5 ms·

Why does every article on mis- and dis-information I see on HN these days starts with some primer that encourages the audience to assume that it's predominantly

Why does every article on mis- and dis-information I see on HN these days starts with some primer that encourages the audience to assume that it's predominantly the product of the political right? In this case the primer takes the following form: > The utterance emerged in February 2019 from Fox & Friends presenter Pete Hegseth This is in the first paragraph. Before the subject is properly introduced and defined, before the reader even begins processing what the article says about it, the author encourages the audience to think about how barbarous and primitive Fox News is, which is guaranteed to tint everything that follows. This is a propaganda technique and it's becoming ubiquitous in modern writing.

p1necone 5y ago
Have you considered that maybe the North American right is just that bad. Reality doesn't magically shift so that it always exists in the exact center of the North American political spectrum
- philliphaydon 5y ago
  Watching America from a distance, the left is JUST as bad as the right.
  - bhupy 5y ago
    There’s also something to be said about not only being “just as bad”, but being righteously self-unaware about it.
  - awd 5y ago
    This the result of the two party systems. Bi-paetisan compromise is rare, and even then is often backdoored with legislation not actually discussed. This leads to the two parties only ever being in an adversarial relationship. In other systems, sometime you get to make a majority government with other parties. This differi means that in mutti-party systems the "party line" is "these guys are ok, and reasonable" every once in a while. Not so in the two party system, where the winner-takes-all perpetual adversarial relationship generates a constant steam of "the others suck, are dumb, evil and want to destroy the country"
  - OminousWeapons 5y ago
    I wouldn't say they are just as bad. They are also bad but they're bad in a very different way. The far right effectively has decided that objective reality doesn't exist at all. The truth is whatever they say it is and they will manufacture data as necessary. The far left on the other hand believes in data but is constrained by their inherent need to reduce every single problem to a combination of race, sex, or class, no matter how multi-faceted / complex the problems actually are. They start from the conclusion and work back to make the data fit. Where the far left and far right overlap is that they are both virulently populist, they both demonize their opponents, and they both believe in the absolute moral purity of their cause.
    - rriepe 5y ago
      As an American, I'd say one side is always swept up in a religious fervor and the other is strung out on drugs. They switch roles every twenty years or so. The one doing drugs allows humor and the religious one doesn't. They're going to switch again within the next two years, by my estimate. It'll be big, traditionalist sects (Catholic, Mormon, etc) on the right and cannabis on the left.
  - SamoyedFurFluff 5y ago
    Also watching from a distance, what’re you talking about? The American right media moguls have fucked up Australian politicsalong with it, and no leftist moguls can claim the same.
    - philliphaydon 5y ago
      I left Australia 9 years ago, politics was pretty messed up then. That was Australia's own doing.
  - danaris 5y ago
    One of these sides has literal, actual Nazis trying their level best to destroy democracy, supporting and protecting people who are murdering people of color, LGBTQ+ people, and others who don't fit into their fascist ideology, and remove most of the legal rights women have gained over the past century+. The other side has...politicians who are too beholden to corporations to fight as hard as they should for progressive policies. If you genuinely think that the American left is just as bad as the American right, then either you really haven't been paying attention, or...I guess you think the Nazis had a point or something?
    - philliphaydon 5y ago
      This is why I’m glad I don’t live in America. The brain washing from the media left is as bad as the crazy stuff the right believes.
      - danaris 5y ago
        Do you have any information to actually refute what I said, or just handwaving about "brainwashing"?
        philliphaydon 5y ago
        I do. But it’s 2021. If I listed out a ton of problems on the left I’ll get a bunch of people on the left screaming “racist” and “nazi”, etc. Can’t have debates and arguments anymore.
- ekianjo 5y ago
  Have you considerered your own bias when making this statement ?
foerbert 5y ago
If you'd gone a little bit further into the article, you'd have seen why. It's context. There's a whole discussion included where the event you're attributing to malicious priming is used as an example. What's the alternative here? Leave the audience guessing about what's going on? Omitting the highly relevant fact the person under discussion is a TV presenter on a major news network? Going out of their way to obscure the source of a public comment so it's harder for their readers to verify? I really don't see what else they could have done. The only quasi-reasonable alternative would be to have teased the fact, really let the readers come to the assumption the person is a crazy wacko that nobody would ever listen to, and _then_ drop the bomb he said this on Fox? Except that would turn it from an article on misinformation into a hit piece on Pete Hegseth and Fox, which I can only assume would have made you even less happy. Seriously, what else were they supposed to do here?
- toomim 5y ago
  > If you'd gone a little bit further into the article, you'd have seen why. I went further into the article, and found that every ... single ... example ... was about the political right. > Seriously, what else were they supposed to do here? Give examples of misinformation on the left.
  - th0ma5 5y ago
    I think there's a lot of stuff that goes around and left circles that is pretty bleeding heart sort of exaggeration. A lot of the "Now This" content is rather heavy handed. But the vast majority of people on the right swallow as gospel every single bit of misinformation, and they are much more adept at getting the vast majority of the right in lock step with their misinformation. A great deal of Republicans for instance still believe that the election was somehow stolen, when it is now, because of all of the lost court cases, the most proven outcome in American election history. They believe the propaganda so much that even though they may agree with a lot of the facts that line up with the fact that it wasn't stolen, they still "believe in their hearts" that it "must've been stolen." I don't know a better way to describe the most desired outcome of really effective propaganda than that.

