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Unfortunately the U.S. has done a really good job at convincing it’s citizens that there is freedom of the press in their country even though time and time agai

Unfortunately the U.S. has done a really good job at convincing it’s citizens that there is freedom of the press in their country even though time and time again we’ve seen the mass media in the U.S. severely comprised by corporate interests and/or politics. When is the last time you’ve turned on the news and seen a balanced view given on Russia-U.S. relations? In the last three years the New York Times hasn’t reported a single positive story on Russia or written an unbiased one that would present a counterviewpoint. If we jump back two decades ago the American people were lead to believe that weapons of mass destruction were present in Afghanistan and Iraq and it was the cornerstone of the war initiative there. The U.S. ended up violating not only international law and the sovereignty of the nations of Iraq and Afghanistan but killing thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent people there on a baseless claim. Today we see the same propaganda being used against countries like Iran, Russia and China. Countries in attempt to defend themselves from U.S. aggression are building nuclear arsenals and the world has become a much more dangerous place to live in as a result. In my opinion this all goes back to freedom of the press, or lack of it.

enaaem 6y ago
Freedom of press is not the same as unbiased press. For example, US citizens can watch Chinese news media in the US, but Chinese people cannot watch US news in China.
- yorwba 6y ago
  > US citizens can watch Chinese news media in the US They could, but they don't, because they wouldn't understand a thing. So in practice, I think the situation is reversed: there are more people in China who watch US news than people in the US who watch Chinese news.
  - labster 6y ago
    I know quite a few people in the U.S. who watch RT, a Russian state-controlled media operation. The pivot from backing the left fringe to the Trumpist right has been quite interesting. Not affiliated with the bug tracker RT, in case you were wondering.
    - chupasaurus 6y ago
      Russia Today was created as a child company of RIA Novosti. RIA Novosti itself was created as Sovinformbureau in July 1941 so the propaganda is in it's core.
    - secondcoming 6y ago
      Jeremy Corbyn, the former leader of the UK's far-left Labour party was quite a fan of Russia Today.
      - ben_w 6y ago
        Please, the Labour Party is centre-left not far-left by U.K. standards. Corbyn himself is far-left (again by U.K. standards), but the Parliamentary Labour Party itself gave him 172-40 against in a vote of no confidence in 2016, only for the public members to vote for him 313,209-193,229 in the subsequent leadership contest. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Labour_Party_leadership_election_(UK) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Labour_Party_leadership...
        spaetzleesser 6y ago
        When you watch FoxNews they call everything that’s not in line with them “far left”. It’s a cool trick to mark anybody only slightly left from them as extremist. And judging from conversations with FoxNews viewers it works like a charm.
        ceejayoz 6y ago
        A tactic that's backfiring on them now, as they get accused by the President of "pandering to the left". https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/11/trump-nuclear-against-fox-news-election-coverage https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/11/trump-nuclear-agains...
        spaetzleesser 6y ago
        Allying with Trump is a dangerous path because his only ideology is himself.
  - T-A 6y ago
    These seem fairly comprehensible: https://www.cgtn.com https://www.cgtn.com https://english.cctv.com https://english.cctv.com http://en.cncnews.cn http://en.cncnews.cn
    - yorwba 6y ago
      Their US equivalents would be https://www.rfa.org/mandarin/ https://www.rfa.org/mandarin/ https://www.voachinese.com/ https://www.voachinese.com/ Those are government-sponsored, explicitly foreign-facing (the language is a big hint) mouthpieces that are about as representative of "US news" as the sites you link are representative of "Chinese news" (i.e. barely).
      - enaaem 6y ago
        All those sites are blocked in China. Even hackersnews is blocked. Check: http://www.chinafirewalltest.com http://www.chinafirewalltest.com
        acqq 6y ago
        Sure, the web sites are blocked, but radio waves couldn't be. And traditionally there were always enough radio stations carefully built and sufficiently financed to cover the target areas. RFA: https://www.rfa.org/about/info/frequencies.html https://www.rfa.org/about/info/frequencies.html VOA: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https://www.voachinese.com/p/5869.html https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https... A nice example of what one U.S. journalist knew regarding the coverage of North Korea in 2013: https://www.northkoreatech.org/2013/04/11/us-wants-voa-rfa-transmitter-in-south-korea/ https://www.northkoreatech.org/2013/04/11/us-wants-voa-rfa-t...
