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Ah... Media these days. I can't trust anyone, anymore. I guess, best thing to do is not to have opinion at all. I'm having a GPS in my pocket, I can browse mo

Ah... Media these days. I can't trust anyone, anymore. I guess, best thing to do is not to have opinion at all. I'm having a GPS in my pocket, I can browse most of the cities from my computer through Google Earth. I can talk to my watch, which replies and sends messages for me, but not a single country can provide a satellite image of the exact location of a fired rocket or any other evidence, like radar logs of some sort. Sometimes I really think I'm living in a multi-country-conspiracy and Snowden is only the top of the iceberg.

reqres 11y ago
That seems to be the point of modern propaganda. It's no longer about trying to convince people of what to believe in. Instead, the idea is to throw out multiple competing ideas no matter how far fetched to breed cynicism and conspiracy theories. I tend to read RT.com from time to time when Russia is featuring in the news to see what the Russian media is saying. And I have to confess the barrage of conflicting information (vis a vis western media) is extremely disorienting and difficult to methodically process. I'm not surprised that some people feel the way that you do. What I would also add is it's interesting to note how the story is pretty consistent from western media (that rebels shot down the plane by mistake). From what I've seen, the Russian media perspective is highly fluid; i.e. prone to change and multi-pronged.
- ckozlowski 11y ago
  There was an article posted here on HN detailing how this is performed. I'll see if I can dig up the article, but it had interviews with internet users paid by the Russian state to shape argument. A group of 2-3 would take opposing sites in creating an artificial argument on say, a forum where it was being discussed. The "Western" POV would be discredited, and the argument focused between differing "Russian" explanations. The argument would never actually cease or come to a conclusion, but re-center around a number of accepted conclusions.
berntb 11y ago
Well, you shouldn't really trust any information without considering cui bono, etc. The media sell eyeballs. And so on. In the present case -- there seems to be a theme in comments from security experts in the democratic countries. They claim that muddying the waters, so no one is trusted, is the real target of Russia's alternate history. If all cats are grey and everyone lies -- then military invasions and stealing areas wasn't as bad, relatively. It is all just a matter of opinion. So give the modern propaganda engine a hat tip for evil competence. Edit: What "reqres" wrote, in the same minute. It was interesting about the propanda. I would like to add to his comment that I've seldom seen so many sources in democratic countries be so consistent as about the Ukraine war, in so many countries and from so many viewpoints.
x03 11y ago
Adam Curtis, a documentary film-maker and journalist, has a brilliant aptitude at analysis in this area. His work in general, at the intersection of reporting and politics, is pretty excellent. It is some malice, more than you might expect; with with a great dollop of ineptitude, far more than you might expect; that allows this climate of total disorientation to exist. Take some of his thoughts: > "Politicians used to have the confidence to tell us stories that made sense of the chaos of world events. > "But now there are no big stories and politicians react randomly to every new crisis - leaving us bewildered and disorientated. > "And journalism - that used to tell a grand, unfurling narrative - now also just relays disjointed and often wildly contradictory fragments of information. > "Events come and go like waves of a fever. We - and the journalists - live in a state of continual delirium, constantly waiting for the next news event to loom out of the fog - and then disappear again, unexplained." The rest of that article is here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/ae14be85-3104-3c74-a9da-85807434a38e http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/ae14be85-3104-... And the documentary-film that he's referring to in that post, Bitter Lake, is available on iPlayer (for British viewers...or people on a VPN...), here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p02gyz6b/adam-curtis-bitter-lake http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p02gyz6b/adam-curtis-bi...
dsfyu404ed 11y ago
>But not a single country can provide a satellite image of the exact location of a fired rocket or any other evidence. Assume for a minute that the CIA had that sort of in depth coverage of the event. Assume they know everything from the serial number of the warhead to the crew-members' favorite vodka. Why would they, or any other intelligence agency risk burning even the tiniest shred of information on an event that open sources have done a pretty good job covering?
ajuc 11y ago
There was good speach about the exact effect that modern propaganda has by Timothy Snyder: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKFObB6_naw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKFObB6_naw The whole point of this kind of propaganda is to make people go "meh, everybody's lying, so I just won't trust anybody". You have police shooting black unarmed teen, and want people not to be angry about that - make a panel discussion with 12 people telling 12 versions of what happened, 11 of which blame the teenager. Accuse every other source of information of bias and lies. Many people will think "there's sth to this, I won't know the truth anyway, not my problem, let's ignore this issue".

