11 ms·

Once a Chinese grad student explained to me a difference he noted between Chinese and American citizens. He said in China no really reads or watches 24/7 major

Once a Chinese grad student explained to me a difference he noted between Chinese and American citizens. He said in China no really reads or watches 24/7 major news outlets in China. They are fully aware that all of it is propaganda and just go about their life. He said Americans seem to get really emotional over content in the press and seem to really struggle with the idea of propaganda / journalism in the news. I tend to agree with student, NYT and major news outlets are clearly used for propaganda and if you sit back and look at it from perhaps another angle it makes sense , why wouldn’t a world super power with a massive government apparatus use media to influence and control citizen behavior? So yes the anonymous experts, the anonymous intelligence experts, the experts on CNN panels .. etc etc. It’s the government pushing a narrative for a purpose. My two cents live your life and spend your precious emotional energy for the people you care about around you. Do things in your local community and help when and where you can.

alansammarone 1y ago
While I think I agree with most of what you're saying, I think it can be misunderstood and it can be very damaging when taken to an extreme, so I'll just leave a quote from the absolutely fantastic 20 lessons from the 20th century by Timothy Snyder: > Believe in truth. To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.
- ynniv 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - runlaszlorun 1y ago
    Unless you get your eyes open to Intuitionist Math and then you realize math isn't "true". Then again... where in the trillion or so parameters of any LLM is The Law of the Excluded Middle that classical math requires to be "true". Even more comical is that there are certainly embeddings in there _about_ an excluded middle. With thousands of dimensions and billions of values in each one. Lord help us all... Lol
  - T-A 1y ago
    Thank you for reminding me of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9299539 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9299539
    - ludicrousdispla 1y ago
      and here I was just going to say that math requires numbers, and numbers are often made up
  - brookst 1y ago
    It is possible to accept that one can’t know the absolute, complete, detailed truth without giving up on identifying and rejecting lies. That’s the whole authoritarian / fascist shtick: if you can’t be 100% certain that no formulation of any vaccine has ever increased illness, then “vaccines kill people” is just as true as “vaccines save lives”. I don’t need to have personally reviewed all records of every single version of every single vaccine to confidently assert the two statements are not remotely equivalent in accuracy.
    - zmgsabst 1y ago
      Both statements as written are true: vaccines do kill people and vaccines do save lives. If you insert the implicit “all”, then both are false: not all vaccines save lives and not all vaccines kill people. But your knowledge of medicine is quite deep if you know the relative rates of vaccines with zero deaths ever versus the rate at which defective vaccines are produced. Do you have a good source you can share?
      - brookst 1y ago
        So many fallacies. To be charitable, I will assume you are just trying to wind people up with nonsensical rhetoric. There are no zero-death vaccines, as you know. There are also no zero-death diseases, as you probably know. The relative rates of death between the two are not even close, as you know.
  - stogot 1y ago
    relativism is indeed wrong, but thinking that because knowing the truth is somehow “hard”, that you should throw out objectivism is also wrong.
- fidotron 1y ago
  The important point is to distinguish between truth and the co-ordinated release of information in the NYT, BBC etc. The latter is very much intended to send a message, but it is not to be taken as literal truth.
  - hnlmorg 1y ago
    I cannot about the NYT, but the BBC is one of the most impartial sources available. So much so that the left and the right accuse the BBC of biasing the other in equal measures! If you want to talk about bias in the UK press then you’re better off looking towards The Sun, The Mail and anything owned by Murdoch (that guy has done so much damage to the world it’s unreal).
    - whatsupdog 1y ago
      > BBC is one of the most impartial sources available. I really hope that is sarcasm. BBC is highly skewed to the left. No debate on that. Can you show me any story on BBC that is biased to the right?
      - ptaffs 1y ago
        I hope you're being sarcastic. If you do want a debate, there's plenty of research on bias at the BBC, and there are examples of bias left and right, pun intended.
