Washington Post is an american propaganda outlet when it comes to foreign policy articles. You might as well be linking VOA or RT.
That whole mutiny is fishy AF. There were rumours Prigozhin was betrayed by his deputy and informed the Kremlin. The CIA said they knew a week in advance. There was only a minor skirmish between a jet and a convoy on the way to Moscow where 12 soldiers died.
I don’t understand what happened there or how the guy who tried to overthrow the government is still walking free. I’ve never heard of this in history before. The whole thing smells.
It is silly to compare Voice of America (an excellent journalistic institution with a great reputation), to the Washington Post (overall pretty good), to Russia Times (literal state propaganda). These are all very different sources and painting them with the same brush is just factually incorrect.
They might, but being state-run is actually no guarantee of bias! Some state-run media is certainly very biased (RT). Others less so (VOA). This might surprise you but you have to do things like “research” and “consider the source,” in addition to determining where its funding comes from.
“Actually being state-run is okay when our guys do it”
Before you whine, let me add that RT is a rag, though every now and then it has a good article and sometimes covering things western outlets refuse to is a good thing (like the recent-ish stuff with Seymour Hersh), but to say that VoA isn’t notoriously propaganda or that BBC articles aren’t mostly rightwing drivel is unhinged neoliberal bullshit.
(BBC does have some good TV programs, but those are fiction and documentaries, the news is awful)
“Actually being state-run is okay if those journalistic institutions can be independently verified to offer high-quality, objective reporting, based on nothing more than an analysis of that reporting – especially with regards to that institution’s stances of its government’s actions.”
Not sure why this is so hard for you all. Like, actually, in order to determine if a news source is good, we have to – shockingly! – examine the output of that news source. By this metric, the VOA and BBC are pretty good… uh, single Tweets notwithstanding.
We’ll look at an example from another US state media outlet: Radio Free Asia
In 2014, Radio Free Asia wrote a story claiming North Korean students were forced to get the Kim Jong Un haircut. The story spread like wildfire. It was on all the news stations, all the talk shows, Kimmel, Colbert, John Oliver. TV commercials riffed on it. The whole American media ecosystem was unanimous, everyone believed this shit. Regular people on the street could tell you about it.
Then it came out that Radio Free Asia made it up. Someone at Radio Free Asia sat down and deliberately wrote a false story with the intent to deceive the public, and then Radio Free Asia published that story as fact in order to smear an enemy of the United States.
Radio Free Asia, like VoA, has excellent scores on all the media bias and fact-checking sites. This is because they sprinkle their bullshit carefully. RFA’s hit pieces are mixed in among hundreds of ordinary, mundane, reputable current events stories. You go to the site and you see headlines like you might see on any other site. But when you go digging, you start to find dozens of unsourced claims about China and North Korea mixed in. The rest is just reputation laundering to support the bullshit.
If you asked an intelligent person, “how would you publish propaganda,” RFA is the format they would come up with.
I briefly researched this and it looks like the initial version of the article (as described by the Washington Post) was indeed wrong. The Diplomat claims RFA updated the English translation of the article and made it more accurate:
The instruction for male students to get the same haircut as their leader is not based on any directive from Kim but on a recommendation from the ruling Workers’ Party, according to a North Korean from North Hamgyong province near the border with China.
So I’m not sure the takeaway is “someone sat down and wrote a bullshit story with the intent to deceive the public,” so much as “an article stub appears to have gotten into the wild and was corrected in translation.”
Certainly it’s easier to believe RFA made an error and/or mispublication here than they’re just publishing propaganda, right? Unless we’re saying the standard for a US-backed media source is “zero errors, and any errors are intentional propaganda.”
But let’s assume that’s true: they don’t make any errors and this is indeed propaganda. Why did they publish it? What would be the utility of false haircut propaganda, except to tip their hands that they are a propaganda outlet, which would certainly make its utility as a propaganda outlet worthless? Wouldn’t they want to get this story right so you believe the really big important stuff?
If you asked an intelligent person, “how would you publish propaganda,” you’d just do it like Russia Times: just straight-up repeat the state’s lies and never bother reporting anything close to the truth. I think the multilayered conspiracy theories required for the assertion that institutions intentionally seed their stories with propaganda are difficult to swallow, and not particularly well-supported. Like there’s no evidence RFA intentionally lied here, at least none that I can find.
Of course, I also think you should be cautious of media sources in general and it’s a fine idea to keep in mind who pays RFA’s bills. But the way to judge whether a place gets it right or wrong is to examine its history and accuracy; dismissing it outright because the US funds it is intellectually lazy.
They changed one unsourced claim to another unsourced claim. Neat.
Why did they publish it?
Because it vilifies an enemy state, which is convenient when you want public support for sanctions against that enemy
If you asked an intelligent person, “how would you publish propaganda,” you’d just do it like Russian Times: just straight-up repeat the state’s lies and never bother reporting anything close to the truth.
Uh, if they’re just going to publish total outright lies, why not just claim they eat babies or something equally horrific? Villifying the state via haircut shaming is certainly not how I’d go about it.
Could you explain why you think this?
Well yeah: it’s easier to do and gets the same results in the end.
