Media Analysis & Criticism

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Esran: Apr 28, 2008

That quote was literally part of ram dass' post, I don't know why you're acting as if you found a smoking gun here.

I agree that ram dass' phrasing is not literally what WaPo said, but I don't think it's some great leap from

quote:

Bush let the 9/11 attacks happen so he could start wars

quote:

Bush took advantage of the 9/11 attacks to start wars

and I think the article is trying to imply that a connection between the two things is tinfoil hattery.

# ¿ Oct 13, 2021 19:35

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 13:39

Esran: Apr 28, 2008

I may have phrased this incorrectly. What I mean when I say that the leap is not great is not that the two statements are equivalent or close to.

I mean that when the article calls out "Bush let 9/11 happen so he could start wars" as a conspiracy theory (imo accurately), it does so without mentioning why people might believe such a conspiracy theory: Bush was warned about Bin Laden ahead of time, and he did in fact use 9/11 to start wars he wanted to start anyway.

By just calling out the original statement without mentioning context, the quiz leads the reader to think of the whole thing as baseless, which I thought was what ram dass was getting at.

# ¿ Oct 13, 2021 20:33

Esran: Apr 28, 2008

DV, your post is itself a pretty good example of misinformation and manipulative framing. I've extracted some sections where your argumentation and framing is particularly flawed.

quote:

Nominally leftist counterculture political cartoonist Ted Rall is one of a large number of people that the Russian government pays as a propaganda source, something he's done in a variety of settings for years and years (for a review of Rall's work, see this partial compendium by xander77). His role is essentially to foster incompetently militant leftism and encourage fatalistic disengagement from the Democratic party and civics in general (the latter being a big part of the overarching Russian propaganda strategy)

In this section, you assert that Ted Rall is a propaganda source for the Russian government. To convince the reader of this, you employ invective and ad hominems in lieu of evidence. It appears you want the reader to feel enlightened but also under threat, so you paint the Russian government's propaganda as having very extensive reach, while Rall himself is portrayed as incompetent. This form of framing is frequently used when an enemy must be portrayed as both overwhelming in order to establish stakes and convince the reader that the threat is worth caring about, and incompetent in order not to discourage action.

quote:

His role is essentially to foster incompetently militant leftism and encourage fatalistic disengagement from the Democratic party and civics in general (the latter being a big part of the overarching Russian propaganda strategy)

Well, I'm glad to know that he isn't simply pointing out issues with American society. Good to know that he landed a job with such a clear job description. Are you sure you don't want to add a few more negative adjectives to leftists here? I think it would really strengthen the emotional appeal of this section.

quote:

In brief, Rall presents the view that the US is so hostile to and censorious of leftism that only truly "freedom-loving" outlets like Sputnik support "true" leftist speakers, like him. This may sound absurd, but if you've been buying into past messages from this train of thought, it can have the effect of getting the audience to completely reject other sources of information

Presenting the statement that the US is hostile and censorious of leftism as facially absurd seems to be an attempt to save yourself from arguing the truth value of that statement. By making the statement seem self-evidently untrue, readers will feel uncomfortable challenging the statement for fear of appearing ignorant.

quote:

Rall is infamously egotistical and likely believes he is actually the persecuted leftist that he pretends to be. Russia loves hitting up fringey semi-failed figures like Rall, because they're cheap to subsidize and it rapidly becomes impossible to tell which parts of their beliefs are paid for and which are sincere.

Readers are unlikely to want to align with someone seen as both a "fringey semi-failed figure" and "egostistical". Great emotional appeal.

quote:

The entire chain of mediation needs to be scrutinized. It's not enough to just get back to the root source- as much as possible, it's important to consider how and why a message from one place made its way onto the forum
(...)
Misinformation always "has a point"

You appear to advocate not engaging in messy arguments such as "Is the American media focusing on atrocities in the Ukraine war, while ignoring atrocities happening in America's own wars" or "Is the American media ascribing benevolence to their own regime, while ascribing malevolence to the Russian regime?". You instead advocate that readers focus on the source and mediators of messages, while disregarding the content. You even go so far as to say that evaluating the root source isn't enough, you have to consider whether Russia appears anywhere in the chain of mediators. This is a great tool for derailing discussions. Can't talk about cop violence, because the person bringing it up might have read it on RT. Can't talk about Tara Reade because the interview was on Fox News.