      - retsibsi 1y ago
        > Can you show me any story on BBC that is biased to the right? They're saying that the BBC is relatively impartial, not that it is biased to the right. If you're saying that the BBC has left-biased stories, and therefore the claim of impartiality requires evidence of counterbalancing right-biased stories, I think you need to start by providing evidence of the former. (Even if you think it's blindingly obvious that the left-biased content exists, your examples will clarify what would be required to balance it out.)
      - pixl97 1y ago
        Is the BBC highly skewed to the left, or is reality?
- suddenlybananas 1y ago
  Well, Snyder himself is a bit of a propagandist with his ridiculous double genocide theory. Here's a longer discussion[1] with examples of how he is an ideologue. (I would have liked to post a reply to the people responding to me but alas, I cannot.) [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1brdk1l/comment/kx9p2hp/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1brdk1l/comm...
  - ImPostingOnHN 1y ago
    Indeed, everybody except me is a propagandist with their ridiculous 'saying things I don't believe or want to agree with'. I, on the other hand, am always right.
    - suddenlybananas 1y ago
      There are many academics who disagree with his characterisation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_genocide_theory#Bloodlands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_genocide_theory#Bloodla... The point is, he's an ideologue (who may end up being right even if I think he's not) which makes it a bit ironic to mention in the context of talking about propaganda.
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
      - ImPostingOnHN 1y ago
        Indeed, everybody except me is a ideologue with whom at least 2 academics and a reddit poster disagree. I, on the other hand, am always right, of course! Additionally, as a jew, I was raised on an ironclad ideological assertion that the holocaust was the worst thing people have ever done to each other, and no genocides have or will ever rival it. I'm keenly aware that there is a vested interest in maintaining that view [0], even if it is not true (many academics say that an equal, perhaps greater number died in The Holodomor, for example – not that that need be true for the two to be compared). Take your own link, for example: it describes David Katz, a holocaust scholar, who commented, "Snyder flirts with the very wrong moral equivalence between Hitler and Stalin". This is just a dude saying his opinion, even though a moral equivalence between Hitler and Stalin is not, in fact, "very wrong". 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust_uniqueness_debate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust_uniqueness_debate
- snickerbockers 1y ago
  That is actually orwellian as fuck.
- whatamidoingyo 1y ago
  This reminded me of a YouTube clip I watched years ago. It was basically a retired KGB agent explaining how the media purposely puts out conflicting stories. This breaks the brain of the citizens, and they're unable to know what is true. We indeed see this here in the US. I can't tell you what is true or false (in media) objectively. I can choose what I want to believe is true, though.
  - pixl97 1y ago
    Known as the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firehose_of_falsehood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firehose_of_falsehood
    - lt_snuffles 1y ago
      This wikipedia article needs some work.
      - ceejayoz 1y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Firehose_of_falsehood&action=edit https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Firehose_of_false...
      - free_bip 1y ago
        Be the change you wish to see in the world
        cindyllm 1y ago
        [dead]
    - th0ma5 1y ago
      I'd also put Gish Gallop in there somewhere as well. Or "unfalsifiable" is also certainly in the neighborhood.
  - throwaway894345 1y ago
- phkahler 1y ago
  >> Believe in truth. To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. That means every time the press says something about what Trump did, you have to find a direct quote or video of him saying it. Or read an actual executive order. The media abandons facts to criticize power they don't like. During covid the Governor of Michigan banned shopping for gardening supplies. This raised a big fuss. One of my FB friends shared a reporters story saying the ban was fake news and that the order did not include anything like that. He even provided a link directly to the order itself so you could see for yourself. Most people would not bother because hey, he went to the source! I followed the link, found the paragraph - which was super clear and explicit about the gardening thing - and posted a direct quote of it in response. I lost a FB friend that day. Facts are hard to find (you must do it yourself) and just piss people off when they don't like them.
  - tw04 1y ago
    > That means every time the press says something about what Trump did, you have to find a direct quote or video of him saying it. Or read an actual executive order. The media abandons facts to criticize power they don't like. You’re implying they don’t include a video of what they claim he said and any reputable news source pretty much always does. Don’t get your news from Facebook and Twitter and you’ll be starting from a much better position.