p1necone 5y ago

Have you considered that maybe the North American right is just that bad. Reality doesn't magically shift so that it always exists in the exact center of the North American political spectrum

philliphaydon 5y ago
Watching America from a distance, the left is JUST as bad as the right.
- bhupy 5y ago
  There’s also something to be said about not only being “just as bad”, but being righteously self-unaware about it.
- awd 5y ago
  This the result of the two party systems. Bi-paetisan compromise is rare, and even then is often backdoored with legislation not actually discussed. This leads to the two parties only ever being in an adversarial relationship. In other systems, sometime you get to make a majority government with other parties. This differi means that in mutti-party systems the "party line" is "these guys are ok, and reasonable" every once in a while. Not so in the two party system, where the winner-takes-all perpetual adversarial relationship generates a constant steam of "the others suck, are dumb, evil and want to destroy the country"
- OminousWeapons 5y ago
  I wouldn't say they are just as bad. They are also bad but they're bad in a very different way. The far right effectively has decided that objective reality doesn't exist at all. The truth is whatever they say it is and they will manufacture data as necessary. The far left on the other hand believes in data but is constrained by their inherent need to reduce every single problem to a combination of race, sex, or class, no matter how multi-faceted / complex the problems actually are. They start from the conclusion and work back to make the data fit. Where the far left and far right overlap is that they are both virulently populist, they both demonize their opponents, and they both believe in the absolute moral purity of their cause.
  - rriepe 5y ago
    As an American, I'd say one side is always swept up in a religious fervor and the other is strung out on drugs. They switch roles every twenty years or so. The one doing drugs allows humor and the religious one doesn't. They're going to switch again within the next two years, by my estimate. It'll be big, traditionalist sects (Catholic, Mormon, etc) on the right and cannabis on the left.
- SamoyedFurFluff 5y ago
  Also watching from a distance, what’re you talking about? The American right media moguls have fucked up Australian politicsalong with it, and no leftist moguls can claim the same.
  - philliphaydon 5y ago
    I left Australia 9 years ago, politics was pretty messed up then. That was Australia's own doing.
- danaris 5y ago
  One of these sides has literal, actual Nazis trying their level best to destroy democracy, supporting and protecting people who are murdering people of color, LGBTQ+ people, and others who don't fit into their fascist ideology, and remove most of the legal rights women have gained over the past century+. The other side has...politicians who are too beholden to corporations to fight as hard as they should for progressive policies. If you genuinely think that the American left is just as bad as the American right, then either you really haven't been paying attention, or...I guess you think the Nazis had a point or something?
  - philliphaydon 5y ago
    This is why I’m glad I don’t live in America. The brain washing from the media left is as bad as the crazy stuff the right believes.
    - danaris 5y ago
      Do you have any information to actually refute what I said, or just handwaving about "brainwashing"?
      - philliphaydon 5y ago
        I do. But it’s 2021. If I listed out a ton of problems on the left I’ll get a bunch of people on the left screaming “racist” and “nazi”, etc. Can’t have debates and arguments anymore.
ekianjo 5y ago
Have you considerered your own bias when making this statement ?

foerbert 5y ago

If you'd gone a little bit further into the article, you'd have seen why. It's context. There's a whole discussion included where the event you're attributing to malicious priming is used as an example. What's the alternative here? Leave the audience guessing about what's going on? Omitting the highly relevant fact the person under discussion is a TV presenter on a major news network? Going out of their way to obscure the source of a public comment so it's harder for their readers to verify? I really don't see what else they could have done. The only quasi-reasonable alternative would be to have teased the fact, really let the readers come to the assumption the person is a crazy wacko that nobody would ever listen to, and _then_ drop the bomb he said this on Fox? Except that would turn it from an article on misinformation into a hit piece on Pete Hegseth and Fox, which I can only assume would have made you even less happy. Seriously, what else were they supposed to do here?

toomim 5y ago
> If you'd gone a little bit further into the article, you'd have seen why. I went further into the article, and found that every ... single ... example ... was about the political right. > Seriously, what else were they supposed to do here? Give examples of misinformation on the left.
- th0ma5 5y ago
  I think there's a lot of stuff that goes around and left circles that is pretty bleeding heart sort of exaggeration. A lot of the "Now This" content is rather heavy handed. But the vast majority of people on the right swallow as gospel every single bit of misinformation, and they are much more adept at getting the vast majority of the right in lock step with their misinformation. A great deal of Republicans for instance still believe that the election was somehow stolen, when it is now, because of all of the lost court cases, the most proven outcome in American election history. They believe the propaganda so much that even though they may agree with a lot of the facts that line up with the fact that it wasn't stolen, they still "believe in their hearts" that it "must've been stolen." I don't know a better way to describe the most desired outcome of really effective propaganda than that.