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KOTEX GOD OF BLOOD posted:The only way to view Taibbi and Greenwald as "bottom of the dredge barrel take artists" is if you have been so poisoned by the hyperbolic Twitter echo chamber that you just refuse to engage with any news or information that could possibly threaten your worldview. Or you're just mainly colored by what they've done lately. Both of them began their shift from reporting to other kinds of journalistic work around 2014ish, both with an increased focus on punditry, and both embarrassed themselves with their reporting in the last couple of years. KOTEX GOD OF BLOOD posted:And for many outlets, like the NYT and MSNBC, their primary mission has become not to conduct reporting and contextualize facts with a range of interpretive opinion. It's to be a safe, warm cocoon for consumers to reassure themselves that they're already 100% right about everything and that their views have inherent virtue. That isn't journalism, it's masturbation. It's much easier to recognize shameless pandering to audiences other than yourself, but it's pretty close to a universal phenomenon. Cease to Hope fucked around with this message at 03:58 on May 1, 2023 |
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May 1, 2023 03:55
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Necrobama posted:One might argue that being out-reported on the Russiagate hoax by a lovely transphobic moron like Greenwald an embarrassment to The Guardian rather than to the reporter they kicked to the curb for doubting the official Russiagate narrative but I'm guessing I'm probably dealing with folks that still believe that Russia Did Trump 2016 so I'm not sure there's really any worth in pursuing that argument. I'm not sure what you're talking about. Greenwald left the Guardian on good terms to found what ended up being the Intercept, years before Trump even announced he was running for president.
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May 1, 2023 05:12
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Necrobama posted:Yup, you're 100% right on the publication name - that's what I get for posting at the end of a long day of air travel. Mea culpa. Okay, but if you're referring to the reason he was booted from the Intercept, it was because he wouldn't tolerate edits to an editorial he later posted on his Substack that ended up being factually wrong, all because he clearly wanted it to be true that there was a big media coverup that only he saw. That's just basic malpractice.
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May 1, 2023 05:22
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Most of what you quoted seems to be inveighing against an imagined foe who is somehow both a relativist but also sees the world strictly in terms of good and bad. You frequently scold unnamed interlocutors for reducing press outlets to "good and bad", but also decry relativism or applying a universal standard of skepticism. It's not very insightful to say that people should exercise judgement, but exercise it correctly. This doesn't doesn't seem to be useful advice, but the rest of it does raise some interesting questions. Are there risks to be concerned about other than active malice? Why is "'crit' theory" in scare quotes? It's hard to discuss the role of journalism or reporting without reference to the field. Are you referring to a specific theory here? In what shared way do the Intercept and RT say or imply that it's the only source of truth? How does that differ from, say, Propublica? How does it differ from "All the news that's fit to print" or the implications of "Democracy dies in darkness"? Is there a reason why you mention the Intercept, whose reporting is well-respected, in the same breath as RT, who is not?