    - nocoolnametom 1y ago
      Indeed, source very much still matters. "It's difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it." "Qui bono," who benefits, is a great question to ask about the organization and the story when reading it, especially when combined with Hanlon's Razor. Tend not to attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. And when malice is reasonable, then make sure to ask Who Benefits from the malice. If that's difficult to determine or the benefit seems small in comparison to likelihood of human stupidity, assume human stupidity. Is the organization historically trustworthy? (MSNBC and Fox News, when not being talking heads and not talking about the current culture war buzzwords, tend to do good reporting.) If the story is wrong, is it reasonable to assume it's because someone somewhere misread something, mistyped something, misstated something, or otherwise made a mistake? (Perhaps the story breaking or otherwise too recent for slow, quality research. Perhaps the reporter, while trained in research, is not expert enough to come to the correct conclusions of their research, or is not researching or can't find nonexistent peer criticism to the research, both big problems in science reporting, especially when the reporting is of initial findings that haven't been peer reviewed.) If the story is not accidentally wrong through human stupidity, then qui bono, who benefits from malice? (Does it present a politician as unhinged or out of control? Does it ? And especially, would the story impact wealth, either to hurt it or protect it?) Sources like PBS, which (while they are NOT immune) are impacted far less by click-through ad rates and through funding partially derived from donations and public funding have less incentive to push narratives that benefit particular monied and/or political interests, or foreign sources like BBC or AJ don't get as much benefit when it comes to stories about US events that don't tie directly back to their organizational/political benefits. (When these are NOT the case, of course, then malice become far more easy to assume for these sources!) So is it more likely that Governor Whitmer targeted gardening supply stores during the early pandemic because she was testing/pushing the limits of government power to limit the freedom of citizens to go where they wished or to expand government's economic control over the American marketplace, or is it more likely that there was political power to be derived from presenting the image of the governor as petty, tyrranical, and nonsensical? Or is it more likely that everything, both the initial EO's presentation, the angry response to it, and the fact-checking of the response, were victims of our human foibles? Personally, I think it's far more likely a mix of human stupidity in writing the EO in a way where it was easy to misread the EO as specifically targeting gardening stores, combined with a malice decision to push hard on what was probably originally a misreading because it presented a view of the governor that worked to politically tear down her trustworthiness as she was taking actions that were having an economic impact on monied interests in the state (the EO essentially tried to turn big box stores into grocery-only stores to limit gathering, which during the Fog of War of the early pandemic was a reasonable health goal even if years of hindsight have given us a far better view of how impactful that actually was or not). Plus some stupidity on pushing back far too hard on the fact-checking response to give the impression that the EO didn't even mention gardening (it completely did, very clearly, in the list of attempts to pre-empt loopholes to the EO's attempt to limit the uses of large stores in order to minimize the reasons for people to gather in them to limit crowd sizes). Also, the Facebook/Twitter viral news sources get their money from clicks, so their stories tend to be far more about pathos than ethos or logos and truth is all-too-often a casuality for them. I'm sorry about the length of my thoughts here. Bevity is the soul of wit, and I'm a rather witless man.
- terminalshort 1y ago
  But what if you don't know the facts? And how can you if you don't have eyes on the situation or know someone who does. I'd rather go with Mark Twain: > It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- chrisweekly 1y ago
  Fantastic quote. Spot on. Thanks for sharing it!
- stronglikedan 1y ago
  > I think it can be misunderstood and it can be very damaging when taken to an extreme That applies to anything, when taken to an extreme.