Journalists are actually people. Let’s assume that care about what they do and want to do it with integrity (as most of us seek to act). Convincing them to constantly lie and compromise their work for political reasons seems like a lot of work, and they’d just wind up quitting and writing scandalous tell-alls anyway. So why bother to begin with? It’d just cause drama and is frankly a dead-end for your goals in any event. Just hire a bunch of hatchet job propagandists whose explicit goal is lying. Then everyone’s happy and you’ve made your life much much easier.
Of course, you miss out on “truthful articles” that fool people into believing you’re a good institution. But most people will see that you’re publishing intentional lies and have fired your good journalists anyway, so no one is going to believe you’re a reliable journalistic institution even if you cram in some incisive, hard-hitting truths. Again, it’s just a waste of time and effort; people who are smart enough to do the research will see through you in any case. So, just go straight for the propaganda.
There are plenty of people (right here in this thread) who will falsely equivocate between your propaganda and actual journalism anyway, so it’s not like you’re even sacrificing that much.
Why not just claim they eat babies or something equally horrific?
They do publish many horrific claims.
gets the same results in the end
No it doesn’t. When your outlet is obvious propaganda, fewer people believe you. RFA’s sheen of reputability was a huge factor in the haircut story’s enormous reach in western media.
Hire a bunch of hatchet job propagandists
…the sort of people who would write this disproven haircut story and dozens of other goofy unsourced claims they’ve published, yes. You can even tell them to write normal stories too just to mix it up.
Convincing journalists to lie seems like a lot of work
Not if some or all of your journalists are US intelligence — Radio Free Asia began as a CIA front operation (google it), and might still be one.
For the love of god, listen to some Citations Needed and stop self-congratilating your media literacy because some fucking dork with a website tells you the New York Times and Washington Post aren’t biased.
I’d thought that even the most liberal people on nü-Lemmy had at least read some Chomsky (or even watched the documentaries based on his work), but I guess we aren’t even there yet.
I think it’s hilarious people are telling me I need some nuance and research, when I’m the one arguing there are differences between these sources and we need to evaluate them individually. And the person I responded to is arguing they’re all the same because, well, Journalism Bad I guess!
For the love of god read the comments before you reply.
And the person I responded to is arguing they’re all the same because, well, Journalism Bad I guess!
If you only consider corporate media and western state-run and state-sponsored outlets to be purveyors of “Journalism,” then let me emphatically say yes, Journalism Bad.
Voice of America was put under the command of the USIA (US Information Agency) whose job was literally propaganda.
The US archives state the following:
306.2 Records of the International Information Administration
(Department of State)
1945-53
History: Office of the Coordinator of Information established as an independent agency by Presidential order, July 11, 1941, to collect and analyze information bearing upon national security. Foreign Information Service established within OCOI to oversee shortwave propaganda broadcasts (Voice of America, VOA),
Interesting find! There were also 48 states when that was written though, so we should probably take its current-day accuracy with a grain of salt.
Indeed, the nature of VOA has changed over time. During the Cold War it served to bring accurate news to countries behind the Iron Curtain and fight Soviet propaganda. (The Soviet government jammed it during this time.) Obviously this mission has changed since then as well since the Soviet Union no longer exists.
Ultimately its current reputation of journalistic objectivity does not depend on nearly century-old records but on what we can see today; dedicated journalists and accurate reporting.
Ah yes the propaganda outlet started for the purposes of propaganda and staffed with people all doing the job of propaganda has surely not continued to employ people ideologically aligned with performing propaganda ever since! Nooooooo. Somewhere along the line must have fired every single member of staff and built a reputable new outlet from the top down. Surely!
To quote a reagan fuckhead - “Personnel is policy”.
Ultimately its current reputation of journalistic objectivity does not depend on nearly century-old records but on what we can see today; dedicated journalists and accurate reporting.
You are not immune to propaganda. And you should seriously take a moment to read the shit you are writing and ask yourself how much of it is you repeating propaganda. You sound like you’re literally writing PR copy.
I mean, France was once ruled by an Emperor; does that mean it still secretly is? Or did, like, something change in the last two hundred years in that regard? Do you think Napoleon is still secretly in charge there too?
You’re right personnel is policy though. And if you did any research whatsoever instead of posting nonsense on the Internet, you’d see that the journalists who work at the VOA are actually journalists, not propagandists. It’s not hard, the facts are out there. Maybe you should pursue them instead of indulge in baseless conspiracy theories.
But I’m easy to convince! Feel free to link me evidence that the VOA is still American propaganda and not real journalism. Surely reputable sources and good evidence are easy to find? I mean, if this was written a hundred years ago, there must be something else between then and now?
Of the two of us I am the only one that has done any research at all. As I am the only one who bothered to see what language the US uses for its own media outlet.
Your research consists of looking up propaganda sites that suit you, and parroting whatever they say regardless of any critical thought that might suggest they’re not reliable. You don’t think for yourself. At all. All you do is defer all of your thinking to these ““sources”” when they’re not primary sources and are literally obviously spouting easily falsifiable shit.
What research was that exactly? Watching a literal propaganda YouTube video and deciding it was the truth? You know that video was in English too, right? Doesn’t that mean it’s been compromised by the CIA?
Anyway… you clearly just have no idea what you’re talking about and have no ability to discern fact from fiction. For crowing that I need to stop being propagandized, I’m the only one here that appears to have done anything even actual research and employing critical thought.
