/brbarrett/status/1420722721223217152 Basically, someone has been spoofing transponder signals from various naval vessels for some unknown reason. The way the ship trackers work means that you can just inject spurious data into a feed and it will turn up on the tracker. The faked signals have often been incursions into territorial waters, for example, a Russian vessel ostensibly entering Polish waters around Kaliningrad or NATO vessels entering, err, disputed waters around Crimea, with some apparently benign spoofing of NATO vessels in international waters. Notably, most of the incursions seem to be fake NATO vessels entering Russian-claimed water, as it specifically mentions that there were only two incursions of Russian ships into Polish/Ukrainian waters. So, why do I think the article is interesting? Because it only advances one, frankly pretty stupid sounding, explanation for this behaviour. 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.” It's the loving Russians and their disinformation! They just love doing this poo poo, unlike the West who I'm sure never do anything to sow doubt and confusion anywhere. And they're doing it in case they accidentally hit a NATO vessel in international waters when they're trying to warn it off, which is obviously a very likely sounding scenario, because they're all drunk and can't shoot straight. And it will be very useful to have all these unpublicised fake tracks, because they can point to them and say "Well, they violated our waters before!" and people will definitely care. I mean, NATO will obviously know where their ships were, and the Western media isn't particularly sympathetic to Russia, but it will definitely throw the whole situation into so much doubt that ??? Like, will it prevent a nuclear war? Will they be able to bring up all this fake data in the international sea court or whatever? How is this insurance policy supposed to pay out? To me, it just doesn't make any sense. A slightly more plausible theory, to me at least, seems to be that it's either NATO or Russia probing the other sides defences. If I was, for example, in charge of the US navy, I think it would be very interesting to know how the Russians responded to a fake warship entering their territory, e.g. to see how many vessels/planes they send out to warn off the intruder, or because it might indicate they're relying on a ship-tracking website to keep track of our vessels in some way. But no, we just get Professor Humphreys' suggestion and nothing else. And I guess we should be happy with that, he's an academic, he's an expert in the field, and the article doesn't give us any reason to suspect he's like lying or anything. He's not a spokesperson for the US military, for example. Except... https://radionavlab.ae.utexas.edu/ quote:Research Sponsors ...he loving might as well be. Now, do I think the author of this article was deliberately trying to advance the agenda of US global hegemony by making out like this is the loving crafty Russians up to their usual tricks? No, probably not. Do I think that Humphreys thinks he's advancing the US agenda? Maybe, but still probably not. But still an agenda has been pushed, because presumably the author thinks that Russian disinformation is a plausible enough explanation that they don't need to do any more digging, and the professor just naturally thinks like that because he works hand in hand with the US MIC. Like, if he was at all distrustful of the evil empire, I don't think he would have ended up in charge of this lab. I think this clip from the Chomsky/Marr interview pretty much sums it up. The whole system is set up so that you don't have to consciously push an agenda in order to push it (and in fact maybe it's more effective if you don't know you're doing it). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLcpcytUnWU 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 XMNN fucked around with this message at 01:07 on Jul 31, 2021 |
# ? Jul 31, 2021 01:00 |
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Solkanar512 posted:Nope, I did not. Once again, you can't even quote where I said these things because I did not. No, you did. Don't try to weasel yourself out of your bad posts by acting like you never made them. 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 This is what I think, and way better put than I could have done. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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# ? Jul 31, 2021 01:37 |
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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). So Russian schools ignoring and glossing over stalins atrocities is 'ridiculous sounding'? 3 years ago they banned the black comedy film 'the death of stalin' in russia. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/24/movies/death-of-stalin-banned-russia.html The russian embassy's official Twitter account mocked a polish ambassadors statement that Germany and Soviet Russias joint invasion started ww2. https://twitter.com/rusemb_pl/status/1211658270953357318?s=20 Heres another article. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/06/13/putins-dangerous-campaign-rehabilitate-stalin/ 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. Oliver Cromwell is considered a genocidal monster by the Irish for what he did to them. There is very clear evidence of a deliberate attempt to gloss over stalins crimes in modern Russia. 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.
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# ? Jul 31, 2021 04:27 |
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Sorry, when I wrote the "frankly ridiculous" bit I was mostly thinking about the "A is for assault rifle" line, then when I reread the article I noticed that whole section about Stalin and just thought it was a little bit ironic that an American was condemning revisionism turning a mass murdering, forced labour-using historical figure into some sort of strong mythical hero. The comparison to Cromwell you raise is also apt, because it's not like his treatment of the Irish has always been the main focus of British education about him. Anyway, I don't think it really changes the actual point I was attempting to make there, which is that the Washington Post let a guy who proudly worked for one of the worst organisations in the world write an article, not about like his experiences "working in authoritarian regimes" which might have been legitimately interesting (especially the bits where they mysteriously became authoritarian) but instead to talk about how uniquely evil America's enemies are. I think they did that because they fundamentally don't view the CIA as an inherently evil organisation, from which we can then infer some things about the Washington Post's world view and ideals. e: Oh yeah, the other slightly humorous line that led me to copy and paste more than I'd planned was this: 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. XMNN fucked around with this message at 08:34 on Jul 31, 2021 |
# ? Jul 31, 2021 08:23 |
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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. figured it was worth eating a probe to point out how posting about posters doesn't warrant action as long as you're one of ralph's darlings (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST) (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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# ? Jul 31, 2021 15:38 |
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For those interested in the links between the CIA and media I would suggest reading The CIA as Organized Crime. A couple chapters deal with the subject directly. And for those who hate Glenn Greenwald, they’ll be happy the author isn’t kind to him either. I’d post some good quotes but I won’t be home until tomorrow evening and am phoneposting.