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May 2, 2023 04:54
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I asked those questions because they seem particularly relevant to the topic at hand. Framing the failings of the press only in terms of malicious actors is polarizing. Helpful if your political goals or business model benefit from inflaming the audience! But I do think there are other sources: simple error, unconscious bias, self-censorship (to avoid criticism, or liability, or loss of access, or indeed stochastic or official harassment), a desire to adhere to convention, socioeconomic factors dictating who is allowed to do the work, etc. Critical theory is obviously relevant here. I was wondering what causes of failures you saw beyond willful deceit, because it does seem to me that those failures increasingly erode people's trust in the media in general. Similarly, I'm curious what framing you feel is intended (or has the unintentional effect?) to encourage the reader to be suspicious of other sources of news. You seemed to have your sharpest criticism for RT and the Intercept, so I focused on those rather than, say, Fox News, the National Review, or Zerohedge. In particular I am curious about your thoughts on how the Intercept compares with Propublica, which has a similar reporting focus and mission statement (if very different structure). I wonder what the role of reporting-with-a-mission is, as generalized reporting of the day's notable events becomes more centralized. Cease to Hope fucked around with this message at 07:52 on May 2, 2023 |
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May 2, 2023 07:37
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Necrobama posted:Would it be too god damned much to ask for to see DV eat more than a token sixer for their consistency in speaking down to other posters as though the simple act of questioning him were a personal offense? please stop trying to get someone i'm trying to have a conversation with probed, thanks Willa Rogers posted:The Intercept also did incredible work in disclosing the government's secret censorship tribunals, although it was pretty much roundly ignored. this is an odd description of a project that is described in the second para as a failure that never got past the planning stage. it's also not a very good article, relying on tangents and innuendo in a way that distracts from clearly explaining what happened and what is still happening. good reporting but bad writing, it happens. (it's also fascinating in the wake of the "twitter files" nonsense, that the project's influence on social media chiefly took the form of censoring revenge porn of hunter biden.) i don't think it's helpful to hold tribunal in this thread over accusations of discarding a site out of hand because of bias. everyone does it, and everyone should do it! i have no interest in either zerohedge or the national review except insofar as i'm occasionally curious about the sorts of things their audiences are reading. it's possible to read them adversarially to glean specific facts of interest, but frankly i have better things to do most of the time. it's also easier to see the flaws of arguments you disagree with, of publications that don't flatter your own biases. doing that can help you see the flaws in the publications you do agree with, both to better your own ability to recognize misleading or incomplete reporting (which can happen even in great reporting!), or understand why people find an outlet unpalatable. i don't think it's likely that the intercept is very much like RT, or that either of them are why news media is in an overall decline. but please, at least let people make the case before jumping into the same boring feeding frenzy, okay? what willa thinks about what vox thinks is not an interesting or informative post, i think. it's much more informative to find out what people who disagree with you think that to pre-emptively maneuver to prevent having to hear anything you disagree with.
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May 2, 2023 21:38
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the social media sites and google are the rentiers choking journalism to death. i don't think them becoming payment middlemen in a different way is going to save anything.
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May 4, 2023 05:58
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i am not finished reading this but extremely lol that this was obviously copy and pasted out of people's response emails without fixing up their horribly ugly formatting before publishing
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Dec 3, 2023 00:47
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Discendo Vox posted:Yes. CPB exists, and should be funded at levels vastly beyond the current rate. their budget for last year was $17.5 billion dollars, don't you think that's enough? the corporation for public broadcasting has a budget of $0.465B, so yes, definitely. 34 states also fund public broadcasters. technically public universities funding public broadcasting counts too but that would be a lot of research and i am lazy
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Dec 4, 2023 20:30