It seems like there’s no reason to doubt the US Archive’s internal records on this regard. You say surely things have changed, but there’s little in the way of compelling evidence that that’s the case, right? Propaganda doesn’t mean an absence of factual reporting, it means slanted, biased reporting, and it’s not exactly a stretch by any means to suggest that VOICE OF AMERICA might have an agenda in their reporting, right? Pretty much every country that disseminates its own media employs propaganda because it’s a proven means of control. I understand you respect the service they provide but consider the purpose of propaganda, its intended effect, and how it might be influencing your stance on this matter.
I know it’s tough to believe, but government-funded things aren’t necessarily bad. To discover if they’re bad you have to do more research than seeing who funds them!
VOA earned credibility around the world on the basis of its honest journalism, even when its stories conflicted with US policy. “Some might argue that as a government-funded network, the voa should always be expected to portray US policies as righteous and successful,” wrote former VOA Director Sanford Ungar in Foreign Affairs in 2005. “But experience demonstrates that the VOA is most appreciated and effective when it functions as a model US-style news organization that presents a balanced view of domestic and international events, setting an example for how independent journalism can strengthen democracy.”
As anyone who’s ever lived, worked or served overseas will tell you, the Voice of America (VOA) is an invaluable and highly respected source of news and reliable information in a world too often flooded with misinformation and propaganda.
So certainly you have some sources for your claim that it’s US propaganda, right? It’s based on more than just the name and you continually asserting it?
I apparently think about it more critically than you do. All journalism is not propaganda; some is good in fact, and we can determine which is good and which is bad. And I at least have sources, whereas you have, uh… brain damage I guess?
Also that’s a laughable and total misunderstanding of Voice of America’s history, mission, and goals. It has a reputation basically everywhere as being as close to objective and reliable reporting as you can get outside the BBC. I guess you’re just assuming it’s bad based on its name, which is not great on the critical thinking front!
I don’t disagree with you about VOA not being 100% propaganda, but I think the thing that RT and VOA do share in common is that they are state-funded. With that being said, WaPo (just like the BBC) isn’t state funded so it’s still a poor comparison.
The BBC is quasi-state funded; its relationship with the government is not entirely cut-and-dry, since it is funded through a government act (though not directly by the UK itself).
What matters is whether the state has controls that prevent it from interfering with its media sources, and whether those sources have missions respecting journalistic integrity. For the VOA and BBC this is entirely true, both have charters specifically mandating them to do that and their respective governments have very clear “hands-off” laws and policies (or did until Trump, the story does get a little complicated for the VOA recently).
RT on the other hand just publishes Putin’s marketing emails.
I concede it’s a stretched argument but WaPo is known for hiring ex-State Department/ex-CIA staff onto its editorial board. I’m too lazy to find source but say something that gets me riled up and I’ll find the source out of spite.
Suggesting I have Brain Damage and then doubling down on your argument that VOA is as good as another state-owned media outlet that promotes its own nation with a history of imperialism, colonialism, and a bunch of other atrocities. I’m not sure if you think you’re convincing me or anyone beyond your echo chamber of anything or just like to read your own words as reaffirmation of your own beliefs. Either way it’s useless.
Oh sorry, read the first paragraph on that page. You don’t need to read anything else. Usually when someone shares a link I read the first few sentences if there’s no further explanation.
Can you point out where I said it wasn’t? I’m just saying the severity of what happened in Russia is completely incomparable to what happened in the US. You’re talking about a fully armed military with sophisticated mechanized weapons and armor versus some Facebook rednecks with Trump flags.
I don’t know how you can admit that you have zero understanding of the subject and attack the article in the same post. It’s quite good and aligns well with many other sources of information and analysis.
I don’t understand what happened there or how the guy who tried to overthrow the government is still walking free.
You know you don’t understand what happened there, but you still assume he tried to overthrow the government. That’s highly implausible. A much simpler explanation is that he wanted to quit on his own terms before it’s too late, but needed the other party to start listening and, ideally, enter the negotiations with a handicap. Judging by the reports that he got his audience (a claim too embarrassing to make up for no gain), that seemed to work.
That’s a big pitfall with analysing Russia: rationalizing stuff happening there to fit a reasonable plan, or at least a coherent overarching narrative, while the plethora of actors constituting Russia couldn’t care less about your narrative. They’ve been improvising with no clear plan for at least a year, on all levels, and it’s a miracle we still occasionally see patterns in their collective actions.
This will sound catty, but it’s not intended as such: do you have any news outlets you view as pretty close to reasonable/down-the-middle (if that’s even possible)? I don’t disagree about WaPo, I’m just curious what others read.
I read the CBC for international news and that has served me pretty well. Canada doesn’t really have a strong international position to introduce bias in (other than being a Western country and all the biases inherent in that). In cases where Canada does have a stake (typically regarding trade with the US/China), I read something from Reuters/AP/Bloomberg because wire services tend to be less biased in general. Alternatively, BBC is decent for news that don’t relate to ex-colonies. For a non-Western perspective, Al Jazeera is pretty alright. For a US-perspective, the NYT is alright too.
Every media outlet is biased. Typically, you get less bias as you stray further away from people who can directly or indirectly profit off of portraying an event in a certain way.