Since some readers may be inclined to evaluate messages based on their content as well as their source, you then frame the act of even evaluating the truth content of messages as suspect. Playing on the reader's ego, you present people who evaluate content as playing into the hands of the propagandists, which predisposes the reader not to do so.

This section also serves to preempt counterarguments that we should examine the evidence supporting certain messages. When someone pointed out that a message may be true even if the mediator is untrustworthy, you pointed to this section to avoid engaging with the argument.

quote:

Mediators of misinformation can be human
(...)
And that doesn't matter. The individual who routinely makes themselves a vessel for misinformation, especially when they know its source, is willfully participating in the same deceptive enterprise. Propaganda spreads because the person mediating it finds it useful- to own their enemies, to shore up their insecurities, to answer their questions, to provide moral clarity. If they know the source and they persist, their credulity is calculated, and they share in its commitment to bad faith argumentation.

How convenient for you. Either the people you disagree with are intentionally and malevolently spreading misinformation, or they're unfortunate victims that just don't know what they're doing. Your framing doesn't even require misinformation to be factually incorrect, it just needs to be said by people you consider untrustworthy.

What is presented in your post is equally interesting to what is not presented. No evidence is presented that Ted Rall is a propagandist for the Russians, only insinuations and guilt by association. No evidence is presented that the US government isn't hostile to or censorious against dissenters, and any evidence that could support the opposite is ignored. The possibility that statements critical of the US could be presented on a Russian-aligned platform, while still being accurate is also not addressed. Finally you omitted a framework to evaluate sources and mediators for trustworthiness.

By narrowly focusing on source/mediator "approval value" and not presenting a framework for evaluating sources, the framework you are advocating is one where disagreeable statements can be rejected by ad-hoc filing the source/mediator under "untrustworthy", without needing to engage with the statement itself. That sounds like a great way to create an echo chamber.

# ¿ Nov 6, 2022 14:02

Esran: Apr 28, 2008

quote:

It's not conspiracy because it's a known thing

You keep saying that, but so far your evidence for Rall being a propagandist for Sputnik is that he's employed by them. You keep ignoring the idea that Russia may choose to platform people already critical of the US, even if those people aren't lying, because that's still to Russia's benefit.

You outright stated that Rall is molding his opinions to fit what he thinks Sputnik wants, and that's part of why he is untrustworthy. Where is your evidence of this?

For their part, people like Rall, Schultz and Hedges have made the argument that leftism isn't welcome in the American media establishment, and that's why they're going to RT and Sputnik. You consider that idea self-evidently absurd, but you seem to have forgotten to justify this belief.

Which agenda is Rall promoting?

Assume a world where Rall is not lying, and is simply calling out problems as he sees them in America. Imagine that Sputnik gives him a platform, because platforming people critical of the US is in Russia's interest. Is Rall now a propagandist even if he's saying the same things as before? If yes, does that mean we should now disregard what he's saying?

Edit:

My main issue with your line of argument is that you're saying some media organization is hostile to the US, some person works there, ergo the things that person is saying are untrue or misleading. Propaganda can be true. If RT points out that American politicians are useless at dealing with school shootings, that's true, and it is not a reason not to discuss that subject.

Esran fucked around with this message at 18:42 on Nov 6, 2022

# ¿ Nov 6, 2022 18:27

Esran: Apr 28, 2008

Discendo Vox posted:

Yes, the person being paid to produce content for a propaganda entity is a propagandist. This isn't complicated.

This is not necessarily true, see YMB's earlier post. Unless you are defining "propaganda" broadly as meaning "someone is being paid assuming they will push a particular set of viewpoints", and if so, I have bad news about nearly all news media.

Discendo Vox posted:

This "platforming" claim might bear water if the guy wasn't directly taking money from the organization, and if he hasn't been doing it for years and years.

When I say "platform" I'm not referring to whether a person is being paid or not. I'm referring to how Sputnik chooses which people it wants to put on the air. Sputnik may decide to hire people who are already critical of the US system. You are stating that Rall is molding his opinions based on what he thinks Sputnik would like, rather than Rall's opinions being his own, which you simply have no evidence to support.

Discendo Vox posted:

It's self-evidently nonsense because a) there are other "leftist" sources not funded by the Russian government, b) the concept of "American media establishment" is vague and allows the claimant to render the claim unfalsifiable, and c) if they were actually interested in promoting leftism, they would consider why the propaganda agency that isn't interested in promoting leftism is continuing to employ them, and what the actual effects of their propaganda are!

