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I'm saying free press can also be free propaganda, it's not a matter of which is superior because fundamentally they all have an agenda to serve. Also I'm not

I'm saying free press can also be free propaganda, it's not a matter of which is superior because fundamentally they all have an agenda to serve. Also I'm not sure what you are referring to when you are talking about state propaganda. Do you mean BBC or abc or what?

danShumway 7y ago
Free press can be free propaganda. State press is free propaganda. Free press also has a check-and-balance in that other journalists can call out its abuses. State press has no check-and-balance, because everyone who contradicts it gets thrown in prison. Even if someone distrusts literally everything that modern press is putting out, they'd still prefer to live in a world where they're legally allowed to publish blog posts talking about how bad the press is. More to the point, if someone assumes the BBC is propaganda because it's publicly funded, why would they want to live in a world where only the BBC is allowed to broadcast? Saying that one system has faults doesn't imply that it's a good idea for us to switch to a system that is strictly worse on nearly every axis.
- hungryhobo 7y ago
  You are still not getting it, how likely would a British journalist have the best interest of China at heart? So if BBC were to publish propaganda against China, how likely would they act as the check and balance that you talk about?
  - danShumway 7y ago
    No, I get what you're saying. It's just that I think the solution you've proposed is unhelpful. > how likely would a British journalist have the best interest of China at heart? More likely than the British government. Additionally, under a free press, anyone in Britain can publish anything criticizing the BBC, and anyone can claim that it doesn't have China's best interests at heart. Heck, even China can publish information in Britain that criticizes the BBC. Under a state-propaganda system, only state approved actors get to publish information, which means that however slight you think it is that someone would call out the BBC, a free press is still the more-likely system for that to happen. China is better off because Britain has a free press. In regards to China itself, the idea I gather you're putting forward is that China can't counter the BBC's propaganda on its own and therefore has to protect its citizens by shielding their ears. There are a lot of problems with this idea that boil down to, 'every time a nation has tried it, it's been awful for the citizens involved.' But a more general argument against this idea is that it doesn't scale -- it is always easier to win an argument when you control what the other person is and isn't allowed to say. If China doesn't trust its citizens to hear news from other countries, there's not going to be a point in the future where it suddenly starts trusting them. It will always be easier to make the argument that we have to protect stupid people from hearing stupid things. An indefinite state-propaganda system is in the long run almost universally worse for the world as a whole, and almost universally worse for the citizens of individual countries. We also have a lot of examples in the past of it being worse for citizens in the short term. But the fact that there is no off-ramp for state propaganda, and no check-and-balance system to prevent it from going bad -- that would be enough to make it dangerous even if that short-term data didn't exist.
    - hungryhobo 7y ago
      Let me just reiterate, I agree with the ideal of free speech. And I also agree that it's better for society if free speech is functioning as intended. But I disagree with couple things. First, propaganda exists everywhere, in China its carried out through censorship, in the west people do have free speech, but whose voice gets heared is controlled by a few media moguls. And I do think there are off ramp for censorship, and if I were to guess maybe in 20 years, when china's economic development matures into a developed economy and its opinions are no longer simply waved off as propaganda but carries concrete results to back it up.
      - danShumway 7y ago
        > in the west people do have free speech, but whose voice gets heared is controlled by a few media moguls. If the Western media moguls actually controlled speech to the degree people think they do, Donald Trump would not be president. I won't even deny that there are competing interests in Western media, that there are prevailing narratives that arise in certain subgroups, and even broader cultural narratives that arise across the overwhelming majority of news sources. There are lots of broad problems to address. But it seems weird to claim that media in the US and EU are entirely controlled by a few colluding owners during one of the most politically divisive periods in recent history. If there are a few moguls controlling the message, they're doing a really crappy job of it. > and its opinions are no longer simply waved off as propaganda but carries concrete results to back it up In theory, I guess I agree that could happen? But if someone spends all of their time lying, and practicing lying, and seeing large benefits from lying, I don't assume they'll get more truthful over time -- I assume they'll get better at the thing they're practicing. In regards to the wider world, the order can't be, "people will respect Chinese government opinions, and then they'll open themselves up to criticism." That's just not how respect works. People put less stock in Chinese propaganda about its economic strategies because China has a large history of lying about human rights violations and censoring critics. People assume (not without reason) that a government that's willing to lie about protesters and ethnic groups might also be willing to lie about its economic positions and strategies. If China is waiting for other countries to respect its opinions before it opens up to internal scrutiny, then it's going to be waiting for a long time -- because the lack of internal scrutiny is the reason people don't respect them.