Wherever your privately-owned media source is domiciled will have a bias towards that country in international relations. For example, WaPo will have a strong bias towards the US in anything relating to a conflict between the US and Russia. So will the NYT. They will never report objectively on these events because reporting with bias will get more people to agree with their writing and (eventually) lead to greater profit. These companies are profit-oriented, so this is to be expected.
This is, in general, different for government-owned media such as VoA, RT, and CCTV. These entities are controlled by the government (and, in fact, often allow for direct executive control by the President). Naturally, we expect these to be far more biased, particularly for countries that are on polar opposites of the geopolitical spectrum such as the US and Russia. These entities will generally avoid criticizing the ruling party.
Al Jazeera would fall into the above category, except Qatar isn’t exactly relevant on the global stage… it doesn’t matter if Al Jazeera never criticizes the Emir because nobody cares about the Emir.
In contrast, government-funded public broadcasters such as CBC and BBC are typically not controlled by the government and operate as entirely independent entities without direct executive control. They do often criticize the government and the country and are not driven by profit. These broadcasters still have bias towards the country they are domiciled in, but to a lesser degree than privately-owned media as they lack the profit incentive. They also have less bias than government-owned media, as can be shown by their willingness to talk shit about the government.
However, they are still biased by the people who work there, leading to the CBC to have a slight Liberal-leaning bias while the BBC has a slight Conservative-leaning bias. Notably (and perhaps most amusingly), they are criticized as being biased from all parties, which may be the strongest argument for their impartiality.
All this is to say that all media is biased. However, you can avoid a decent amount of bias by selecting news entities that are not based in a country that would have a strong opinion either way. For example, while the US has many issues with Russia, Canada/the UK/Qatar do not (other than the basic Western/European/Middle Eastern biases). They are likely to have more moderate and fair reporting on the conflict which, while still biased, are likely to be closer to the facts.
Basically, I wouldn’t trust any US reporting on Russia/China, nor would I trust any Russian nor Chinese reporting on the US. The reporters are always going to pander to their target demographic. Instead, I would look for international reporting from countries with strong freedom of speech protections that are not as strongly implicated in the issue.
No not really unfortunately, I think every media outlet is biased. Le Monde Diplomatique is my favourite media outlet and I still think it’s biased.
I’m critical of all media when I read it and I think that’s the only way to be in the age of disinformation. It’s really funny to me that people rely on websites to tell them if media outlet is biased or unbiased because it’s apparent that those sites themselves are biased.
IMO It’s better to read theories, different takes on history, and then approach new news under different mental frameworks when trying to assess the reality of situations. But generally a political economic framework (ie power structures) is how I approach news articles for international events.
It’s really funny to me that people rely on websites to tell them if media outlet is biased or unbiased because it’s apparent that those sites themselves are biased.
Are they, though? They can’t all be biased and they can’t all be lying at the same time, especially when they provide a transparent analysis of their findings that you can click on. And even then, you don’t just blindly trust what a remotely credible website says because they could be mistaken, or things may have changed. Nobody’s promoting that you blindly trust a website, but we know that the website has built a reputation through their verifiable work until proven otherwise. And even then, an inkling of your own criteria and discretion is always adviced which should go without saying.
I think it’s weird to brand anything and everything as state-owned or irreparably biased to the point of not being able to trust anything or anyone. It’s exactly the other side of the coin to the post-truth world you sneered at. We see with the alt medicine movement all the time. They trash postigious institutions out of ignorance and then mislead those who don’t know which side is up. What you’re saying could be just as dangerous.
That said, I also find it deeply cynical that pretending that the golden hammer to all this is an abstract personal “political economic framework” because a lot of us do work hard to rein in order and truth. For this I point to the crowd source that has built Wikipedia, the open source community, the so-called skeptic movement, and so many others that work in cooperation all the time for the good of humanity. Why is news and politics the exception? Good will is out there and it does exist.
I guess what I’m trying to say is, don’t let any fool out there tell you that the only ground you can step on is the one you built for yourself. If you don’t trust a source, so be it, but be specific why instead of trashing everything altogether indiscriminately.
To me, the only ground you step on is the one you build yourself is the only way to read the news. Maybe it’s extra work and it’s cynical but I’ll read an article about something, say a riot in Haiti. Then a couple months later I’ll read that it wasn’t actually a riot, but it was a peaceful protest and mercenaries employed by the government started shooting at people to break it up. The media reported it as a riot and never followed up that it was a peaceful protest. Turns out the President of Haiti is allied with the west for exploitation of labour and resources of that country. So now most people think that Haiti is just disorganized and needs strong western leadership, meanwhile the opposition is being repressed and the media is supporting the western narrative by not following up on the “riot”.
That example is what I mean about not trusting anything I read until I’ve read different takes on a situation and considering my own skepticism.
But it’s a fair point that not all state owned media is bad, but I would just never trust a state owned media for any foreign/international issue for not having a slant in favour of the reporting state.
I don’t understand what happened there or how the guy who tried to overthrow the government is still walking free. I’ve never heard of this in history before. The whole thing smells.
It is silly to compare Voice of America (an excellent journalistic institution with a great reputation), to the Washington Post (overall pretty good), to Russia Times (literal state propaganda). These are all very different sources and painting them with the same brush is just factually incorrect.