        yorwba 6y ago
        I know, just like https://cn.ft.com/ https://cn.ft.com/ and https://cn.nytimes.com/ https://cn.nytimes.com/ (which are more likely to be worth reading, although not at the same level as the English originals), but the blocks can be circumvented by sufficiently motivated individuals. And I think there are more of those in China than there are sufficiently motivated individuals in the US circumventing the language barrier to read https://www.caixin.com/ https://www.caixin.com/ or any of the magazines published by http://boyamedia.com/ http://boyamedia.com/ . (Of course those aren't representative of "Chinese news" either, most of which probably consists of clickbait blogspam.)
- throwaway4good 6y ago
  I betcha there are more people in China who watch CNN, Fox News etc. than there are people in America who watch CGTN etc. It is trivial for the US to allow foreign media on US grounds if noone watches it. If the foreign media becomes popular, the pipe will soon play a different tune. Case in point: TikTok.
  - scoot_718 6y ago
    There is no independent media in China, your comparison is invalid. They can cry all they want about it - it's their own fault.
    - yorwba 6y ago
      If there's no independent media in China, how do you explain that a Chinese magazine's interview with Dr. Ai Fen was censored on social media? https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/11/coronavirus-wuhan-doctor-ai-fen-speaks-out-against-authorities https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/11/coronavirus-wu... Surely if they're not independent they'd just not have published it in the first place.
      - 50or05 6y ago
        Different outlets are controlled by different people some are more loyal to Xi, but ultimately none of them can go wild. Even in this case the news have been removed quickly and Dr. Ai Fen disappeared as well: https://rsf.org/en/news/whistleblowing-doctor-missing-after-criticizing-beijings-coronavirus-censorship https://rsf.org/en/news/whistleblowing-doctor-missing-after-...
        yorwba 6y ago
        > Different outlets are controlled by different people some are more loyal to Xi, but ultimately none of them can go wild. This is how "independent media" work in most countries that have such a thing: different outlets are controlled by different people, resulting in some diversity of opinion, but not every idea gets the same airtime. Of course the definition of "going wild" is different in a Chinese context. Also, from the article you linked: > 04/13/2020 UPDATE RSF has taken note of the video published on the Weibo account of the whistleblower Ai Fen, which suggests that she is free to move, and hopes that it was not staged by the Chinese regime.
- kome 6y ago
  i'm pretty sure the contrary is true.
porpoise 6y ago
Very much agreed. One of the smartest people I know, a Frenchman called Phillippe Lemoine, published 50k words in Quillette [1] on China's role in the COVID pandemic, comprehensively addressing the cover-up charges, accusations of data fudging, etc, countering the NYT/Wapo narrative, but to this day, people are still talking about "Chinese cover-up" as if it's an uncontroversial fact, not even bothering to answer any of his arguments. Many people are even still repeating the "China closed Wuhan but sent citizens everywhere" accusation that has already been debunked and retracted by its original promulgator [2,3], and even people who know it's debunked don't bother to correct it when others bring it up. When I originally came to the US, I was attracted by its high-minded ideals, but the behavior of the press and most politicians (and, I have to say, most of the tweeting public) changed my perception forever. ━━ [1] https://quillette.com/category/covid-19/china-syndrome-series/ https://quillette.com/category/covid-19/china-syndrome-serie... [2] https://www.factcheck.org/2020/05/trumps-flawed-china-travel-conspiracy/ https://www.factcheck.org/2020/05/trumps-flawed-china-travel... [3] https://danielabell.com/?s=Ferguson&submit=Search https://danielabell.com/?s=Ferguson&submit=Search
- mensetmanusman 6y ago
  Whenever humans are involved, keep your expectations low, and you wont be disappointed.
  - StavrosK 6y ago
    I still get disappointed.
    - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
      your expectations are not low enough.
- croissants 6y ago
  The linked Quillette article series is pretty dang good, and offers convincing refutations of things I believed before reading it (most of which are described in porpoise's comment).
