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Here in China, gov't has evolved to a whole new level, they don't manipulate media with fake news, but with selected truth.

by est 10y ago

omarchowdhury 10y ago
Then they are marketing, a modulation of propaganda.
alexdumitru 10y ago
It still sounds better. I feel that "fair and objective" media does that anyway.
Waterluvian 10y ago
Fake news is injected externally. Selected truth comes from the inside.
Consultant32452 10y ago
It's less overt, but I've come to believe the US has the same thing going on. Consider two things... first Fox News just fired O'Reilly, who is the highest rated news man in the country (probably the world). Why? Not because he was a sexist pig. They knew that for years. They did it because the advertisers started pulling out. Now consider that every 4 years the major political parties spend over $1 Billion in advertising. And that's just for the Presidential election. That comes with a lot of power to tell the news media mega corps what they should be talking about.
- darawk 10y ago
  Just to play devils advocate for a moment (since I kind of agree with you), aren't the politicians fairly captive to the media as well, though? It's not like they can vengefully decide to stop advertising with them.
  - Consultant32452 10y ago
    Consider further that there's only 6 media companies in the country and they're all huge mega-conglomerates with billions of dollars in government contracts on the line. A person in a position of political power can easily nudge a contract to a competitor if you don't play ball, costing you millions in a single contract. I mean sure, the government needs things from the media too. We saw CNN give Hillary the secret debate questions during the primary. Rather than going public with this atrocity Clinton just fucking used the information. Literally one person from CNN got fired, but she's got a job at the DNC now so it's totes cool. I think it's safe to assume that this sort of thing is far more common than we'd like to admit.
abdias 10y ago
> China, gov't has evolved to a whole new level, they don't manipulate media with fake news, but with selected truth. This is unfortunately nothing new. They did this in the USSR and East-Europe, and even in "free" countries such as Norway where there was one single national government-owned broadcaster (NRK, similar profile as BBC in the UK) feeding propaganda for the socialist labor party in the political areas. Satellite dishes was forbidden up till late 80's, and the first commercial national broadcaster (not via satellite) came about in 1993 IIRC (the gov't channel was BTW ad-free and financed through a TV-license, giving you the right to own a TV and radio). This is organized censorship and I have been around long enough to see this come and go in various places. I'm sorry, we don't need any company, corporatistic organization or government to tell us what is factual information. We can discern this ourselves, we can do the necessary research ourselves, and most of us has the experience and ability to call BS when we see it. I am a bit worried for the younger generations though who's only source of information seem to be in many if not most cases, sites like Facebook, Google and so forth. That combined with a filtered mainstream media and a very poor education system could easily lead right back to where East-Europe were only a few decades ago, but with a different style and flavor as well as refined techniques and better ability to push targeted and effective propaganda to the masses. This is history, not conjecture, don't let it repeat.
superioritycplx 10y ago
Same here in US. We call it cherry picked news. The mainstream media got really good at it.

Here in China, gov't has evolved to a whole new level, they don't manipulate media with fake news, but with selected truth.

by est 10y ago

Here in China, gov't has evolved to a whole new level, they don't manipulate media with fake news, but with selected truth.

omarchowdhury 10y ago

Then they are marketing, a modulation of propaganda.

alexdumitru 10y ago

It still sounds better. I feel that "fair and objective" media does that anyway.

Waterluvian 10y ago

Fake news is injected externally. Selected truth comes from the inside.

Consultant32452 10y ago

It's less overt, but I've come to believe the US has the same thing going on. Consider two things... first Fox News just fired O'Reilly, who is the highest rated news man in the country (probably the world). Why? Not because he was a sexist pig. They knew that for years. They did it because the advertisers started pulling out. Now consider that every 4 years the major political parties spend over $1 Billion in advertising. And that's just for the Presidential election. That comes with a lot of power to tell the news media mega corps what they should be talking about.

darawk 10y ago
Just to play devils advocate for a moment (since I kind of agree with you), aren't the politicians fairly captive to the media as well, though? It's not like they can vengefully decide to stop advertising with them.
- Consultant32452 10y ago
  Consider further that there's only 6 media companies in the country and they're all huge mega-conglomerates with billions of dollars in government contracts on the line. A person in a position of political power can easily nudge a contract to a competitor if you don't play ball, costing you millions in a single contract. I mean sure, the government needs things from the media too. We saw CNN give Hillary the secret debate questions during the primary. Rather than going public with this atrocity Clinton just fucking used the information. Literally one person from CNN got fired, but she's got a job at the DNC now so it's totes cool. I think it's safe to assume that this sort of thing is far more common than we'd like to admit.

abdias 10y ago

> China, gov't has evolved to a whole new level, they don't manipulate media with fake news, but with selected truth. This is unfortunately nothing new. They did this in the USSR and East-Europe, and even in "free" countries such as Norway where there was one single national government-owned broadcaster (NRK, similar profile as BBC in the UK) feeding propaganda for the socialist labor party in the political areas. Satellite dishes was forbidden up till late 80's, and the first commercial national broadcaster (not via satellite) came about in 1993 IIRC (the gov't channel was BTW ad-free and financed through a TV-license, giving you the right to own a TV and radio). This is organized censorship and I have been around long enough to see this come and go in various places. I'm sorry, we don't need any company, corporatistic organization or government to tell us what is factual information. We can discern this ourselves, we can do the necessary research ourselves, and most of us has the experience and ability to call BS when we see it. I am a bit worried for the younger generations though who's only source of information seem to be in many if not most cases, sites like Facebook, Google and so forth. That combined with a filtered mainstream media and a very poor education system could easily lead right back to where East-Europe were only a few decades ago, but with a different style and flavor as well as refined techniques and better ability to push targeted and effective propaganda to the masses. This is history, not conjecture, don't let it repeat.

superioritycplx 10y ago

Same here in US. We call it cherry picked news. The mainstream media got really good at it.