Here’s some research for you:
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/washington-post/
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/rt-news/
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/voice-of-america/
As for your second point, Trump is still walking free and he tried to overthrow the government. These things apparently do happen.
your source says the VOA is a US government official news arm, you don’t see how they might have a bias when reporting on Russia?
They might, but being state-run is actually no guarantee of bias! Some state-run media is certainly very biased (RT). Others less so (VOA). This might surprise you but you have to do things like “research” and “consider the source,” in addition to determining where its funding comes from.
“Actually being state-run is okay when our guys do it”
Before you whine, let me add that RT is a rag, though every now and then it has a good article and sometimes covering things western outlets refuse to is a good thing (like the recent-ish stuff with Seymour Hersh), but to say that VoA isn’t notoriously propaganda or that BBC articles aren’t mostly rightwing drivel is unhinged neoliberal bullshit.
(BBC does have some good TV programs, but those are fiction and documentaries, the news is awful)
“Actually being state-run is okay if those journalistic institutions can be independently verified to offer high-quality, objective reporting, based on nothing more than an analysis of that reporting – especially with regards to that institution’s stances of its government’s actions.”
Not sure why this is so hard for you all. Like, actually, in order to determine if a news source is good, we have to – shockingly! – examine the output of that news source. By this metric, the VOA and BBC are pretty good… uh, single Tweets notwithstanding.
lol. lmao.
We’ll look at an example from another US state media outlet: Radio Free Asia
In 2014, Radio Free Asia wrote a story claiming North Korean students were forced to get the Kim Jong Un haircut. The story spread like wildfire. It was on all the news stations, all the talk shows, Kimmel, Colbert, John Oliver. TV commercials riffed on it. The whole American media ecosystem was unanimous, everyone believed this shit. Regular people on the street could tell you about it.
Then it came out that Radio Free Asia made it up. Someone at Radio Free Asia sat down and deliberately wrote a false story with the intent to deceive the public, and then Radio Free Asia published that story as fact in order to smear an enemy of the United States.
Radio Free Asia, like VoA, has excellent scores on all the media bias and fact-checking sites. This is because they sprinkle their bullshit carefully. RFA’s hit pieces are mixed in among hundreds of ordinary, mundane, reputable current events stories. You go to the site and you see headlines like you might see on any other site. But when you go digging, you start to find dozens of unsourced claims about China and North Korea mixed in. The rest is just reputation laundering to support the bullshit.
If you asked an intelligent person, “how would you publish propaganda,” RFA is the format they would come up with.
An interesting story!
I briefly researched this and it looks like the initial version of the article (as described by the Washington Post) was indeed wrong. The Diplomat claims RFA updated the English translation of the article and made it more accurate:
So I’m not sure the takeaway is “someone sat down and wrote a bullshit story with the intent to deceive the public,” so much as “an article stub appears to have gotten into the wild and was corrected in translation.”
Certainly it’s easier to believe RFA made an error and/or mispublication here than they’re just publishing propaganda, right? Unless we’re saying the standard for a US-backed media source is “zero errors, and any errors are intentional propaganda.”
But let’s assume that’s true: they don’t make any errors and this is indeed propaganda. Why did they publish it? What would be the utility of false haircut propaganda, except to tip their hands that they are a propaganda outlet, which would certainly make its utility as a propaganda outlet worthless? Wouldn’t they want to get this story right so you believe the really big important stuff?
If you asked an intelligent person, “how would you publish propaganda,” you’d just do it like Russia Times: just straight-up repeat the state’s lies and never bother reporting anything close to the truth. I think the multilayered conspiracy theories required for the assertion that institutions intentionally seed their stories with propaganda are difficult to swallow, and not particularly well-supported. Like there’s no evidence RFA intentionally lied here, at least none that I can find.
Of course, I also think you should be cautious of media sources in general and it’s a fine idea to keep in mind who pays RFA’s bills. But the way to judge whether a place gets it right or wrong is to examine its history and accuracy; dismissing it outright because the US funds it is intellectually lazy.
They changed one unsourced claim to another unsourced claim. Neat.
Because it vilifies an enemy state, which is convenient when you want public support for sanctions against that enemy
Are you serious? Is this really what you think?
Could you explain why you think this?
That claim includes a source.
Uh, if they’re just going to publish total outright lies, why not just claim they eat babies or something equally horrific? Villifying the state via haircut shaming is certainly not how I’d go about it.
Well yeah: it’s easier to do and gets the same results in the end.
Journalists are actually people. Let’s assume that care about what they do and want to do it with integrity (as most of us seek to act). Convincing them to constantly lie and compromise their work for political reasons seems like a lot of work, and they’d just wind up quitting and writing scandalous tell-alls anyway. So why bother to begin with? It’d just cause drama and is frankly a dead-end for your goals in any event. Just hire a bunch of hatchet job propagandists whose explicit goal is lying. Then everyone’s happy and you’ve made your life much much easier.
Of course, you miss out on “truthful articles” that fool people into believing you’re a good institution. But most people will see that you’re publishing intentional lies and have fired your good journalists anyway, so no one is going to believe you’re a reliable journalistic institution even if you cram in some incisive, hard-hitting truths. Again, it’s just a waste of time and effort; people who are smart enough to do the research will see through you in any case. So, just go straight for the propaganda.
There are plenty of people (right here in this thread) who will falsely equivocate between your propaganda and actual journalism anyway, so it’s not like you’re even sacrificing that much.