danShumway 7y ago

Free press can be free propaganda. State press is free propaganda. Free press also has a check-and-balance in that other journalists can call out its abuses. State press has no check-and-balance, because everyone who contradicts it gets thrown in prison. Even if someone distrusts literally everything that modern press is putting out, they'd still prefer to live in a world where they're legally allowed to publish blog posts talking about how bad the press is. More to the point, if someone assumes the BBC is propaganda because it's publicly funded, why would they want to live in a world where only the BBC is allowed to broadcast? Saying that one system has faults doesn't imply that it's a good idea for us to switch to a system that is strictly worse on nearly every axis.

hungryhobo 7y ago
You are still not getting it, how likely would a British journalist have the best interest of China at heart? So if BBC were to publish propaganda against China, how likely would they act as the check and balance that you talk about?
- danShumway 7y ago
  No, I get what you're saying. It's just that I think the solution you've proposed is unhelpful. > how likely would a British journalist have the best interest of China at heart? More likely than the British government. Additionally, under a free press, anyone in Britain can publish anything criticizing the BBC, and anyone can claim that it doesn't have China's best interests at heart. Heck, even China can publish information in Britain that criticizes the BBC. Under a state-propaganda system, only state approved actors get to publish information, which means that however slight you think it is that someone would call out the BBC, a free press is still the more-likely system for that to happen. China is better off because Britain has a free press. In regards to China itself, the idea I gather you're putting forward is that China can't counter the BBC's propaganda on its own and therefore has to protect its citizens by shielding their ears. There are a lot of problems with this idea that boil down to, 'every time a nation has tried it, it's been awful for the citizens involved.' But a more general argument against this idea is that it doesn't scale -- it is always easier to win an argument when you control what the other person is and isn't allowed to say. If China doesn't trust its citizens to hear news from other countries, there's not going to be a point in the future where it suddenly starts trusting them. It will always be easier to make the argument that we have to protect stupid people from hearing stupid things. An indefinite state-propaganda system is in the long run almost universally worse for the world as a whole, and almost universally worse for the citizens of individual countries. We also have a lot of examples in the past of it being worse for citizens in the short term. But the fact that there is no off-ramp for state propaganda, and no check-and-balance system to prevent it from going bad -- that would be enough to make it dangerous even if that short-term data didn't exist.
  - hungryhobo 7y ago
    Let me just reiterate, I agree with the ideal of free speech. And I also agree that it's better for society if free speech is functioning as intended. But I disagree with couple things. First, propaganda exists everywhere, in China its carried out through censorship, in the west people do have free speech, but whose voice gets heared is controlled by a few media moguls. And I do think there are off ramp for censorship, and if I were to guess maybe in 20 years, when china's economic development matures into a developed economy and its opinions are no longer simply waved off as propaganda but carries concrete results to back it up.
    - danShumway 7y ago
      > in the west people do have free speech, but whose voice gets heared is controlled by a few media moguls. If the Western media moguls actually controlled speech to the degree people think they do, Donald Trump would not be president. I won't even deny that there are competing interests in Western media, that there are prevailing narratives that arise in certain subgroups, and even broader cultural narratives that arise across the overwhelming majority of news sources. There are lots of broad problems to address. But it seems weird to claim that media in the US and EU are entirely controlled by a few colluding owners during one of the most politically divisive periods in recent history. If there are a few moguls controlling the message, they're doing a really crappy job of it. > and its opinions are no longer simply waved off as propaganda but carries concrete results to back it up In theory, I guess I agree that could happen? But if someone spends all of their time lying, and practicing lying, and seeing large benefits from lying, I don't assume they'll get more truthful over time -- I assume they'll get better at the thing they're practicing. In regards to the wider world, the order can't be, "people will respect Chinese government opinions, and then they'll open themselves up to criticism." That's just not how respect works. People put less stock in Chinese propaganda about its economic strategies because China has a large history of lying about human rights violations and censoring critics. People assume (not without reason) that a government that's willing to lie about protesters and ethnic groups might also be willing to lie about its economic positions and strategies. If China is waiting for other countries to respect its opinions before it opens up to internal scrutiny, then it's going to be waiting for a long time -- because the lack of internal scrutiny is the reason people don't respect them.