reqres 11y ago

That seems to be the point of modern propaganda. It's no longer about trying to convince people of what to believe in. Instead, the idea is to throw out multiple competing ideas no matter how far fetched to breed cynicism and conspiracy theories. I tend to read RT.com from time to time when Russia is featuring in the news to see what the Russian media is saying. And I have to confess the barrage of conflicting information (vis a vis western media) is extremely disorienting and difficult to methodically process. I'm not surprised that some people feel the way that you do. What I would also add is it's interesting to note how the story is pretty consistent from western media (that rebels shot down the plane by mistake). From what I've seen, the Russian media perspective is highly fluid; i.e. prone to change and multi-pronged.

ckozlowski 11y ago
There was an article posted here on HN detailing how this is performed. I'll see if I can dig up the article, but it had interviews with internet users paid by the Russian state to shape argument. A group of 2-3 would take opposing sites in creating an artificial argument on say, a forum where it was being discussed. The "Western" POV would be discredited, and the argument focused between differing "Russian" explanations. The argument would never actually cease or come to a conclusion, but re-center around a number of accepted conclusions.

berntb 11y ago

Well, you shouldn't really trust any information without considering cui bono, etc. The media sell eyeballs. And so on. In the present case -- there seems to be a theme in comments from security experts in the democratic countries. They claim that muddying the waters, so no one is trusted, is the real target of Russia's alternate history. If all cats are grey and everyone lies -- then military invasions and stealing areas wasn't as bad, relatively. It is all just a matter of opinion. So give the modern propaganda engine a hat tip for evil competence. Edit: What "reqres" wrote, in the same minute. It was interesting about the propanda. I would like to add to his comment that I've seldom seen so many sources in democratic countries be so consistent as about the Ukraine war, in so many countries and from so many viewpoints.

x03 11y ago

Adam Curtis, a documentary film-maker and journalist, has a brilliant aptitude at analysis in this area. His work in general, at the intersection of reporting and politics, is pretty excellent. It is some malice, more than you might expect; with with a great dollop of ineptitude, far more than you might expect; that allows this climate of total disorientation to exist. Take some of his thoughts: > "Politicians used to have the confidence to tell us stories that made sense of the chaos of world events. > "But now there are no big stories and politicians react randomly to every new crisis - leaving us bewildered and disorientated. > "And journalism - that used to tell a grand, unfurling narrative - now also just relays disjointed and often wildly contradictory fragments of information. > "Events come and go like waves of a fever. We - and the journalists - live in a state of continual delirium, constantly waiting for the next news event to loom out of the fog - and then disappear again, unexplained." The rest of that article is here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/ae14be85-3104-3c74-a9da-85807434a38e http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/ae14be85-3104-... And the documentary-film that he's referring to in that post, Bitter Lake, is available on iPlayer (for British viewers...or people on a VPN...), here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p02gyz6b/adam-curtis-bitter-lake http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p02gyz6b/adam-curtis-bi...

dsfyu404ed 11y ago

>But not a single country can provide a satellite image of the exact location of a fired rocket or any other evidence. Assume for a minute that the CIA had that sort of in depth coverage of the event. Assume they know everything from the serial number of the warhead to the crew-members' favorite vodka. Why would they, or any other intelligence agency risk burning even the tiniest shred of information on an event that open sources have done a pretty good job covering?

ajuc 11y ago

There was good speach about the exact effect that modern propaganda has by Timothy Snyder: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKFObB6_naw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKFObB6_naw The whole point of this kind of propaganda is to make people go "meh, everybody's lying, so I just won't trust anybody". You have police shooting black unarmed teen, and want people not to be angry about that - make a panel discussion with 12 people telling 12 versions of what happened, 11 of which blame the teenager. Accuse every other source of information of bias and lies. Many people will think "there's sth to this, I won't know the truth anyway, not my problem, let's ignore this issue".