scoot_718 6y ago
> when was the last time you've [...] seen a balanced view given on Russia-U.S. relations? All the time. It's fucked and Russia fucked it. The wonderful thing about being in a free nation is the access to the news of other countries. It helps you see which ones are the outliers. It's not yours. > In the last three years the New York Times hasn’t reported a single positive story on Russia Gee, I wonder why that might be? Nobody is going to write anything positive when a nation has expelled independent journalists, assassinated people in foreign nations, caused wars in others, been aggressively attacking fishing vessels, attempted assassinations of their own politicans, attacking their own citizens for their religion. Who is going to care about human interest stories from such a nation? What would be a positive story you'd like to see printed in that time frame? Name one.
- dash2 6y ago
  Actually, you will do much better at understanding Russia if you understand all of it, including the positive sides. In fact, here, go read the Moscow Times: https://www.themoscowtimes.com/ https://www.themoscowtimes.com/ They're seriously critical of the government, but they don't make the mistake of thinking all there is to report is misery. Context: I'm not pro-Russia, I think Putin is a wholesale scumbag, for all their faults I greatly prefer the US and the West to any of the alternatives, and I deeply distrust knee-jerk anti-Western leftists.
- pxlmnk 6y ago
  > All the time. It's fucked and Russia fucked it. hahahah case in point right here folks
- wazoox 6y ago
  But do you realize that everything you're damning Russia for, the US is doing exactly the same right now ? Case in point: Assange persecution, war in Afghanistan, Irak, Libya; "targeted assassination" of various people, more recently an Iranian general, waged coups around the world, most recently Bolivia, Brazil, etc. "Who is going to care about human interest stories from such a nation"? Man it's time that you grow up out of "manifest destiny".
- JacKTrocinskI 6y ago
DSingularity 6y ago
The lower bound on civilian casualties is in the hundreds of thousands and the upper bound is a little over a million. A million innocent people murdered by the enlightened, modern, and most definitely civilized west. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War
TeMPOraL 6y ago
> Unfortunately the U.S. has done a really good job at convincing it’s citizens that there is freedom of the press in their country even though time and time again we’ve seen the mass media in the U.S. severely comprised by corporate interests and/or politics. I think the trick isn't in making people believe the press is free - the trick is in misleading people about what it means. The press is mostly free in the US, meaning the government isn't going to explicitly censor or micromanage it. By the same token, the press is also free to do whatever it wants - like, optimize for profits, like a good private sector entity does. Some good ways for an ad-funded news publisher to optimize profits are: - writing things that get people to read/watch the content (and thus, ads), regardless of whether these things are true, accurate, or appropriate in a civilized society; - getting paid for delivering more ads, e.g. as sponsored (officially or not) content; - ensuring ongoing access to freshest news by not burning the sources, particularly government or corporate ones, by e.g. publishing things said sources don't want to see published This way, a fully free press walks into censorship and bias anyway, of its own volition[0]. Freedom of press is important, but I think we talk too much about ideas and principles, and too little about actual system dynamics in play. -- [0] - Well, as much volition as you can have in a highly competitive industry, where if you don't sacrifice your values, your competitor will, and then you'll run out of money and die.
- bxk1 6y ago
  Chomsky did a lot of work to show that it's not optimizing for profits or some subconscious biases of people influencing press, but very deliberate power structure pushing specific censorship, propaganda, it's all very conscious effort. Private ownership here helps a lot of course, not because of profits, but because owners are able to push policies and narratives top down.
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    I don't buy conscious effort all that much. It's reassuring to believe there are some evil actors in control over the narrative. Such people could be identified, and eventually removed from their positions of influence. It's much scarier, and much closer to the truth, that we're dealing with a system of incentives that's stronger than any individual or group. We're not being led astray by the few with an agenda; we're all just flowing down the optimization gradient.
Paradigma11 6y ago