That's fair. I guess they could have gone to Telesur. (it's a fair point, but leftist outlets in the US are actually few and far between)

I'm sure Sputnik doesn't want to promote leftism in Russia, but I don't think they care if Berners in the US get ideas.

Discendo Vox posted:

Rall is promoting the agenda of the people who have been paying him for at least a decade to create material and place it in the US market.

Wow, those comics are damning. How dare he post that the Democrats are worthless, or that Ukraine banned opposition parties, or that the US duopoly doesn't really qualify as democracy, things that are totally misleading and untrue, which no leftist could actually believe.

Discendo Vox posted:

If you find yourself needing to rely on the propaganda of foreign authoritarian governments as the sole source of "leftist" media, then you may have some underlying problems with both your media diet, and your understanding of leftism! I am not opposing the use of disinformation because it's "hostile to the US", I'm opposing disinformation because it's disinformation.

I never suggested using Sputnik as the sole source of media. I simply disagree with you that Rall is necessarily a propagandist in the narrow sense (i.e. I don't think he's lying about his beliefs, and I don't think he's deliberately trying to mislead people or arguing in bad faith. I don't think Sputnik is feeding him what to say either).

I don't disagree that picking a non-Sputnik source is probably a fine idea, especially on story where the Russians likely have an interest in meddling. But I'd apply that same advice to every outlet. I think Cease to Hope's earlier post is much more useful as an approach to source criticism.

Cease to Hope posted:

You can apply these same frames to a CNN commentator or an editorial in the Times. Rather than assuming the speaker is lying or some sort of catspaw, it can be more revealing to look at what they profess to believe, what the mission of the platform ownership is, and what systems proscribe their message and elevated it to you in the first place. It can help you suss out the ways a story is misleadingly framed, and better guess what isn't being reported on or what wasn't in the picture.

Edit:

quote:

Like Rall, we become mediators of the same false framing when we choose to spread it, and we share in his calculated bad faith

I mean, I guess you'll believe what you want to believe, but I really don't think you have evidence supporting that he's arguing in bad faith or that his framing is dishonest, and I don't think you can ascribe that intent to everyone posting his comics either.

Esran fucked around with this message at 20:08 on Nov 6, 2022

# ¿ Nov 6, 2022 19:58

Esran: Apr 28, 2008

Discendo Vox posted:

Rall is employed, directly, by the propaganda source, to produce material on behalf of that source. He didn't go on their radio show a couple times, he's worked for them and produced content for them for more than a decade. You do not need to go further than this. The idea that you need to somehow prove the propagandist truly believes, or doesn't believe, the misleading arguments they are making, while in the employ of a propaganda agency, to call their arguments disinformation beggars belief, and misses the point.

Considering your assertions from earlier today

quote:

Over the course of a given episode, the hosts will invite on as many as 10 separate "guests", including people like Rall. Each guest will be "interviewed" by the hosts to address a set of generally preplanned questions and talking point answers
(...)
Rall develops a lot of the content of his messages on his own using only talking points and what he thinks his employer wants- this illustrates how the concept of propaganda development, and the concept of bad faith, gets blurry in some ways. Many people who work in any persuasive or political area have a horrifying ability to sincerely believe, and advocate for, whatever their employer wants. Rall is infamously egotistical and likely believes he is actually the persecuted leftist that he pretends to be.

That looks like an assertion that Rall is being provided his talking points by Sputnik, and is not simply conveying his own opinions, and that he's shaping his opinions to agree with what Sputnik wants. If you are now pivoting to that not actually mattering, that's fine, but I think you should avoid hurling invective when you won't provide evidence to back up your assertions.

You have still failed to provide evidence to support that Rall is making misleading arguments. Your examples from earlier were you and politoons posters disagreeing with his opinions.

quote:

Rall works directly for a propaganda outlet, which is not the same as simply "being paid assuming they will push a particular set of viewpoints". Sputnik is not remotely comparable to "nearly all news media". He's also worked there for many years, moving his focus in full alignment with their positions. I have also demonstrated that Rall's status as an employed propagandist for that outlet is obscured, which was the whole point of the post in the first place.

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Why would you think this would disqualify what he is doing from being disinformation, or from being propaganda? You think the propaganda entity would hire the people who would actually oppose them?