- ctrlp 1y ago
  [dead]
- fasbiner 1y ago
  I can’t think of a worse person to cite that principle; Snyder has lied and evaded historians with basic inquiries about his work. As we speak, his official position is that Russia and China are both engaged in genocides and another state categorically is not and you should be punished for inquiring. I don’t think that position is going to age well, for him or for you. The propaganda is so effective because the propagandists can rely on your lack of basic rigor and media bubble to present abstractions as a real moral position. And there’s no way to say this without hurting feelings and causing people to get defensive. Look up what any historian who isn’t on tv has say about Snyder’s work on libgen, it’s not sensationalist or context-free, it’s just someone going through and documenting mendacious claims and poor historiography: https://defendinghistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Omer-Bartovs-review-of-Bloodlands.pdf https://defendinghistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Omer... What is telling is not that one reviewer can be authoritative, but more that the response is "Shut up and go away, I'm trying to have a media career." Pretending to be a controversial truth-teller speaking for principles is how Americans like to be propagandized to and how we like to become niche celebrities instead of doing work that requires accuracy and rigor.
RamRodification 1y ago
...and let someone else pay the price in the end for letting these things happen unchecked. Perhaps your children :)
- alansammarone 1y ago
  This. I can't keep myself from quoting another 20th century lesson from Snyder: > Be as courageous as you can. If none of us is prepared to die for freedom, then all of us will die in unfreedom.
- contrarian1234 1y ago
  you caring a lot doesn't change reality in your favor. You get one vote that you can exercise once a year or so. Thats about all the agency you have on the wider world (and probably rightly so, if its to be proportional to the population) Being informed just enough to choose the less horrible of the two clowns the systems presents you... takes very little effort. Everything past that is a waste of brain cycles. Spend your energy on things you can affect. If you care about your children then spend the emotional energy on your friends, family and community. It'll help them more
  - alansammarone 1y ago
    That's right, one person caring and not acting doesn't change reality, neither does one person caring and acting (most of the time). A relatively small number of people caring and acting, however, can change the course of history. While it is in nobody's interest to care, individually, we're all better off if we care and act just a little bit.
    - contrarian1234 1y ago
      i assume caring and acting here you mean in the context of larger issues. bc effort spent on your immediate world definitely does change reality there is no mechanism past voting to change the big picture. Nor should there be. The person going around with the megaphone convincing other people their right inherantly feels their feelings are more right than others' And you dont need to care an aweful lot when it comes to voting. Any caring past that is basically like getting worked up about the weather
pookha 1y ago
What your Chinese friend isn't saying is that all those Substack writers in the US would be disappeared into Chinese gulag's. The US has a strong freedom of speech clause baked into its core governance system...When I was fifteen I'd be subscribed to five different punk zines and would be creating mix-tapes from 10 different sources (and much of it wildly offensive and political).
- bongodongobob 1y ago
  And yet people are getting fired over making comments about Charlie Kirk on social media.
  - jonnybgood 1y ago
    By the government?
    - pjc50 1y ago
      No, but by Party supporters running campaigns against their employers. Or by the use of the administrative state to pressure the employers.
    - imcritic 1y ago
      Even if gov isn't involved directly - it could very easily press some corps for such firings.
      - baggachipz 1y ago
        As we've already seen.
    - ioasuncvinvaer 1y ago
      Government officials are specifically calling for it.
    - ceejayoz 1y ago
      In some cases, yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disciplinary_actions_for_commentary_on_the_assassination_of_Charlie_Kirk?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disciplinary_actions_for_comme... > Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that any non-citizens who celebrated Kirk's death would be immediately deported… > Attorney General Pam Bondi indicated on Katie Miller's podcast and in subsequent Department of Justice announcements that she intended to "target" speech against Kirk following his death as hate speech… Plus teachers in public schools and universities.
seydor 1y ago
I think the main difference is, in liberal countries people depend on the media to manufacture consensuses, while China does not need anyone but the leader to create them. No society can survive without a certain degree of consensus
- r3trohack3r 1y ago
  I believe it’s a mistake for liberal countries to rely on centralized content distribution platforms for consensus - that’s how you end up with consensus being for sale.
  - micromacrofoot 1y ago
    that's capitalism baby, look at sinclair broadcast group for example
  - bluGill 1y ago
    I would need to see an alternative before I can agree. There are other things tried on the margins, but so far none really seem better to me.
- rjdj377dhabsn 1y ago
  Don't the results of elections that are generally perceived to be fair give leaders a mandate that is accepted by most to do what they campaigned on?