"If we jump back two decades ago the American people were lead to believe that weapons of mass destruction were present in Afghanistan and Iraq and it was the cornerstone of the war initiative there." Nope, most news outlets were very critical about the iraqi WMD story with some notable exceptions like the aforementioned NYT and there never was one with afghanistan. Just because there are no/few positive stories about russia does not necessarily mean that the media is biased.
- vagrantJin 6y ago
  You may or may not realize how truly frightening that is. A military in a democratic, sovereign nation should have oversight from civilian authority. If people knew that their sons and daughters were effectively raiding another country as a belligerent force - why did they not stop it. The fear comes not in that they didn't, but that they couldn't Human nature should be feared, especially when you have a loose cannon firing at will, and only grateful that the barrel is facing away from you. If it were to turn towards you, how do would you stop it? We never truly learn from history as much as we think we do.
  - alextheparrot 6y ago
    > A military in a democratic, sovereign nation should have oversight from civilian authority Would it not be fair to say that in a representative government those elected representatives are the civilian authority? The US Congress approved using military force in Iraq, by quite large majorities in both bodies. That is not to say the war was good or the reasons true, just that the second paragraph of your critique seems unfounded as there was oversight by the republic’s civilian authority.
    - vagrantJin 6y ago
      > Would it not be fair to say that in a representative government those elected representatives are the civilian authority? Absolutely. But those office bearers have constituencies I presume? If office bearer xan make their own decisions regardless of what the people who put them in power say - we would be stretching the idea of a democratic republic to the extreme, don't you think? The taxpayers should have the ability to veto decisions if in large enough numbers.
tzs 6y ago
I don’t remember allegations of WMDs being a significant driver of the US invasion of Afghanistan. Almost all the justifications I remember reading about or seeing in the news and in government statements involved the 9/11 attacks.
- dragontamer 6y ago
  We invaded Afghanistan because the Taliban were in direct support of Al Qaeda. Agents of whom brought down the twin towers on 9/11. Iraq probably was a mistake, now that we look back on it through clearer lens of history.
  - mindslight 6y ago
    Iraq being an aggressive war for conquest was obvious at the time, if one wasn't hopped up on propaganda goofballs - motte and bailey "support our troops" etc. It's not enough to claim the enlightened viewpoint in hindsight. You have to be on the right side of history while it's happening.
  - fishtacos 6y ago
    As I recall, the Taliban refused to hand over bin Laden and disavow Al Qaeda, which is why they were invaded. Al Qaeda openly bragged about attacking the Great Shaytan (Satan). I don't recall much opposition to that invasion. The Iraq War was a definite mistake. The only argument that might stand, which is completely absurd if actually analyzed, is that of humanitarian intervention (against Saddam and his Ba'athist party). Even that humanitarian intervention angle, however, is very suspect due to the human cost of severe sanctions imposed on on Iraq after the first Gulf War, which the US maintained and pressured allies to do as well. As we saw, once no WMDs were found, the US government switched to a different argument - the humanitarian one. And when that was shown to be BS due to thousands of civilians dying monthly at the hands of The Coalition of the Willing, they switched the argument to "bringing Democracy" to the country. It's the biggest fuck up and biggest moral stain on this country since I have been living here (mid 90s). Ultimately, the worldwide opposition was palpable. The WMD inspectors from the UN were kicked out by the US. Scott Ritter, the head of the UN group, decried the invasion and did in fact predict the US would achieve nothing and leave "with their tail between their legs". It should have never happened.
AndrewBissell 6y ago
Yesterday I heard a report from the BBC talking (in very oblique terms, of course) about the possibility Germany will replace the U.S. as the main military opponent to Russia. The German people's opposition to the vastly increased defense budgets this would require was described a quixotic insistence on "moral purity."
lenkite 6y ago
6 corporations control 90% of all US media https://techstartups.com/2020/09/18/6-corporations-control-90-media-america-illusion-choice-objectivity-2020/ https://techstartups.com/2020/09/18/6-corporations-control-9... If they don't want something published, it will never be seen by most people.