Yeah, an anonymous source. Did you look at it?
They do publish many horrific claims.
No it doesn’t. When your outlet is obvious propaganda, fewer people believe you. RFA’s sheen of reputability was a huge factor in the haircut story’s enormous reach in western media.
…the sort of people who would write this disproven haircut story and dozens of other goofy unsourced claims they’ve published, yes. You can even tell them to write normal stories too just to mix it up.
Not if some or all of your journalists are US intelligence — Radio Free Asia began as a CIA front operation (google it), and might still be one.
For the love of god, listen to some Citations Needed and stop self-congratilating your media literacy because some fucking dork with a website tells you the New York Times and Washington Post aren’t biased.
I’d thought that even the most liberal people on nü-Lemmy had at least read some Chomsky (or even watched the documentaries based on his work), but I guess we aren’t even there yet.
I think it’s hilarious people are telling me I need some nuance and research, when I’m the one arguing there are differences between these sources and we need to evaluate them individually. And the person I responded to is arguing they’re all the same because, well, Journalism Bad I guess!
For the love of god read the comments before you reply.
If you only consider corporate media and western state-run and state-sponsored outlets to be purveyors of “Journalism,” then let me emphatically say yes, Journalism Bad.
I think you’re just doubling down on your bad arguments with straw man fallacies now. Move on.
Voice of America was put under the command of the USIA (US Information Agency) whose job was literally propaganda.
The US archives state the following:
https://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/306.html
I think that definitively proves you wrong.
Will this make you do one ounce of self-criticism or re-evaluate how you view the world? I sincerely doubt it.
Interesting find! There were also 48 states when that was written though, so we should probably take its current-day accuracy with a grain of salt.
Indeed, the nature of VOA has changed over time. During the Cold War it served to bring accurate news to countries behind the Iron Curtain and fight Soviet propaganda. (The Soviet government jammed it during this time.) Obviously this mission has changed since then as well since the Soviet Union no longer exists.
Ultimately its current reputation of journalistic objectivity does not depend on nearly century-old records but on what we can see today; dedicated journalists and accurate reporting.
Ah yes the propaganda outlet started for the purposes of propaganda and staffed with people all doing the job of propaganda has surely not continued to employ people ideologically aligned with performing propaganda ever since! Nooooooo. Somewhere along the line must have fired every single member of staff and built a reputable new outlet from the top down. Surely!
To quote a reagan fuckhead - “Personnel is policy”.
You are not immune to propaganda. And you should seriously take a moment to read the shit you are writing and ask yourself how much of it is you repeating propaganda. You sound like you’re literally writing PR copy.
I mean, France was once ruled by an Emperor; does that mean it still secretly is? Or did, like, something change in the last two hundred years in that regard? Do you think Napoleon is still secretly in charge there too?
You’re right personnel is policy though. And if you did any research whatsoever instead of posting nonsense on the Internet, you’d see that the journalists who work at the VOA are actually journalists, not propagandists. It’s not hard, the facts are out there. Maybe you should pursue them instead of indulge in baseless conspiracy theories.
But I’m easy to convince! Feel free to link me evidence that the VOA is still American propaganda and not real journalism. Surely reputable sources and good evidence are easy to find? I mean, if this was written a hundred years ago, there must be something else between then and now?
Of the two of us I am the only one that has done any research at all. As I am the only one who bothered to see what language the US uses for its own media outlet.
Your research consists of looking up propaganda sites that suit you, and parroting whatever they say regardless of any critical thought that might suggest they’re not reliable. You don’t think for yourself. At all. All you do is defer all of your thinking to these ““sources”” when they’re not primary sources and are literally obviously spouting easily falsifiable shit.
What research was that exactly? Watching a literal propaganda YouTube video and deciding it was the truth? You know that video was in English too, right? Doesn’t that mean it’s been compromised by the CIA?
Anyway… you clearly just have no idea what you’re talking about and have no ability to discern fact from fiction. For crowing that I need to stop being propagandized, I’m the only one here that appears to have done anything even actual research and employing critical thought.
Stop getting your information from YouTube. Duh.
Stop getting your information from the CIA. Duh.
It seems like there’s no reason to doubt the US Archive’s internal records on this regard. You say surely things have changed, but there’s little in the way of compelling evidence that that’s the case, right? Propaganda doesn’t mean an absence of factual reporting, it means slanted, biased reporting, and it’s not exactly a stretch by any means to suggest that VOICE OF AMERICA might have an agenda in their reporting, right? Pretty much every country that disseminates its own media employs propaganda because it’s a proven means of control. I understand you respect the service they provide but consider the purpose of propaganda, its intended effect, and how it might be influencing your stance on this matter.
You don’t think critically about mediabiasfactcheck?
Voice of America was created to promote American propaganda, it’s literally the US propaganda outlet. You’re a shill.
lol, even that site directly states VoA is funded by the US government.
I know it’s tough to believe, but government-funded things aren’t necessarily bad. To discover if they’re bad you have to do more research than seeing who funds them!
It’s shocking I know.
Have you done any research on VoA?
Yes; have you? If you have you’d know they have a reputation basically everywhere for journalistic integrity, high objectivity, and high factuality.
You’re making this up. It’s known around the world for being US propaganda. Next you’ll be saying Stars and Stripes is highly objective.
