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>Perhaps - but having the "truth" be "exposed" by a foreign government undermining your electoral process and waging a propaganda campaign is not something the

>Perhaps - but having the "truth" be "exposed" by a foreign government undermining your electoral process and waging a propaganda campaign is not something the public should be calling for I can't imagine any situation whereby uncovering the truth undermines democracy. That sounds distinctly Orwellian, in fact.

krapp 10y ago
>I can't imagine any situation whereby uncovering the truth undermines democracy. Can you imagine a situation in which the truth uncovered by a foreign government or some unaccountable agency like Wikileaks is not, in fact, actually true? Or where, as with Wikileaks, the selective exposure of some truths and withholding of others is meant to serve an explicit political purpose and to bias, rather than inform, the electorate?
- crdoconnor 10y ago
  >Can you imagine a situation in which the truth uncovered by a foreign government or some unaccountable agency like Wikileaks is not, in fact, actually true? Yes. All that would achieve would be to undermine wikileaks' credibility. They literally would just have to do it once and every leak subsequent to that would be suspect. The main reason why wikileaks has had such an effect is because they haven't yet released any lies. >Or where, as with Wikileaks, the selective exposure of some truths and withholding of others is meant to serve an explicit political purpose and to bias, rather than inform, the electorate? If you were the subject of such leaks you could offset this problem by releasing the rest of the information to the media rendering its selectivity pointless. The only way selective exposure as a means of propaganda works is if you actually wield a large degree of influence or control over the media (which does undermine democracy) and can 'bury' stories. The DNC can make a claim to that (CNN, CBS, Viacom) as can the RNC (Fox) but wikileaks doesn't wield any influence over those corporations.
  - krapp 10y ago
    >Yes. All that would achieve would be to undermine wikileaks' credibility. You're assuming that the accuracy of the information Wikileaks releases is crucial to its influence or credibility, but I disagree. A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can put on its shoes, after all. I submit that Wikileaks is more influential because of political bias than it is because of objectivity. >I don't doubt that the mainstream media would hammer home the point that they released lies in the past from that point onward. Many Americans have been trained to mistrust the mainstream media and to assume they are biased, corrupt and bought by corporate and political interests. People who would be susceptible to political influence from sources like Wikileaks would likely also reject the credibility of the mainstream media, so the intended effect of influencing partisans wouldn't really be countered by MSM rebuttals. The question is whether the set of such people is large enough to actually influence an election. >If you were the subject of such leaks you could offset this problem by releasing the rest of the information rendering its selectivity pointless. Yes ... and your releases wouldn't be believed, because many people have been trained to assume that politicians are corrupt and that their denials regarding accusations of scandal are lies. Also, guaranteeing that anyone who leaks inaccurate information will be answered with a leak of accurate information probably doesn't set a good precedent regarding the integrity of classified material. >The only way selective exposure as a means of propaganda works is if you actually wield a large degree of influence or control in the media. I present to you the recent US Presidential election in rebuttal, and argue that selective exposure as a means of propaganda worked quite well in that case. Not because of Wikileaks' influence over the media, but because of their influence over social media and the cynicism of the electorate.
    - crdoconnor 10y ago
      >You're assuming that the accuracy of the information Wikileaks releases is crucial to its influence or credibility It did real harm to Dan Rather and CBS's credibility when they did it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy Wikileaks' position is even more precarious than theirs since unlike CBS they own no distribution channels. If the mainstream media choose to ignore them then they're toast. >I submit that Wikileaks is more influential because of political bias This doesn't even make any sense: the average Trump voter and Assange do not see eye to eye. >Many Americans have been trained to mistrust the mainstream media They've got plenty of reason to mistrust them but that doesn't always stop the truth from being believed. What has trained them to mistrust the mainstream media in any case, is lies. If they care about that (and all evidence points to the contrary), they can start by lying less. >People who would be susceptible to political influence from sources like Wikileaks would likely also reject the credibility of the mainstream media, so the intended effect of influencing partisans Partisans don't decide elections and the stupidest part of this post-election hand wringing has been the complaints about the idiocies they believe and how they were influenced. What killed this election for Hillary was low turnout by non-partisans, not Trump. >assume they are biased, corrupt and bought by corporate and political interests. No need to assume. Plenty of evidence for this. >Yes ... and your releases wouldn't be believed I think if the DNC released their own emails they wouldn't have much trouble getting people to believe that they're real. If they released actual evidence about Russian hacking then likewise. >many people have been trained to assume that politicians are corrupt and that their denials regarding accusations of scandal are lies. Again, there's no real need to 'train' people for this because it's self evident and relatively more truthful and scandal free politicians (e.g. Sanders) do have a greater tendency to be believed. >I present to you the recent US Presidential election in rebuttal, and argue that selective exposure as a means of propaganda worked quite well in that case. I present to you Hillary Clinton: the most compromised, scandal ridden politician that the DNC could possibly run and the only person who, under the microscope of wikileaks, could actually end up making Trump look good. If Sanders was the nominee Wikileaks wouldn't have had anything of substance to leak.

