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> The entire Chongryon-hosted enterprise thus seems almost completely devoid of informational and propaganda value today, if it ever had any; it is a classic ex
by rdtsc 10y ago
> The entire Chongryon-hosted enterprise thus seems almost completely devoid of informational and propaganda value today, if it ever had any; it is a classic example of “propaganda without readers.” [...] we can try to make sense of KCNA stories [...] simply as the nearly automatic manifestation of the North Korean state’s own commitments to itself
North Korean propaganda is so obvious and so stupid by our standards that it seems ridiculous anyone would listen to it, like the article points.
But there is something there for us to learn as well about our propaganda. which is less obvious. By now I think nobody can pretend that mass media is unbiased. I think before elections, for some channels one could squint and give them a benefit of the doubt at least.
The media served as this persuasion machine for many years (unlike the North Korean site mentioned here). It was never unbiased, but we one could almost pretend it was. However then something interesting happened when the curtain was lifted too much. It simply became too obvious and impossible to ignore. They went and started unilaterally backing only one candidate in the elections, hired operatives from their party, anchors donated large sums of money to that candidate, passed debate notes back and forth, etc. As a result even traditional large media empires found themselves regarded pretty much as the North Korean propaganda by the majority of the population.
You'd think they realize and stop. But they didn't and I claim they won't. That is what is fascinating, they keep marching on further and further. In a sense just like this site, the people writing there keep pumping those headlines even though the world is laughing at them. You'd think for example Chris Cuomo from CNN would sort of have this apology and say the whole "documents are illegal for you to read, but is different for the media, come to use for interpretation" was a dumb thing to say and how it made the whole channel look silly and so on. But he didn't and never will. And it makes more sense in the light of this article, this kind of propaganda is largely literature aimed not at persuasion but at reassurance of those who already believe and mostly also as literature and signaling among the media creators themselves. What the outside world thinks, doesn't matter anymore.
- resfirestar 10y agoYou're missing a big difference between biased news and authoritarian propaganda: independence from the government itself. This has all sorts of consequences, but one is the type of stories that can appear. North Korea's news is an extreme example of being laser-focused on inane activities of the leader and routine diplomacy, to the complete exclusion of anything about the daily life of civilians. Many people trust the political reporting on broadcast news about as much as they trust KCNA's take on US politics, but non-Alex Jones fans don't think they're covering it up when bad things happen, or that they pull punches on generally apolitical incidents of public or corporate malfeasance. Look at the headlines this week: lots of stuff about the Oroville Dam. In North Korea, public infrastructure issues like that would be completely blacked out to avoid embarrassing the government. My impression of the Chinese press is that it would be reported without criticizing officials for ignoring the dam's weaknesses. Even if people continue retreating into Facebook's bubbles for political news, non-political reporting by western mass media will continue to be widely read and trusted, while the purely political mission of authoritarian state media dooms it to the inanity of KCNA.
- rdtsc 10y agoThe difference is more nuanced. The media in reality has never been un-biased. See Herman & Chomsky's Manufactured Consent work (sorry, I've been mentioning it very often). They did a great job proving how mass media has always been subservient to large corporation and governments. The mechanism of how it works is different for each case. > North Korea's news is an extreme example of being laser-focused on inane activities of the leader and routine diplomacy, to the complete exclusion of anything about the daily life of civilians. North Korean model is a more distilled and purified version, obviously to a ridiculous level. But you brought a good point that in some domains like entertainment, weather, non-political stuff, the news are still there. There is no payoff or threat, it does get through. Another thing I noticed that foreign news cover stuff better if they don't have a stake in it - like say Al Jazeera talking about South America for example.
- paradite 10y agoYou got the wrong impression about Chinese politics and the press. If a dam fails, officials responsible for it would be sacked immediately before getting a chance to resign and the news will be reported. However if it's just "weakness" in dam, I don't think news media would be too quick to criticize officials, regardless of the country. It's not a disaster yet.
- resfirestar 10y agoYou're probably right, I'm thinking more of China historically, when it was much more authoritarian. The Soviet Union would have been a better example, with their tendency to delay reporting or cover up famines and nuclear accidents.
- simonh 10y ago> They went and started unilaterally backing only one candidate in the elections Western mass media isn't a single bloc though. Did Fox News back the same candidate as NPR and PBS? In the UK did the Daily Mail lean the same way as the Guardian? Of course not. These are all mainstream media organizations with very different political leanings. In the West most people vote for a mainstream left or right party. Most news media is made up of people with varied, but generally mainstream political views and are selling news to people with mainstream political views. But the reason the Socialist Worker newspaper in the UK has a low circulation isn't that it's silenced or marginalized by the political elite, or stifled by mainstream media, it's because only a handful of people want to buy it. If millions of people agreed with it's politics, it would sell millions of copies. So blaming the 'mainstream media' is lazy and complacent. The reality is that the main political parties get lots of votes because frankly, lots of people agree with them. The reason people with variant political views don't get traction isn't because the mass media is against them, it's because those variants views just aren't popular. When a variant view does get popular, like Trump's alt-right flavored isolationist protectionism, he gets elected. Like it or not, that's democracy in action. People whingeing that their particular brand of politics is unpopular and blaming the mass media are putting the cart before the horse. Maybe they're unpopular because most people just flat out disagree with them.
- bluejekyll 10y ago> NPR and PBS It saddens me to see you say this about our publicly funded (yes, they also have corporate sponsors) institutions. These two are some of the least biased and factually accurate news organizations in the US. If you had used CNN and MSNBC I think that would support your argument. But I challenge you to find a more transparent news organization than NPR which consistently asks difficult questions to people of all sides. It also happens to be one of the few news organizations that is trying to bridge the gap between the right and the left, by doing great stories going straight to voters on both sides of the equation. Don't put NPR into the same slimed bucket as FOX, CNN and MSNBC. They are nowhere near the same.
- simonh 10y agoFair enough, I'm a Brit and not too familiar with the status of these organizations.