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this isn't really specific to journalism, it's just the consequences of campism outliving the USSR. wanting governments to be more just or more socialist, to not only end their colonial projects but undo them along with their empires; holding those beliefs did (and remain) a strong basis for anti-americanism. combine that with a decently strong soviet propaganda narrative that they wanted those things (which wasn't entirely false), american propaganda that wrapped itself in the flag as a shield against communism, and constant revelations that the US's anti-socialist foreign policy was bloody-handed and often pointless cruelty. it was very easy for socialism/communism to be pro-soviet and anti-american, just by default. (this is also the origin of "tankie". the putative tankies were people who supported the USSR sending in the tanks to crush pro-democracy socialist revolutionaries in hungary and czechoslovakia. before it was "leftist who sucks," it was "leftist who loves licking boot more than justice.") anyway that sort of anti-american, pro-whoever-the-US-is-mad-at attitude is still generally a reasonable attitude to have by default when looking at american foreign policy, especially if you're also generally leftist. it was always a short path to go from that position to being a tiananmen-cheering crank, but as the US focused more on containing iran or islamists, it became more distant from, y'know, leftism. russian english-language media has always been happy to pick up american or british fringe voices. it's cheap heat, since they're controversial but have a pretty open calendar. (this isn't particular to russia; it's a longtime voice of america strategy.) they have fairly free rein to say or do whatever they want, as long as it isn't anything that specifically gets in the way of russian political interests, and most english speakers did not care much about russian politics until fairly recently. so RT gets something of a reputation for being a place that publishes various american left-leaning commentators and writers, and the ways commentary is shaped by RT's boundaries are hard to spot or largely irrelevant. what changed is how russian and american interests have increasingly come into conflict over the last decade. being a full-throated believer in the idea that gaddafi was standing up to american imperium was just a weird opinion to have. but russia's been more focused on MENA in recent years, directly conflicting with the US, and has taken a hard right into culture war issues to cope with a prolonged economic downturn and increasing economic focus on fossil fuel extraction. meanwhile american conservatism is increasingly wrapping itself in an anti-establishment aesthetic, with culture war against the "woke establishment". if you're unhappy with (what you see as) the US's political establishment, you now have a narrative other than leftism to grab onto. it's the trap of campism, where nominal leftists let their anti-americanism (or, in different circumstances, american nationalism) get in the way of whatever left-leaning political beliefs they originally held. this plays out in the press mainly by the fact that there is so, so much money floating around to throw at anyone willing to flatter right-wing billionaires. you're seeing a bunch of people who were nominally leftist (or just agreed with leftists on some particular cause) jump after that gold ring. there are clusters of it happening - i know more about one single social circle of fascist cokehead socialites in new york than i ever cared to learn - but the upshot is that there's a lot of money to be made in "former leftist who took the red pill." RT is one of those clusters. and it is probably the chief reason reason there are now a significant number of english-speaking leftist assad apologists, or why anyone treats "NATO caused russia to invade ukraine" has any currency. but it's not the main cause i do not think (and i think russian politicians are downstream of american culture war froth rather than upstream). i just think it has more to do with how much more money there is in being a right-wing contrarian than a principled one. ultimately that is The Problem. it isn't so much capitalism as just capital: you get the press the people with the capital are willing to front the money for.
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Dec 14, 2023 23:12
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Probably Magic posted:Phone posting, so sorry for breaking up posting, but for instance: If RT's coverage of Israel goes from positive to negative, you know that signifies a shift in Russia's feelings about expanding access to Israel. They will lie about the reasons behind that shift, give a nonsensical moral argument as to why, act like Russia is anti-imperial when that's a joke, but you get a glimpse of Moscow's personal stance. I think this is based on a misunderstanding of Fox News borne from not watching it. They have isolationists and hawks on all the time, and their commentators range from incoherent and vibes-driven to strong feelings, with no particular pattern. Even highly partisan outlets don't have a party line on every single possible issue or topic. So on those topics, you can easily accuse them of flipflopping or politically tactical bad-faith rhetoric when they're just doing normal reporting and commentary. This applies to RT as well, especially in English. They have strong editorial control that is aligned with the state, but it doesn't mean they care strongly about every detail on every subject. Writers can have domain-specific free rein on topics even in the context of an outlet that has next to no editorial independence whatsoever. However! Probably Magic posted:The constant fear mongering over RT that's completely absent from Western sources who are just as propagandists is just