enaaem 6y ago

Freedom of press is not the same as unbiased press. For example, US citizens can watch Chinese news media in the US, but Chinese people cannot watch US news in China.

yorwba 6y ago
> US citizens can watch Chinese news media in the US They could, but they don't, because they wouldn't understand a thing. So in practice, I think the situation is reversed: there are more people in China who watch US news than people in the US who watch Chinese news.
- labster 6y ago
  I know quite a few people in the U.S. who watch RT, a Russian state-controlled media operation. The pivot from backing the left fringe to the Trumpist right has been quite interesting. Not affiliated with the bug tracker RT, in case you were wondering.
  - chupasaurus 6y ago
    Russia Today was created as a child company of RIA Novosti. RIA Novosti itself was created as Sovinformbureau in July 1941 so the propaganda is in it's core.
  - secondcoming 6y ago
    Jeremy Corbyn, the former leader of the UK's far-left Labour party was quite a fan of Russia Today.
    - ben_w 6y ago
      Please, the Labour Party is centre-left not far-left by U.K. standards. Corbyn himself is far-left (again by U.K. standards), but the Parliamentary Labour Party itself gave him 172-40 against in a vote of no confidence in 2016, only for the public members to vote for him 313,209-193,229 in the subsequent leadership contest. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Labour_Party_leadership_election_(UK) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Labour_Party_leadership...
      - spaetzleesser 6y ago
        When you watch FoxNews they call everything that’s not in line with them “far left”. It’s a cool trick to mark anybody only slightly left from them as extremist. And judging from conversations with FoxNews viewers it works like a charm.
        ceejayoz 6y ago
        A tactic that's backfiring on them now, as they get accused by the President of "pandering to the left". https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/11/trump-nuclear-against-fox-news-election-coverage https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/11/trump-nuclear-agains...
        spaetzleesser 6y ago
        Allying with Trump is a dangerous path because his only ideology is himself.
- T-A 6y ago
  These seem fairly comprehensible: https://www.cgtn.com https://www.cgtn.com https://english.cctv.com https://english.cctv.com http://en.cncnews.cn http://en.cncnews.cn
  - yorwba 6y ago
    Their US equivalents would be https://www.rfa.org/mandarin/ https://www.rfa.org/mandarin/ https://www.voachinese.com/ https://www.voachinese.com/ Those are government-sponsored, explicitly foreign-facing (the language is a big hint) mouthpieces that are about as representative of "US news" as the sites you link are representative of "Chinese news" (i.e. barely).
    - enaaem 6y ago
      All those sites are blocked in China. Even hackersnews is blocked. Check: http://www.chinafirewalltest.com http://www.chinafirewalltest.com
      - acqq 6y ago
        Sure, the web sites are blocked, but radio waves couldn't be. And traditionally there were always enough radio stations carefully built and sufficiently financed to cover the target areas. RFA: https://www.rfa.org/about/info/frequencies.html https://www.rfa.org/about/info/frequencies.html VOA: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https://www.voachinese.com/p/5869.html https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https... A nice example of what one U.S. journalist knew regarding the coverage of North Korea in 2013: https://www.northkoreatech.org/2013/04/11/us-wants-voa-rfa-transmitter-in-south-korea/ https://www.northkoreatech.org/2013/04/11/us-wants-voa-rfa-t...
      - yorwba 6y ago
        I know, just like https://cn.ft.com/ https://cn.ft.com/ and https://cn.nytimes.com/ https://cn.nytimes.com/ (which are more likely to be worth reading, although not at the same level as the English originals), but the blocks can be circumvented by sufficiently motivated individuals. And I think there are more of those in China than there are sufficiently motivated individuals in the US circumventing the language barrier to read https://www.caixin.com/ https://www.caixin.com/ or any of the magazines published by http://boyamedia.com/ http://boyamedia.com/ . (Of course those aren't representative of "Chinese news" either, most of which probably consists of clickbait blogspam.)
throwaway4good 6y ago
I betcha there are more people in China who watch CNN, Fox News etc. than there are people in America who watch CGTN etc. It is trivial for the US to allow foreign media on US grounds if noone watches it. If the foreign media becomes popular, the pipe will soon play a different tune. Case in point: TikTok.
- scoot_718 6y ago
  There is no independent media in China, your comparison is invalid. They can cry all they want about it - it's their own fault.
  - yorwba 6y ago
    If there's no independent media in China, how do you explain that a Chinese magazine's interview with Dr. Ai Fen was censored on social media? https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/11/coronavirus-wuhan-doctor-ai-fen-speaks-out-against-authorities https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/11/coronavirus-wu... Surely if they're not independent they'd just not have published it in the first place.
    - 50or05 6y ago
      Different outlets are controlled by different people some are more loyal to Xi, but ultimately none of them can go wild. Even in this case the news have been removed quickly and Dr. Ai Fen disappeared as well: https://rsf.org/en/news/whistleblowing-doctor-missing-after-criticizing-beijings-coronavirus-censorship https://rsf.org/en/news/whistleblowing-doctor-missing-after-...
      - yorwba 6y ago
        > Different outlets are controlled by different people some are more loyal to Xi, but ultimately none of them can go wild. This is how "independent media" work in most countries that have such a thing: different outlets are controlled by different people, resulting in some diversity of opinion, but not every idea gets the same airtime. Of course the definition of "going wild" is different in a Chinese context. Also, from the article you linked: > 04/13/2020 UPDATE RSF has taken note of the video published on the Weibo account of the whistleblower Ai Fen, which suggests that she is free to move, and hopes that it was not staged by the Chinese regime.
kome 6y ago
i'm pretty sure the contrary is true.