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# ? Jul 31, 2021 16:32 |
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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?"
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# ? Jul 31, 2021 17:58 |
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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. 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 fucked around with this message at 18:53 on Jul 31, 2021 |
# ? Jul 31, 2021 18:42 |
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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. Maybe WaPo wouldn’t, but NYT did: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/12/opinion/putin-plea-for-caution-from-russia-on-syria.html Similarly, an op-ed that caused some controversy: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/01/opinion/hong-kong-china-security-law.html (This is not a defense of any particular op-ed. I’m not a big fan of op-eds in general, honestly.) Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 19:14 on Jul 31, 2021 |
# ? Jul 31, 2021 19:02 |
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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.
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# ? Jul 31, 2021 20:54 |
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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? The post you’re quoting argues that the op/ed uses the examples of China and Russia to demonstrate that US schools are propaganda-free, thereby reinforcing the claim that the people of US rivals are brainwashed and US citizens are free. The crt stuff (in this argument) is the occasion for the claim, but the claim is that the US would never brainwash its people with propaganda (and so crt is not propaganda), unlike the enemies of the US, who brainwash the poor captive children who can’t escape (just compare crt to this sick Russian propaganda). I don’t quite follow how that’s a foreign-policy objective, but the claim is easy enough to follow.
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# ? Jul 31, 2021 21:06 |
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https://mobile.twitter.com/CT_Bergstrom/status/1421545885331197952 Interesting thread about headlines. Maybe has too rosy a view of how things used to be, but I agree with his general points.
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# ? Jul 31, 2021 22:19 |
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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.
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# ? Aug 1, 2021 00:55 |
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I think the first problem is that the Washington Post views 30 years of service in the CIA as a qualification, not a disqualification. I think this shows they are comfortable enough with the apparatus of American imperialism that they're happy to believe in the myth of a "good CIA officer" (cf. the same sort of tendency with Mueller/Comey). I'm sure the editors will freely admit that the CIA isn't perfect, and maybe even acknowledge that it is in fact very bad, but they probably don't believe that every member of it belongs in prison, or anything like that. So we can infer that the outlook of the paper is going to be at least broadly in line with mainstream American foreign policy views even if they disagree with specifics. I think this goes hand-in-hand with the thing about publishing FSB agents, which as far as I know they don't (I don't have a subscription or anything so feel free to correct me). If they do it with approximately the same regularity as they do CIA/FBI/NSA agents then I think you could reasonably look at that as a sign that they are just genuinely interested in platforming different voices. If they only published FSB agents, we could conclude that they're either pro-Russia, or at least sceptical of US foreign policy. And again, I think the exact specifics of personnel isn't the only important thing, although it is an indication of viewpoint. I think the actual point is that the Washington Post and New York Times and all those media outlets are so deeply couched in the Western capitalist mindset that everything they publish should be read with that in mind, much like when you read the BBC you have to bear in mind that it is incredibly deeply entwined with the British establishment, or like state-run media in other countries will obviously be sympathetic to/explicitly pushing their world view. It doesn't mean everything they publish is a lie, or even that every single thing they publish necessarily will advance that view, but like any source it has to be read with its provenance in mind. With regards to the content of the article, I obviously don't think he's wrong to suggest that we should teach kids about the horrible poo poo our countries have done. I think where it's pushing an agenda, consciously or not, is in framing this as "education, not indoctrination" and that we should do it because otherwise we'd be bad and scary like Russia or China or Cuba, when "indoctrination" with some sort of world view is essentially unavoidable, and certainly hasn't been avoided in the US so can't really be characterised as a fundamentally authoritarian or democratic characteristic. I think the "A is for AK-47" thing really highlights why that distinction is pretty arbitrary. It's taken as read that it is bad and scary for Cuba to teach kids that defeating a CIA-orchestrated invasion of the fledgling revolutionary state was good and heroic, which lets face it is just amazingly loving rich coming from the country that literally will not ever shut up about kicking out the British. Like, the myths of the founding fathers, Paul Revere and the liberty bell and the evil redcoats and all this stuff are so incredibly engrained in American culture that it's inescapable, but suddenly it's bad for Cuba to glorify shooting some Yankee pig dogs? He could have stuck to the intellectual argument he starts to make about not suppressing facts, or at least more explicitly made the moral case that the founding fathers were (almost?) universally monsters, that the US was built explicitly on slavery, genocide and exploitation and that that original (and ongoing) sin taints every aspect of its history and society, rather than going for "well you wouldn't want to be like our many and varied enemies, would you?". I think this is underlined by the specific examples he chose, i.e. Russia, China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea. If he'd thrown in Venezuela we'd have a full house of America's enemies. But these aren't the only authoritarian regimes on Earth, are they? Why didn't he name, for example, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Thailand, Turkey etc.? Maybe it's because their educational systems are much less "indoctrinating", I don't know, but I presume it's not for any reasons of geopolitical alignment. 