You might recall that this was a response to your assertion that because Rall works at a propaganda outlet, he is a propagandist, which carries particular connotations of falsehood, taking into account your original uncharitable description of the man. The main points of your argument here seems to be that he works at Sputnik, and that Sputnik doesn't announce him as an employee on podcasts.

According to your own definition, disinformation is "false, incomplete, or misleading information". You have not provided any evidence or even examples of Rall disseminating information that is false, incomplete or misleading. We seem to be going around in circles on this point, and you consider the fact that he works at Sputnik as being damning, so I guess I'll drop talking about Rall specifically.

Is your assertion that (debatably) true statements amplified by someone with an agenda are inherently misleading, regardless of their actual veracity, and so such statements shouldn't be posted here?

quote:

Telesur is also a propaganda outlet; in fact it shares resources with and swaps proxies with Russia on a pretty routine basis.

Yes, thank you. That was the joke.

quote:

Sputnik is interested in encouraging civic disengagement in targeted populations, including specifically in causing division among the Democrats. Rall has served in this capacity for a very long time. I have provided examples of people in the politoons thread straight up commenting on how predictable this pattern has become. I've also pointed to multiple other entities operated by RT for the same purpose, using the same approach.

Yes, and a way to do that is to platform lefties from the US, who are already dissatisfied with American politics, and are already inclined to think that the political process is rigged. No one disagrees that Sputnik and RT are amplifying these voices to mess with the US. The point of contention is whether that means that someone like Hedges should be distrusted or even banned from discussions here because of this association.

quote:

The opinion piece you've linked, like the cartoon, neglects to mention that the parties in question were endorsing or participating in the invasion, or that there are a whole bunch of political parties not banned in Ukraine of every political stripe not currently facilitating the invasion. As was said in the Ukraine conflict thread at the time, it's akin to Germany banning the NSDAP. This is, once again, a pretty great example of why how a selective framing of an issue facilitates disinformation, and how people will uncritically engage in it if it tells them what they want.

If you feel that it is appropriate to counter an article from Al Jazeera authored by a Ukrainian sociologist working out of a Berlin university with a reference to a thing some random poster in the Ukraine thread said, I feel you should take your own advice about uncritically believing sources that tell people what they want to hear.

quote:

The defense being raised, by both Rall and by the other people who work for Russian propaganda outlets, is explicitly that they are the only available place for true leftist media versus some ill-defined "mainstream." YMB's explicit framing of the issue was that the options are Sputnik, or material "pre-approved by US propagandists".

From the loving OP:

The OP holds no special authority, it is not quoting from some unassailable source of truth, it is simply an older post of yours. All media is biased, and I think it is naive to claim otherwise. I agree that people can't be skeptical of every source equally, but the way people usually resolve that issue is to reserve special scrutiny for stories that appear out of the ordinary, or where accuracy is particularly important, while letting most other stories flow by unless someone objects. As you said, you can't generally sort sources into "good" and "bad" piles and be done. But there is no reason to think that you can't try to determine biases on particular topics, and use that to develop a list of "likely weak bias"/"likely strong bias" sources on certain topics.

To be clear: The position I'm taking here is not that Sputnik is trustworthy, or that you should include it in your media diet. It's that if someone posts a Rall cartoon portraying Democrats as useless, you should not be allowed to call in the mod squad to nuke the offending poster (remember that you couched your post as moderation advice), simply because Rall is working for Sputnik. Instead, you should explain why the argument presented in the cartoon is misleading, or you should provide evidence that Rall's arguments are being dictated from Moscow.

cinci zoo sniper posted:

I don�t know why you all decided to break rules here instead of doing that in the Politoons thread, but, alas, I have to ask everyone to actually restate, in brief terms, what are their positions in this conversation, and to what end they would like to take it.

My position is outlined a few lines above. I don't have an end to take it to after this post. I think we were largely done with this discussion even if we don't agree, and I don't think continuing it would be productive in any case, now that you're swinging the probate stick around for unclear reasons.

Esran fucked around with this message at 01:52 on Nov 7, 2022

# ¿ Nov 7, 2022 01:47

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 13:39

Esran: Apr 28, 2008

cinci zoo sniper posted:

That said, I don�t think sassy parting shots will do you much favour.

I wasn't going for sass. From my point of view, you showed up in this thread which was being fairly civil, and made a demand for reasons that weren't clear. When another poster asked about the reason for this demand, you probated them for reasons that were (are still) unclear.

# ¿ Nov 7, 2022 02:37

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