porpoise 6y ago

Very much agreed. One of the smartest people I know, a Frenchman called Phillippe Lemoine, published 50k words in Quillette [1] on China's role in the COVID pandemic, comprehensively addressing the cover-up charges, accusations of data fudging, etc, countering the NYT/Wapo narrative, but to this day, people are still talking about "Chinese cover-up" as if it's an uncontroversial fact, not even bothering to answer any of his arguments. Many people are even still repeating the "China closed Wuhan but sent citizens everywhere" accusation that has already been debunked and retracted by its original promulgator [2,3], and even people who know it's debunked don't bother to correct it when others bring it up. When I originally came to the US, I was attracted by its high-minded ideals, but the behavior of the press and most politicians (and, I have to say, most of the tweeting public) changed my perception forever. ━━ [1] https://quillette.com/category/covid-19/china-syndrome-series/ https://quillette.com/category/covid-19/china-syndrome-serie... [2] https://www.factcheck.org/2020/05/trumps-flawed-china-travel-conspiracy/ https://www.factcheck.org/2020/05/trumps-flawed-china-travel... [3] https://danielabell.com/?s=Ferguson&submit=Search https://danielabell.com/?s=Ferguson&submit=Search

mensetmanusman 6y ago
Whenever humans are involved, keep your expectations low, and you wont be disappointed.
- StavrosK 6y ago
  I still get disappointed.
  - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
    your expectations are not low enough.
croissants 6y ago
The linked Quillette article series is pretty dang good, and offers convincing refutations of things I believed before reading it (most of which are described in porpoise's comment).

