6 ms·

I disagree. RT is very biased, but is fairly factual once you learn to ignore the bias. They do a lot of pretty impressive journalistic work, like frontline rep

I disagree. RT is very biased, but is fairly factual once you learn to ignore the bias. They do a lot of pretty impressive journalistic work, like frontline reporting. If you exclude it completely, you miss a big part of the picture.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
mseebach 10y ago
Different media for different purposes. There are many of these highly biased "marginal" media outlets that often contain tidbits of facts that aren't reported elsewhere, and yes, sometimes it's because those facts don't match the (oppositely biased) narrative (and sometimes it's because those facts are indeed not relevant for reporting), and that's useful for surfacing these facts so you can make up your own mind. But this only works for a highly informed reader who is deeply familiar with the subject, so they can sift through the bias and pull out the facts. BUT -- they are emphatically worse than useless for getting high-level acquainted with an unfamiliar subject, which seems to be what's at stake here.
- dagenleg 10y ago
  You are assuming that there's a way for an uninformed reader to get his hands on 'unbiased' media. If you don't sift through the biases yourself the "high-level acquaintance" you acquire will be inevitably biased, since someone had to do it for you.
  - orcdork 10y ago
    That's a great excuse for making a semi-totalitarian government mouthpiece look like it's credible news.
    - dagenleg 10y ago
      On the contrary, I am saying that there are no credible news to be found. Sure, RT is a mouthpiece, but it's unwise to lock yourself in a bubble where all media you consume follows the same party line.
      - mseebach 10y ago
        That argument is about as intellectually sound as saying "evolution is only a theory" (correct) "so creationism is equally valid" (wrong). ("It's bad to be locked into a party-line bubble" (correct) "so it's good advice to add RT and Breitbart to your daily media diet" (wrong))
  - DanBC 10y ago
    This is the "honest about lying" trope. https://euvsdisinfo.eu/honest-about-lying/ https://euvsdisinfo.eu/honest-about-lying/
DanBC 10y ago
RT is not factual, and many of the facts RT broadcasts are deliberate falsehoods.
fpig 10y ago
RT factual? You must have not been following their Ukraine coverage. They're likely the biggest liars of all mainstream media. They were somewhat OK until the Ukraine crisis started, that's when they started going full-retard. RT published an article about the Ukrainian army shooting down that Malaysian passenger plane. I am not sure if it still exists, but I have read it on their web site. Then they quickly started changing their story in followup articles, but never actually published the truth about it (unless they published it since I stopped reading them, but I seriously doubt it). The RT mentality seems to be "the truth doesn't matter, perception is everything". It is hard to find even a hint of journalistic integrity in their work. This is far beyond being "biased". Yeah, pretty much everyone is biased, but not in the despicable way RT is.
- dagenleg 10y ago
  Frankly, compared to internal Russian and Ukrainian news they were the epitome of unbiased journalism. The Ukrainian coverage was and is very subjective, but they did not resort to outright lies much more than media usually does. Malaysian plane is a very good example of this - they were floating a lot of mad theories absolving Moscow of any guilt but in the end they were still reported just as "versions". It's very hard to catch a media company on outright lies because of such evasive tactics.
  - fpig 10y ago
    Yes, there are even worse pieces of trash than RT somewhere out there. There's a paper in my country that claims the Earth is flat, that's not the sort of media I am comparing RT to because I don't trust those papers at all either. The New Gazette (Gorbachev's paper) is internal Russian media and did not run a full retard propaganda campaign on this issue. They printed "Forgive us, Netherlands" on their cover page. This is the paper that has had something like 5 journalists assassinated in the last decade for actually doing their job. By presenting RT as somehow not particularly bad you are lowering the bar all the way to the ground and disrespecting thousands of honest journalists who work hard to inform the public about the wrongdoing of those in power. None of those people work for RT. RT is a pure propaganda paper. Journalists in my country have taken down people in our government and even sent them to prison by relentless digging for the truth. They have been killed in their pursuit of justice. Throwing actual journalists into the same basket with RT indicates an extremely warped perspective.
snsr 10y ago
> RT is very biased, but is fairly factual once you learn to ignore the bias. If you exclude it completely, you miss a big part of the picture. It's nothing more than propaganda and disinformation with an agenda.
megous 10y ago
You have to be very careful. They lie about even relatively inconsequential things. Like particular bombings in Syria. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFQdBHQjPHs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFQdBHQjPHs This one is back from the time of the siege of Aleppo last year. Frontline reporting is probably even more biased than anything else. Journalist speaking against the soldiers he's embedded with? What will happen next time he's embedded with any troops?
- dagenleg 10y ago
  Correct me if I am wrong, but it's just about the thumbnail inappropriately used in one of the videos. Not about the report itself or the factual errors in it. Just the thumbnail which was probably assigned from some stock of "Syrian war destruction photos". That's sounds more like sloppy work than a deliberate lie.
  - megous 10y ago
    It's not a generic stock photo. It's a photo from rebel held areas made just 4 days prior to the report. Clearly labeled as such on the purchase page. http://pictures.reuters.com/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&VBID=2C0FCI3L2F3KU#/SearchResult&VBID=2C0FCI3L2F3KU&PN=4&POPUPPN=230&POPUPIID=2C0BF1FXHIJKT http://pictures.reuters.com/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&VBID=2C0...
  - megous 10y ago
    Also the entire RT reporting about Syria is a factual error. They omit so much, it's ridiculous. Russia last fall/winter killed around 4000 civilians in Syria, before they scaled back this year. Where are detailed reports on those reported on RT? Google "site:rt.com russia massacres" and have fun finding something perpetrated by Russia's military there, even playing it down as an accident.
k_swden 10y ago
"ignore the bias" == believe in lies Individuals, professionalism and reputation is what makes news outlets credible, and real competition between news agencies is the very key for that to work, so without a free press environment, news are unreliable. https://cpj.org/killed/europe/russia/ https://cpj.org/killed/europe/russia/ See any RT journalists on that list? Wake up dude