xenophobia, unless you want to argue Brian Williams talking about the beauty of our weaponry is objective analysis. Almost like the objection is not to impartiality but who the impartiality is for. Independence not mean objectivity. Every news agency is going to consider their own government's interests as a fact worth reporting, and all but the most oppositional will consider enthusiastic support of the current government a POV worth publishing. They are biased, obviously. The difference is that independent newsrooms are dedicated to reporting the truth as they see it, rather than acting as a state organ. This is never going to be The Truth, ofc. In the US, it will come through a filter of being a profit-seeking business, as well as a Respected Institution or at least On A Mission. They're separate entities that can obviously be influenced by their own state('s many various agencies), but generally don't see their interests as synonymous with those of a government, agency, or party. Even Fox News positions itself as what Republicans should be, with little regard for where they are. There isn't a sharp line here. State-funded media can be highly independent or the proverbial Pravda. It needs to be understood in the context of its own business culture and the power relationship it has with its owners, just like any media outlet. However, this lack of consonance means the state doesn't get to edit the news. In a liberal democratic state like the US, news agencies are setting their own agenda, according to their interests. This includes sucking up to the government, but it's a slack leash; independence means they're hard to micromanage. The control is softer and comes more in the form of censorious chilling pressure rather than an actual censor office, so there's more possibility for things to be too minor to merit leaning on the press or too enticing to not report on, even if the state would rather not. This makes Kremlinology-style breakdowns of what a news story says about an outlet's POV significantly harder, but also makes them generally more useful for finding out what's going on. Even if it is through a glass darkly. The short version is that no, there are important functional differences in the mechanisms of control and propaganda between the US and Russia. Independent news agencies are different, even if that independence isn't absolute. WarpedLichen posted:Especially since RTs model itself is to be contradictory on purpose so that its harder puzzle out Russia's true intent. It's called firehose of bullshit for a reason. This, however, this is xenophobic bullcrap. Even the most beholden state mouthpieces have a range of acceptable positions. It's not a plot to trick you. Cease to Hope fucked around with this message at 21:37 on Jan 2, 2024 |
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Jan 2, 2024 21:27
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Probably Magic posted:This may have been true in the middle of last century, but the current media climate has led to a much stiffer leash done under the guise of "preventing misinformation." In the middle of last century, Congress had an anticommunist censor board with subpoena powers. You should know better than to appeal to an idyllic past. In any event, you've gotten hooked up on individual examples of the system continuing to work to enforce a liberal consensus without thinking about what that liberal consensus is. Losing a greater perspective is a real risk of being too online. What pressure existed to "combat misinfo" was primarily aimed at social media sites over covid, and with the net effect of a fart. Cable and network news (appearing to be) leaning further and further right is one half not remembering where they were 10, 20, 30 years ago and one half their audience greying, and doesn't have anything to do with a shortlived and defunct effort to "combat misinfo". As for how the press reports on war, you're right about the Iraq War, but perhaps not so much paying attention to the intervening decade and a half. The corporate press's interests run to emphasizing Important Developments or Difficult Controversies, so it's easy to manipulate into cheerleading for a new war, or exaggerating the viewpoints on an issue to dissemble about it. But they also love Government Failure and new revelations on a Controversial Quagmire, too. You can easily map a response onto a single historical example, but it requires ignoring all the times it was more profitable or strategic to take a different angle. Psaki is definitely a government proxy. It's probably helpful to talk about the roles of surrogates and proxies but this post is long enough. Discendo Vox posted:I agree here, with the caveat that internal inconsistency is also believed to be a part of the Russian model not because it obscures their actual position, but because One has to wonder who is doing this believing. This Kremlinology analysis is a favorite of useless, media-friendly DC thinktanks who often (including in this case) are little more than conspiracy theorists. It mirrors the leftist commentary you so despise, where press is the direct mouthpiece of capital. When the supposed strategy is indistinguishable from cynical disinterest, apply Ockham's razor.
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Jan 2, 2024 23:27
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Discendo Vox posted:which is so broad that it completely defies falsifiable claims Nobody is making any falsifiable claims in this thread. This aren't a lot of testable hypotheses here, let alone predictive ones.