scoot_718 6y ago

> when was the last time you've [...] seen a balanced view given on Russia-U.S. relations? All the time. It's fucked and Russia fucked it. The wonderful thing about being in a free nation is the access to the news of other countries. It helps you see which ones are the outliers. It's not yours. > In the last three years the New York Times hasn’t reported a single positive story on Russia Gee, I wonder why that might be? Nobody is going to write anything positive when a nation has expelled independent journalists, assassinated people in foreign nations, caused wars in others, been aggressively attacking fishing vessels, attempted assassinations of their own politicans, attacking their own citizens for their religion. Who is going to care about human interest stories from such a nation? What would be a positive story you'd like to see printed in that time frame? Name one.

dash2 6y ago
Actually, you will do much better at understanding Russia if you understand all of it, including the positive sides. In fact, here, go read the Moscow Times: https://www.themoscowtimes.com/ https://www.themoscowtimes.com/ They're seriously critical of the government, but they don't make the mistake of thinking all there is to report is misery. Context: I'm not pro-Russia, I think Putin is a wholesale scumbag, for all their faults I greatly prefer the US and the West to any of the alternatives, and I deeply distrust knee-jerk anti-Western leftists.
pxlmnk 6y ago
> All the time. It's fucked and Russia fucked it. hahahah case in point right here folks
wazoox 6y ago
But do you realize that everything you're damning Russia for, the US is doing exactly the same right now ? Case in point: Assange persecution, war in Afghanistan, Irak, Libya; "targeted assassination" of various people, more recently an Iranian general, waged coups around the world, most recently Bolivia, Brazil, etc. "Who is going to care about human interest stories from such a nation"? Man it's time that you grow up out of "manifest destiny".
JacKTrocinskI 6y ago

DSingularity 6y ago

The lower bound on civilian casualties is in the hundreds of thousands and the upper bound is a little over a million. A million innocent people murdered by the enlightened, modern, and most definitely civilized west. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War

TeMPOraL 6y ago

> Unfortunately the U.S. has done a really good job at convincing it’s citizens that there is freedom of the press in their country even though time and time again we’ve seen the mass media in the U.S. severely comprised by corporate interests and/or politics. I think the trick isn't in making people believe the press is free - the trick is in misleading people about what it means. The press is mostly free in the US, meaning the government isn't going to explicitly censor or micromanage it. By the same token, the press is also free to do whatever it wants - like, optimize for profits, like a good private sector entity does. Some good ways for an ad-funded news publisher to optimize profits are: - writing things that get people to read/watch the content (and thus, ads), regardless of whether these things are true, accurate, or appropriate in a civilized society; - getting paid for delivering more ads, e.g. as sponsored (officially or not) content; - ensuring ongoing access to freshest news by not burning the sources, particularly government or corporate ones, by e.g. publishing things said sources don't want to see published This way, a fully free press walks into censorship and bias anyway, of its own volition[0]. Freedom of press is important, but I think we talk too much about ideas and principles, and too little about actual system dynamics in play. -- [0] - Well, as much volition as you can have in a highly competitive industry, where if you don't sacrifice your values, your competitor will, and then you'll run out of money and die.

bxk1 6y ago
Chomsky did a lot of work to show that it's not optimizing for profits or some subconscious biases of people influencing press, but very deliberate power structure pushing specific censorship, propaganda, it's all very conscious effort. Private ownership here helps a lot of course, not because of profits, but because owners are able to push policies and narratives top down.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  I don't buy conscious effort all that much. It's reassuring to believe there are some evil actors in control over the narrative. Such people could be identified, and eventually removed from their positions of influence. It's much scarier, and much closer to the truth, that we're dealing with a system of incentives that's stronger than any individual or group. We're not being led astray by the few with an agenda; we're all just flowing down the optimization gradient.