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. This section advances the view that their systems are invalid, and that OK the US is "blemished" (he doesn't specifically accept that the US is responsible for just as horrific human rights records, lack of basic freedoms and unacceptable international behaviour, especially when one takes into account the imperial periphery) but fundamentally correct. I think the point you make about this being designed to appeal to theoretical right-wingers basically sums it up, it's steeped in an "imperfect but fundamentally trying our hardest us vs inherently evil them" world view. As an aside, I also thought the "we can't say every aspect of America is racist, that would be tantamount to saying MLK was an anti-Black racist" line was a weird non-sequitur, which could be construed as advancing a line that "OK, sure there was/is a lot of racism, but it's not like everything was racist and America is inherently evil, I'm not one of those crazy extremists", which is trying to appeal to these people by playing down the fact that almost every aspect of American history is pretty racist. 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?" With regards to these specific questions, I think basically listing out Western capitals' enemies and underlining how inherently illegitimate they are covers the first one, and in response to the second I have nothing to offer but "lol, lmao" e: phone posting so there were a lot of typos XMNN fucked around with this message at 17:49 on Aug 1, 2021 |
# ? Aug 1, 2021 15:28 |
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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. I'm...going to assume this is in good faith. No, the government can't, nor should it, create such a space. There are several private and nonprofit entities that do do this sort of thing.
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# ? Aug 2, 2021 02:45 |
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Today, the results of the NY Attorney General's report on governor Andrew Cuomo came out, finding he had sexually harassed 11 women. Cuomo denied the accusations. The NY congressional delegation, the speaker of the house, the governors of many states bordering New York and the President of the United States all called on him to resign. This is important, breaking news, and an unprecedented story. CNN spent an hour tonight not covering the story at all, as his brother CNN host Chris Cuomo is, again, forbidden from reporting on his brother, after a period where he was allowed to. Why didn't they just give Chris Cuomo tonight off and have literally anyone else at CNN fill in for him to continue reporting on the story? There's certainly a case to be made for his firing, given that he was, while in his job as a prime time CNN host, giving his brother advice on handling the media to get through the scandals and charges facing him, but perhaps contractual obligations get in the way of something so final, but for one day, with such a big story? Not a good look for the network. What will they do going forward, as more developments break on the story?
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# ? Aug 4, 2021 06:26 |
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They'll probably just continue to cover it on the other shows and newshours? I'm not a Chris Cuomo defender, he's a dipshit and shouldn't be working in news at all as far as I can tell, but also to be fair are we really losing out on anything if the Andrew Cuomo scandal is not being covered on one cable TV news show for 1 hour each day? I don't really feel like that's a huge injustice, particularly.
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# ? Aug 4, 2021 19:16 |
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They are indeed covering it the rest of the day, but Cuomo Prime Time is their highest rated show. What message are they sending about their standards and practices by going dark on a huge story when they have the most viewers? This was one more questionable decision they’ve made in a series of them regrading the Cuomos.
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# ? Aug 4, 2021 20:56 |
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# ? May 28, 2024 16:32 |
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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 I find this part of this post particularly interesting in this thread, because it's rooted in an insistence in the truth of something that is not true, but would be convenient for the argument you want to make, namely, that Thomson Reuters is a media conglomerate and that any person employed by Thomson Reuters must therefore be involved with Reuters News. This is not only false, but easily veritably false, and because it's the first argument you make, it colors the perceived validity of everything else you posted. To be a media conglomerate, Thomson Reuters would, to my mind, have to satisfy two criteria: one, it would have to make most of its revenue from media-related activities, and two, it would have to own at least two or more media imprints. However, neither of these things are true. As you can see in their annual report, only 11% of the company's revenue comes from news, with the remainder coming from providing software and services to law firms, accounting firms, and the legal and accounting divisions of companies and governments. You can also see here that, where most of their divisions are referred to by what type of service they offer, News is specifically Reuters News - this is the only media imprint they own or are involved with. The annual report is a convenient source for this sort of information, but it's also immediately obvious on going to their homepage and spending even an instant looking around. What solutions do they offer? What does their "about us" say about them? How does that compare to actual media conglomerates like Disney? So, neither of the criteria are satisfied - the woman in question was hired into a totally unrelated division of the company, to do something totally unrelated. It's like saying that someone hired to work at Doritos is going to be influencing what happens at Gatorade, because both are owned by Pepsico. You started off your post dismissing the relevance of this, but it's fundamental to the entirety of your argument, because you follow up with examples of what has happened at other media conglomerates, which is totally irrelevant, because TR is not a media conglomerate. And while most of your later points are fine, it's all undermined because you have started off by ostentatiously insisting on the truth of something that can be verified as false with almost no effort. It makes you, as a source, seem impossible to rely on for factual accuracy.
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# ? Aug 9, 2021 17:30 |