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As I said in my other comment, of course Russian media and gov is untrustworthy, but so is Ukrainian government and media. Both have incentive to push specific
by xyzzyz 5y ago
As I said in my other comment, of course Russian media and gov is untrustworthy, but so is Ukrainian government and media. Both have incentive to push specific narrative: Russians wants to be seen as chivalrous liberators, which requires them to blame civilian casualties on Ukraine as much as possible, while Ukraine wants to be seen as putting up strong resistance in order to keep morale high, and point to civilian deaths as proofs of their invaders savage barbarism.
This means you cannot take any sides claims at face value. At the same time, you shouldn’t just ignore them and close your eyes to propaganda, as you’ll miss important nuggets of truth that are sprinkled throughout the narrative. The more information you get, from all sides, the more likely you will be to be able to piece together what actually is going on.
Hence why the comment above said “Russian media reports”, without five paragraphs of disclaimers that this is not gospel truth, as it assumed that people are able to think for themselves, and take Russian media reports for what they are, which is, while obviously an aggressor’s propaganda, not necessarily a falsehood.
- slg 5y agoI don't know what you are going on about. I started my first comment with "I'll admit I have no idea if the story is true" so it should have been clear that I was not siding with either Ukrainian or Russian sources on this specific issue. I also didn't need "five paragraphs of disclaimers". I didn't even need five words of disclaimers. A simple "They're biased but..." at the start of that original comment and I wouldn't have felt the need to respond. You don't need to overanalyze my comment. I simply think that if someone asks for a source and your only response is a source of questionable accuracy, that you should acknowledge that the source is not authoritative. I found it funny that this was happening in a conversation that was already about how many sources can't be trusted so I commented to point these two things out. It isn't any more complicated than that.
- xyzzyz 5y agoI assumed you need a thorough explanation, considering your statements like “Knowingly posting an untrustworthy source without any remark on its untrustworthiness implies that you believe that source.”. No, this is simply untrue. That’s not how it ever worked. Western media will happily relay Russian claims without adding disclaimers about trustworthiness of Russian media in each and every instance. The main reason to add disclaimers like these is to in fact signal allegiance to opposing side.
- drran 5y agoRF has multiple billions of dollars in budget to make fakes en masse at professional level. Ukraine is busy fighting for survival. It looks like they look equal in your eyes, so RF is very weak and Ukraine is very strong.
- xyzzyz 5y agoNo, they don’t “look equal” in my eyes. I was only talking about the incentives of each side, not how successful their efforts are. That said, since I live in the west, I’m overwhelmingly exposed to pro-Ukraine propaganda, and very little to pro-Russia propaganda. Almost none of it is, of course, paid for by Ukraine.