Paradigma11 6y ago

"If we jump back two decades ago the American people were lead to believe that weapons of mass destruction were present in Afghanistan and Iraq and it was the cornerstone of the war initiative there." Nope, most news outlets were very critical about the iraqi WMD story with some notable exceptions like the aforementioned NYT and there never was one with afghanistan. Just because there are no/few positive stories about russia does not necessarily mean that the media is biased.

vagrantJin 6y ago
You may or may not realize how truly frightening that is. A military in a democratic, sovereign nation should have oversight from civilian authority. If people knew that their sons and daughters were effectively raiding another country as a belligerent force - why did they not stop it. The fear comes not in that they didn't, but that they couldn't Human nature should be feared, especially when you have a loose cannon firing at will, and only grateful that the barrel is facing away from you. If it were to turn towards you, how do would you stop it? We never truly learn from history as much as we think we do.
- alextheparrot 6y ago
  > A military in a democratic, sovereign nation should have oversight from civilian authority Would it not be fair to say that in a representative government those elected representatives are the civilian authority? The US Congress approved using military force in Iraq, by quite large majorities in both bodies. That is not to say the war was good or the reasons true, just that the second paragraph of your critique seems unfounded as there was oversight by the republic’s civilian authority.
  - vagrantJin 6y ago
    > Would it not be fair to say that in a representative government those elected representatives are the civilian authority? Absolutely. But those office bearers have constituencies I presume? If office bearer xan make their own decisions regardless of what the people who put them in power say - we would be stretching the idea of a democratic republic to the extreme, don't you think? The taxpayers should have the ability to veto decisions if in large enough numbers.

tzs 6y ago

I don’t remember allegations of WMDs being a significant driver of the US invasion of Afghanistan. Almost all the justifications I remember reading about or seeing in the news and in government statements involved the 9/11 attacks.

dragontamer 6y ago
We invaded Afghanistan because the Taliban were in direct support of Al Qaeda. Agents of whom brought down the twin towers on 9/11. Iraq probably was a mistake, now that we look back on it through clearer lens of history.
- mindslight 6y ago
  Iraq being an aggressive war for conquest was obvious at the time, if one wasn't hopped up on propaganda goofballs - motte and bailey "support our troops" etc. It's not enough to claim the enlightened viewpoint in hindsight. You have to be on the right side of history while it's happening.
- fishtacos 6y ago
  As I recall, the Taliban refused to hand over bin Laden and disavow Al Qaeda, which is why they were invaded. Al Qaeda openly bragged about attacking the Great Shaytan (Satan). I don't recall much opposition to that invasion. The Iraq War was a definite mistake. The only argument that might stand, which is completely absurd if actually analyzed, is that of humanitarian intervention (against Saddam and his Ba'athist party). Even that humanitarian intervention angle, however, is very suspect due to the human cost of severe sanctions imposed on on Iraq after the first Gulf War, which the US maintained and pressured allies to do as well. As we saw, once no WMDs were found, the US government switched to a different argument - the humanitarian one. And when that was shown to be BS due to thousands of civilians dying monthly at the hands of The Coalition of the Willing, they switched the argument to "bringing Democracy" to the country. It's the biggest fuck up and biggest moral stain on this country since I have been living here (mid 90s). Ultimately, the worldwide opposition was palpable. The WMD inspectors from the UN were kicked out by the US. Scott Ritter, the head of the UN group, decried the invasion and did in fact predict the US would achieve nothing and leave "with their tail between their legs". It should have never happened.

AndrewBissell 6y ago

Yesterday I heard a report from the BBC talking (in very oblique terms, of course) about the possibility Germany will replace the U.S. as the main military opponent to Russia. The German people's opposition to the vastly increased defense budgets this would require was described a quixotic insistence on "moral purity."

lenkite 6y ago

6 corporations control 90% of all US media https://techstartups.com/2020/09/18/6-corporations-control-90-media-america-illusion-choice-objectivity-2020/ https://techstartups.com/2020/09/18/6-corporations-control-9... If they don't want something published, it will never be seen by most people.