I’m literally the only one who hasn’t made shit up this thread because I’ve linked sources. Want some more?
Columbia Journalism Review writes in a rather incisive examination of its position as state-run media:
From the Dallas News:
Here’s some other bias checking websites.
So certainly you have some sources for your claim that it’s US propaganda, right? It’s based on more than just the name and you continually asserting it?
😂😅
I apparently think about it more critically than you do. All journalism is not propaganda; some is good in fact, and we can determine which is good and which is bad. And I at least have sources, whereas you have, uh… brain damage I guess?
Also that’s a laughable and total misunderstanding of Voice of America’s history, mission, and goals. It has a reputation basically everywhere as being as close to objective and reliable reporting as you can get outside the BBC. I guess you’re just assuming it’s bad based on its name, which is not great on the critical thinking front!
I don’t disagree with you about VOA not being 100% propaganda, but I think the thing that RT and VOA do share in common is that they are state-funded. With that being said, WaPo (just like the BBC) isn’t state funded so it’s still a poor comparison.
The BBC is quasi-state funded; its relationship with the government is not entirely cut-and-dry, since it is funded through a government act (though not directly by the UK itself).
What matters is whether the state has controls that prevent it from interfering with its media sources, and whether those sources have missions respecting journalistic integrity. For the VOA and BBC this is entirely true, both have charters specifically mandating them to do that and their respective governments have very clear “hands-off” laws and policies (or did until Trump, the story does get a little complicated for the VOA recently).
RT on the other hand just publishes Putin’s marketing emails.
WaPo just publishes Bezos’s marketing emails.
Is your goal to be wrong in as many places in this thread as possible? Cuz you are killing it if so.
Just trolling now with nothing productive to add.
I concede it’s a stretched argument but WaPo is known for hiring ex-State Department/ex-CIA staff onto its editorial board. I’m too lazy to find source but say something that gets me riled up and I’ll find the source out of spite.
“Russian state owned media bad. British state owned media good.”
No, we know it’s bad because it’s literally run by the US government.
Suggesting I have Brain Damage and then doubling down on your argument that VOA is as good as another state-owned media outlet that promotes its own nation with a history of imperialism, colonialism, and a bunch of other atrocities. I’m not sure if you think you’re convincing me or anyone beyond your echo chamber of anything or just like to read your own words as reaffirmation of your own beliefs. Either way it’s useless.
Cite reliable sources proving it’s “another state-owned media outlet that promotes its own nation” or at least give us a demostrable example.
https://www.insidevoa.com/p/5831.HTML
🤡
What about it? You can’t just link to a page with a thousand words on it and pretend that it all proves your point. Elaborate.
Oh sorry, read the first paragraph on that page. You don’t need to read anything else. Usually when someone shares a link I read the first few sentences if there’s no further explanation.
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His supporters forced their way into the Capitol Building in order to keep him in office by throwing out the election results.
If that ain’t an attempted coup, then what is?
Can you point out where I said it wasn’t? I’m just saying the severity of what happened in Russia is completely incomparable to what happened in the US. You’re talking about a fully armed military with sophisticated mechanized weapons and armor versus some Facebook rednecks with Trump flags.
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so we’re just going straight-up conspiracy theory here now? ok.
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So no sources or evidence for your conspiracy theory, eh?
I honestly pity you. Why not crawl back to lemmygrad where you belong?
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It’s sad the only thing you have is insults. What would be even more impressive is facts. Oh well.
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I’m dying at everyone going “Um actually the Freedom Eagle Burger Institute for Freedom says that VoA is unbiased. Five Pinocchios.”
Thank you for making it more blatant. I still don’t think they’ll get it.
I don’t know how you can admit that you have zero understanding of the subject and attack the article in the same post. It’s quite good and aligns well with many other sources of information and analysis.
I think you misread my post.
You know you don’t understand what happened there, but you still assume he tried to overthrow the government. That’s highly implausible. A much simpler explanation is that he wanted to quit on his own terms before it’s too late, but needed the other party to start listening and, ideally, enter the negotiations with a handicap. Judging by the reports that he got his audience (a claim too embarrassing to make up for no gain), that seemed to work.
That’s a big pitfall with analysing Russia: rationalizing stuff happening there to fit a reasonable plan, or at least a coherent overarching narrative, while the plethora of actors constituting Russia couldn’t care less about your narrative. They’ve been improvising with no clear plan for at least a year, on all levels, and it’s a miracle we still occasionally see patterns in their collective actions.
Yeah those are fair points. I’m not an expert on Russia it’s a really complex country.
This will sound catty, but it’s not intended as such: do you have any news outlets you view as pretty close to reasonable/down-the-middle (if that’s even possible)? I don’t disagree about WaPo, I’m just curious what others read.
I read the CBC for international news and that has served me pretty well. Canada doesn’t really have a strong international position to introduce bias in (other than being a Western country and all the biases inherent in that). In cases where Canada does have a stake (typically regarding trade with the US/China), I read something from Reuters/AP/Bloomberg because wire services tend to be less biased in general. Alternatively, BBC is decent for news that don’t relate to ex-colonies. For a non-Western perspective, Al Jazeera is pretty alright. For a US-perspective, the NYT is alright too.