krapp 10y ago

>I can't imagine any situation whereby uncovering the truth undermines democracy. Can you imagine a situation in which the truth uncovered by a foreign government or some unaccountable agency like Wikileaks is not, in fact, actually true? Or where, as with Wikileaks, the selective exposure of some truths and withholding of others is meant to serve an explicit political purpose and to bias, rather than inform, the electorate?

crdoconnor 10y ago
>Can you imagine a situation in which the truth uncovered by a foreign government or some unaccountable agency like Wikileaks is not, in fact, actually true? Yes. All that would achieve would be to undermine wikileaks' credibility. They literally would just have to do it once and every leak subsequent to that would be suspect. The main reason why wikileaks has had such an effect is because they haven't yet released any lies. >Or where, as with Wikileaks, the selective exposure of some truths and withholding of others is meant to serve an explicit political purpose and to bias, rather than inform, the electorate? If you were the subject of such leaks you could offset this problem by releasing the rest of the information to the media rendering its selectivity pointless. The only way selective exposure as a means of propaganda works is if you actually wield a large degree of influence or control over the media (which does undermine democracy) and can 'bury' stories. The DNC can make a claim to that (CNN, CBS, Viacom) as can the RNC (Fox) but wikileaks doesn't wield any influence over those corporations.
- krapp 10y ago
  >Yes. All that would achieve would be to undermine wikileaks' credibility. You're assuming that the accuracy of the information Wikileaks releases is crucial to its influence or credibility, but I disagree. A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can put on its shoes, after all. I submit that Wikileaks is more influential because of political bias than it is because of objectivity. >I don't doubt that the mainstream media would hammer home the point that they released lies in the past from that point onward. Many Americans have been trained to mistrust the mainstream media and to assume they are biased, corrupt and bought by corporate and political interests. People who would be susceptible to political influence from sources like Wikileaks would likely also reject the credibility of the mainstream media, so the intended effect of influencing partisans wouldn't really be countered by MSM rebuttals. The question is whether the set of such people is large enough to actually influence an election. >If you were the subject of such leaks you could offset this problem by releasing the rest of the information rendering its selectivity pointless. Yes ... and your releases wouldn't be believed, because many people have been trained to assume that politicians are corrupt and that their denials regarding accusations of scandal are lies. Also, guaranteeing that anyone who leaks inaccurate information will be answered with a leak of accurate information probably doesn't set a good precedent regarding the integrity of classified material. >The only way selective exposure as a means of propaganda works is if you actually wield a large degree of influence or control in the media. I present to you the recent US Presidential election in rebuttal, and argue that selective exposure as a means of propaganda worked quite well in that case. Not because of Wikileaks' influence over the media, but because of their influence over social media and the cynicism of the electorate.
  - crdoconnor 10y ago
    >You're assuming that the accuracy of the information Wikileaks releases is crucial to its influence or credibility It did real harm to Dan Rather and CBS's credibility when they did it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy Wikileaks' position is even more precarious than theirs since unlike CBS they own no distribution channels. If the mainstream media choose to ignore them then they're toast. >I submit that Wikileaks is more influential because of political bias This doesn't even make any sense: the average Trump voter and Assange do not see eye to eye. >Many Americans have been trained to mistrust the mainstream media They've got plenty of reason to mistrust them but that doesn't always stop the truth from being believed. What has trained them to mistrust the mainstream media in any case, is lies. If they care about that (and all evidence points to the contrary), they can start by lying less. >People who would be susceptible to political influence from sources like Wikileaks would likely also reject the credibility of the mainstream media, so the intended effect of influencing partisans Partisans don't decide elections and the stupidest part of this post-election hand wringing has been the complaints about the idiocies they believe and how they were influenced. What killed this election for Hillary was low turnout by non-partisans, not Trump. >assume they are biased, corrupt and bought by corporate and political interests. No need to assume. Plenty of evidence for this. >Yes ... and your releases wouldn't be believed I think if the DNC released their own emails they wouldn't have much trouble getting people to believe that they're real. If they released actual evidence about Russian hacking then likewise. >many people have been trained to assume that politicians are corrupt and that their denials regarding accusations of scandal are lies. Again, there's no real need to 'train' people for this because it's self evident and relatively more truthful and scandal free politicians (e.g. Sanders) do have a greater tendency to be believed. >I present to you the recent US Presidential election in rebuttal, and argue that selective exposure as a means of propaganda worked quite well in that case. I present to you Hillary Clinton: the most compromised, scandal ridden politician that the DNC could possibly run and the only person who, under the microscope of wikileaks, could actually end up making Trump look good. If Sanders was the nominee Wikileaks wouldn't have had anything of substance to leak.