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Jan 2, 2024 23:30
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Zoeb posted:I don't agree with those positions very much. I do see Putin as more in the wrong on Ukraine and I fully condemn his eliminationist attitude and the attitude of his allies on LGBT people but shutting down the anti-war perspective isn't right. The press is reporting plenty on the US right wing's arguments against supplying Ukraine. And, honestly, you can find the pro-Palestinian argument in their coverage, too, just treated as one side of a controversy. I don't think these framings are dictated to them by the US government. In large part because their hawkish position on Israel is very inconvenient to the US government! Biden keeps saying he wants to be seen as the neutral, moderating, bridge-building voice, not Bibi's partner in crime. Biden can't get the press on board with that very much, because, well, it's incoherent, and runs into the pressure from both American Zionist lobbies and the press to say he unconditionally supports Israel. You can explain this by saying the press is actually a mouthpiece for the deep state or whatever, who lust for Arab blood, rather than being a mouthpiece for the actual head of government. A simpler explanation is that the press is picking up the party line of American Zionists, who aren't shy about announcing how they're putting pressure on the press. A righteous war is a good story. Discendo Vox posted:There's plenty [of falsifiable claims]; for example, Probably Magic has claimed that "The constant fear mongering over RT that's completely absent from Western sources who are just as propagandists is just xenophobia". I think this is falsifiable; in fact I think it's false. PM's statement is an opinion, not a claim that can be objectively true or false. the rand corporation's analysis is equally explained by cynical disinterest, and that sort of thinktank has long been in the business of overcomplicating russia. they don't call it kremlinology because it was a science. Cease to Hope fucked around with this message at 00:13 on Jan 3, 2024 |
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Jan 3, 2024 00:04
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Probably Magic posted:What I'm saying is that a better way to understand the influence of state entities would be to let them have an official-official mouthpiece which would also allow for other US News organizations to act as separate actors. If those actors parrot the mouthpiece, we know what they are. But I'm not and never would argue for entirely forsaking the fourth estate to the state. Basically, Public Option for Media. yeah they have a ton of these, what are you even talking about
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Jan 3, 2024 00:15
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Discendo Vox posted:Again, if you've got actual objections to the content you can make 'em. it's equally easily explained by cynical disinterest on the part of RT. that is the objection. dunno how i can make it clearer than that. i even made a bunch of posts about how RT hires heterodox english-speaking commentators with basically no agenda except not intruding on specific russian interests, then occasionally feeds them laughably bad quotes or "leaks" on subjects of specific russian interest to see if someone bites. the rand corporation's attempt to spin up indifferent neglect interspersed with occasional wall-poo poo-throwing into a master russian plan is utterly unconvincing to me. additionally, if those are their goals and these are the results, they're so bad at this that i never have to care. oh no they've subverted jimmy dore!
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Jan 3, 2024 00:31
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Probably Magic posted:This isn't to defend RT, mind you, it's a bad news agency, but also, spoiler alert, interviews get edited and mandated in America too. Obviously. The difference is specifically who is doing the editing and in the service of what interests.
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Jan 3, 2024 00:37
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Discendo Vox posted:This is the part where you should think about why Al Jazeera, which is also a state-funded foreign-facing propaganda outlet, wants you to find this model useful. lmao what exactly are you insinuating about AJE here e: don't probe DV for the arguing by insinuation either, i want to see an actual defense of this Cease to Hope fucked around with this message at 03:25 on Jan 3, 2024 |
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Jan 3, 2024 03:20
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Discendo Vox posted:It's not remotely hard to see that the state-funded foreign-facing propaganda outlet finds it useful for their audience to internalize an approach to media that lets them rationalize continued access to sources that tell them what they want to hear. Like, the idea of continuing to promote Chomsky's bullshit at this point should be a giant red flag not only for the deficits of the model but for its own track record in his hands. I'm pretty sure you know all this, though, because both you and Probably Magic actively participated in the media lit thread. Okay. First, lol, but also lmao. Second, this idea that Chomsky is some obviously discredited crank is laughable. It's hard to argue that someone is a fringe figure when the NYT will take his calls, be it on linguistics or the politics of the day. You are suggesting that AJE must be up to something by "promoting" Chomsky's work; how deep does this conspiracy run? This argument by association doesn't hang together. "Chomsky is a fifth columnist" is a crank belief, and no amount of linking to an old thread is going to make you look less silly when you espouse it. Third, AJE's interest in promoting this is obvious, and much less sinister than you imply: they are arguing that you should seek out news outlets that aren't part of the American consensus because that consensus excludes certain viewpoints (with truthful examples how of that is done). It's somewhat dishonest to imply that any news outlet is immune, but "Trust us, we're the real source for news" isn't a sinister plot to undermine people's confidence in whatever, just an advertising pitch.