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

mseebach 10y ago

Different media for different purposes. There are many of these highly biased "marginal" media outlets that often contain tidbits of facts that aren't reported elsewhere, and yes, sometimes it's because those facts don't match the (oppositely biased) narrative (and sometimes it's because those facts are indeed not relevant for reporting), and that's useful for surfacing these facts so you can make up your own mind. But this only works for a highly informed reader who is deeply familiar with the subject, so they can sift through the bias and pull out the facts. BUT -- they are emphatically worse than useless for getting high-level acquainted with an unfamiliar subject, which seems to be what's at stake here.

dagenleg 10y ago
You are assuming that there's a way for an uninformed reader to get his hands on 'unbiased' media. If you don't sift through the biases yourself the "high-level acquaintance" you acquire will be inevitably biased, since someone had to do it for you.
- orcdork 10y ago
  That's a great excuse for making a semi-totalitarian government mouthpiece look like it's credible news.
  - dagenleg 10y ago
    On the contrary, I am saying that there are no credible news to be found. Sure, RT is a mouthpiece, but it's unwise to lock yourself in a bubble where all media you consume follows the same party line.
    - mseebach 10y ago
      That argument is about as intellectually sound as saying "evolution is only a theory" (correct) "so creationism is equally valid" (wrong). ("It's bad to be locked into a party-line bubble" (correct) "so it's good advice to add RT and Breitbart to your daily media diet" (wrong))
- DanBC 10y ago
  This is the "honest about lying" trope. https://euvsdisinfo.eu/honest-about-lying/ https://euvsdisinfo.eu/honest-about-lying/

DanBC 10y ago

RT is not factual, and many of the facts RT broadcasts are deliberate falsehoods.