Every media outlet is biased. Typically, you get less bias as you stray further away from people who can directly or indirectly profit off of portraying an event in a certain way.
Wherever your privately-owned media source is domiciled will have a bias towards that country in international relations. For example, WaPo will have a strong bias towards the US in anything relating to a conflict between the US and Russia. So will the NYT. They will never report objectively on these events because reporting with bias will get more people to agree with their writing and (eventually) lead to greater profit. These companies are profit-oriented, so this is to be expected.
For example, compare [https://www.thestar.com/business/trump-threatens-20-per-cent-tariff-on-canadian-softwood-lumber/article_f0bfee67-83ce-5968-8135-4a5eca0c8fb4.html?] and [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/24/us/politics/lumber-tariff-canada-trump.html]
This is, in general, different for government-owned media such as VoA, RT, and CCTV. These entities are controlled by the government (and, in fact, often allow for direct executive control by the President). Naturally, we expect these to be far more biased, particularly for countries that are on polar opposites of the geopolitical spectrum such as the US and Russia. These entities will generally avoid criticizing the ruling party.
Al Jazeera would fall into the above category, except Qatar isn’t exactly relevant on the global stage… it doesn’t matter if Al Jazeera never criticizes the Emir because nobody cares about the Emir.
In contrast, government-funded public broadcasters such as CBC and BBC are typically not controlled by the government and operate as entirely independent entities without direct executive control. They do often criticize the government and the country and are not driven by profit. These broadcasters still have bias towards the country they are domiciled in, but to a lesser degree than privately-owned media as they lack the profit incentive. They also have less bias than government-owned media, as can be shown by their willingness to talk shit about the government.
[https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/justin-trudeau-we-charity-margaret-trudeau-alexandre-1.5645781] [https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-65961889]
However, they are still biased by the people who work there, leading to the CBC to have a slight Liberal-leaning bias while the BBC has a slight Conservative-leaning bias. Notably (and perhaps most amusingly), they are criticized as being biased from all parties, which may be the strongest argument for their impartiality.
All this is to say that all media is biased. However, you can avoid a decent amount of bias by selecting news entities that are not based in a country that would have a strong opinion either way. For example, while the US has many issues with Russia, Canada/the UK/Qatar do not (other than the basic Western/European/Middle Eastern biases). They are likely to have more moderate and fair reporting on the conflict which, while still biased, are likely to be closer to the facts.
Basically, I wouldn’t trust any US reporting on Russia/China, nor would I trust any Russian nor Chinese reporting on the US. The reporters are always going to pander to their target demographic. Instead, I would look for international reporting from countries with strong freedom of speech protections that are not as strongly implicated in the issue.
No not really unfortunately, I think every media outlet is biased. Le Monde Diplomatique is my favourite media outlet and I still think it’s biased. I’m critical of all media when I read it and I think that’s the only way to be in the age of disinformation. It’s really funny to me that people rely on websites to tell them if media outlet is biased or unbiased because it’s apparent that those sites themselves are biased.
IMO It’s better to read theories, different takes on history, and then approach new news under different mental frameworks when trying to assess the reality of situations. But generally a political economic framework (ie power structures) is how I approach news articles for international events.
Are they, though? They can’t all be biased and they can’t all be lying at the same time, especially when they provide a transparent analysis of their findings that you can click on. And even then, you don’t just blindly trust what a remotely credible website says because they could be mistaken, or things may have changed. Nobody’s promoting that you blindly trust a website, but we know that the website has built a reputation through their verifiable work until proven otherwise. And even then, an inkling of your own criteria and discretion is always adviced which should go without saying.
I think it’s weird to brand anything and everything as state-owned or irreparably biased to the point of not being able to trust anything or anyone. It’s exactly the other side of the coin to the post-truth world you sneered at. We see with the alt medicine movement all the time. They trash postigious institutions out of ignorance and then mislead those who don’t know which side is up. What you’re saying could be just as dangerous.
That said, I also find it deeply cynical that pretending that the golden hammer to all this is an abstract personal “political economic framework” because a lot of us do work hard to rein in order and truth. For this I point to the crowd source that has built Wikipedia, the open source community, the so-called skeptic movement, and so many others that work in cooperation all the time for the good of humanity. Why is news and politics the exception? Good will is out there and it does exist.
I guess what I’m trying to say is, don’t let any fool out there tell you that the only ground you can step on is the one you built for yourself. If you don’t trust a source, so be it, but be specific why instead of trashing everything altogether indiscriminately.
To me, the only ground you step on is the one you build yourself is the only way to read the news. Maybe it’s extra work and it’s cynical but I’ll read an article about something, say a riot in Haiti. Then a couple months later I’ll read that it wasn’t actually a riot, but it was a peaceful protest and mercenaries employed by the government started shooting at people to break it up. The media reported it as a riot and never followed up that it was a peaceful protest. Turns out the President of Haiti is allied with the west for exploitation of labour and resources of that country. So now most people think that Haiti is just disorganized and needs strong western leadership, meanwhile the opposition is being repressed and the media is supporting the western narrative by not following up on the “riot”. That example is what I mean about not trusting anything I read until I’ve read different takes on a situation and considering my own skepticism. But it’s a fair point that not all state owned media is bad, but I would just never trust a state owned media for any foreign/international issue for not having a slant in favour of the reporting state.