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Jan 3, 2024 04:49
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Discendo Vox posted:I have already linked and described at length the problems with Chomsky's views and the propaganda model yes, chomsky denied the evidence of the khmer rouge massacres for far too long, and it serves as a valuable lesson that while it is reasonable to be skeptical of the american media consensus, that isn't the same as always believing the opposite. regardless, he's still not some sort of fringe figure and your posts on somethingawful have not convinced anyone to stop treating his views as respected political criticism. but what does this have to do with AJE? you responded to my post by citing previous posts, none of which had any points relevant to AJE. you need a whole lot more than the fact that they made a video about chomsky's political theory to justify calling AJE a "propaganda outlet." did you have anything else, or was this weak tea nonsense it? Cease to Hope fucked around with this message at 06:24 on Jan 3, 2024 |
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Jan 3, 2024 06:18
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copypasta filibustering isn't going to make the argument that citing chomsky one time makes AJE a propaganda outlet any less ridiculous, man.
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Jan 3, 2024 06:35
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Main Paineframe posted:As WarpedLichen said, your criticism feels very based on "vibes", where individual instances of coverage from individual figures or outlets appear to have colored your views toward American media as a whole. At the end of the day, we are all describing the elephant. I'm not going to wade into the specifics of whatever this nonsense about NK is - I'm not stupid, my posts notwithstanding - but it's important to remember that what a news report or editorial means is not an exact science. At least, not until SA's politics forums all acknowledge the perfect truth of the immortal science of Marxism-Leninism.
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Jan 3, 2024 21:33
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Campism is the mirror reflection of the way that overall liberal consensus is enforced. Chomsky was right in describing the way that consensus is formed and forced. There's a trap, however, in thinking that a consensus that is enforced must be unsupportable without that force. That's the logic of a Holocaust denier, in the most extreme case. The enforcement isn't a product of absolute truth, nor the strict need to cover up lies. Instead, you need to be able to identify that consensus and identify how it is being enforced, as preconditions to finding out the truth. And part of the enforcement of that consensus is that being wrong but in agreement is generally held blameless in your lifetime. There's a bleak humor in Chomsky (fairly!) being criticized for "but you gently caress one pig..." WRT Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge while nobody at all faces any approbation at all for saying that Palestine isn't genocide, merely a very complicated subject. A perfect model of journalism would still require that enforcement, though. At some point, you do actually have to kick out tendentious arguers, your Holocaust deniers and your race realists and your flat earthers. As we do not have access to truth uncorrupted by observation, we are left with trust in authorities, consensus building, some combination of the two, or some not-yet-invented new way of doing things.
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Jan 4, 2024 00:58
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it would be helpful to have some examples, in any case. not because of some imaginary standard of sources cited to make a Good Post, but because it's kind of hard to tell what point you're trying to make sometimes
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Jan 4, 2024 06:42
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Main Paineframe posted:I'm sorry, but I can't keep up with how fast these goalposts are moving. In the post I originally responded to, you were definitely not just talking about "interviews or conversations". To recap where our conversation started, here's what I was originally responding to: come on man. Main Paineframe posted:I think it would be nice if you could rein in these vast hyperbolic stories and instead focus on more specific and limited claims that you can back up with actual evidence my brother in christ, you asked for him to narrow and clarify.
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Jan 4, 2024 07:05
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npr is mainly philanthropically funded. the corporation for public broadcasting is closer to most government networks, but the relationship it has with the production of news for PBS is circuitous. (it provides about half the funding for stations that syndicate news programs from the largest PBS stations, which inherently have a lesser degree of government funding even when you take into account the fact that syndication by a half-funded station is indirect government funding. many of these stations do not produce any local news at all.) anyway yeah, good overview. FAANG owns both the monetization and the distribution so news, like pretty much any writing of any kind, gets the scraps. any philanthropic or prestige-driven motivation to fund news (over any other form of Content) has withered.
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Jan 30, 2024 03:32
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