fpig 10y ago

RT factual? You must have not been following their Ukraine coverage. They're likely the biggest liars of all mainstream media. They were somewhat OK until the Ukraine crisis started, that's when they started going full-retard. RT published an article about the Ukrainian army shooting down that Malaysian passenger plane. I am not sure if it still exists, but I have read it on their web site. Then they quickly started changing their story in followup articles, but never actually published the truth about it (unless they published it since I stopped reading them, but I seriously doubt it). The RT mentality seems to be "the truth doesn't matter, perception is everything". It is hard to find even a hint of journalistic integrity in their work. This is far beyond being "biased". Yeah, pretty much everyone is biased, but not in the despicable way RT is.

dagenleg 10y ago
Frankly, compared to internal Russian and Ukrainian news they were the epitome of unbiased journalism. The Ukrainian coverage was and is very subjective, but they did not resort to outright lies much more than media usually does. Malaysian plane is a very good example of this - they were floating a lot of mad theories absolving Moscow of any guilt but in the end they were still reported just as "versions". It's very hard to catch a media company on outright lies because of such evasive tactics.
- fpig 10y ago
  Yes, there are even worse pieces of trash than RT somewhere out there. There's a paper in my country that claims the Earth is flat, that's not the sort of media I am comparing RT to because I don't trust those papers at all either. The New Gazette (Gorbachev's paper) is internal Russian media and did not run a full retard propaganda campaign on this issue. They printed "Forgive us, Netherlands" on their cover page. This is the paper that has had something like 5 journalists assassinated in the last decade for actually doing their job. By presenting RT as somehow not particularly bad you are lowering the bar all the way to the ground and disrespecting thousands of honest journalists who work hard to inform the public about the wrongdoing of those in power. None of those people work for RT. RT is a pure propaganda paper. Journalists in my country have taken down people in our government and even sent them to prison by relentless digging for the truth. They have been killed in their pursuit of justice. Throwing actual journalists into the same basket with RT indicates an extremely warped perspective.

snsr 10y ago

> RT is very biased, but is fairly factual once you learn to ignore the bias. If you exclude it completely, you miss a big part of the picture. It's nothing more than propaganda and disinformation with an agenda.

megous 10y ago

You have to be very careful. They lie about even relatively inconsequential things. Like particular bombings in Syria. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFQdBHQjPHs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFQdBHQjPHs This one is back from the time of the siege of Aleppo last year. Frontline reporting is probably even more biased than anything else. Journalist speaking against the soldiers he's embedded with? What will happen next time he's embedded with any troops?

dagenleg 10y ago
Correct me if I am wrong, but it's just about the thumbnail inappropriately used in one of the videos. Not about the report itself or the factual errors in it. Just the thumbnail which was probably assigned from some stock of "Syrian war destruction photos". That's sounds more like sloppy work than a deliberate lie.
- megous 10y ago
  It's not a generic stock photo. It's a photo from rebel held areas made just 4 days prior to the report. Clearly labeled as such on the purchase page. http://pictures.reuters.com/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&VBID=2C0FCI3L2F3KU#/SearchResult&VBID=2C0FCI3L2F3KU&PN=4&POPUPPN=230&POPUPIID=2C0BF1FXHIJKT http://pictures.reuters.com/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&VBID=2C0...
- megous 10y ago
  Also the entire RT reporting about Syria is a factual error. They omit so much, it's ridiculous. Russia last fall/winter killed around 4000 civilians in Syria, before they scaled back this year. Where are detailed reports on those reported on RT? Google "site:rt.com russia massacres" and have fun finding something perpetrated by Russia's military there, even playing it down as an accident.

k_swden 10y ago

"ignore the bias" == believe in lies Individuals, professionalism and reputation is what makes news outlets credible, and real competition between news agencies is the very key for that to work, so without a free press environment, news are unreliable. https://cpj.org/killed/europe/russia/ https://cpj.org/killed/europe/russia/ See any RT journalists on that list? Wake up dude