- eddywebs 1y ago
  Could be, I think the main point missing here is the independence of media from the state, wherever the place.
np- 1y ago
Isn’t it a feature that people are vocally dissatisfied with what the media reports? To just accept it quietly in silence seems in fact the worse outcome. Even if everyone knows the media reporting is wrong, keeping quiet about it creates a strange meta state where the reporting is true enough that no one wants to publicly question it, because nobody else is questioning it, so it’s unclear whether your fellow citizens accept it as true or not, so you need to assume they believe it’s true.
thebruce87m 1y ago
I used to work for a large semiconductor manufacturer and the first time I visited the headquarters in the US I was shocked to see Fox News was on 24/7 in the cafeteria. Whenever I see a major negative news story about republicans I always visit the Fox News website and you’re lucky if it’s a sub heading at the bottom. If it’s a particular bad story there will always be a Biden or Hillary story dug up as a headliner to change the narrative.
pjc50 1y ago
I keep joking that instead of the normal repressive state-controlled media, the West has media-controlled states. Electing a TV host is just a culmination of that. Or a media owner, like Berlusconi. Coincidentally he was brought down by his underage sex trafficking. Westerners voluntarily tune into their propaganda, leaving the 24/7 news channels blaring. But there is a critical difference in that elections do happen, they do get counted, and they do make a genuine difference in the political and economic outcomes which affect millions of people.
- dfedbeef 1y ago
  For now.
- walleeee 1y ago
  Wolin is insightful in this regard
squidproquo 1y ago
The other thing to note is that journalism in the US has gotten really lazy. A lot of the articles you will see in the MSM are based on leaked info and press-releases from PR firms, etc. It's easier to for journalists to regurgitate stories hand-fed to them than doing truly hard and costly investigative work.
- SmirkingRevenge 1y ago
  I think it's less laziness than the fact that the news media has been in a constant state of disruption since the internet. It's a much riskier business than it used to be.
stetrain 1y ago
I think treating the government as a singular entity pushing a narrative is missing a bit. There is no singular government moving in lock-step, I think we've seen a lot of those seams showing recently. There are factions, supported by various wealthy powerful interests. Those factions include people in government but also people funding or controlling media. The owner and CEO of a major social network was literally given a public-facing government position, and others in the administration were previously TV personalities. Wealth, media, and government are an ouroboros, not a one-directional megaphone from The Government to The Citizens.
- herval 1y ago
  This is true in a _well functioning democratic government_ - by design: as long as there are differences, a single actor cannot take over. Understanding that the media is owned by powerful people, and people have agendas, is a key point to media literacy that should be taught at schools. It doesn't mean media should be ignored, nor that they always aim to manipulate (with some exceptions). It's, again, healthy if you understand it as it is (a viewpoint, espoused by people with a specific worldview). Interpreting the news require critical thinking. Most people never develop critical thinking.
  - UpsideDownRide 1y ago
    Lack of critical thinking is a bit of a worldwide schooling system failure. Underfunding on one hand and not having an education plan for people to develop those skills leads to what we have. Some are lucky to get those skills from home or from top tier schools. I imagine that this state of things was somewhat beneficial for the ruling elites but Russia is now showing the whole western world, that dumb population is a huge liability.
    - herval 1y ago
      Indeed it is - and likely by design anyway (critical thinking is bad for political control, after all). You generally want the ones in power (preferably the ones aligned to you) to be better educated than the masses.
alexpit 1y ago
Comparing Chinese media with American media is insane. One can argue most big media companies in the US have an editorial line that is aligned with one ideology, particularly true for most legacy media outlets. But many are still putting out very high quality mostly unbiased content. News are not meant to be consumed as facts but to challenge one’s own beliefs and seek out the truth or truths. Living in a bubble completely disconnected from both national and global events that impact us all is irresponsible and usually exactly what totalitarian regimes expect us to do.
narrator 1y ago
The other thing is the completely different information universes left and right live in in America. It's difficult to have a conversation with someone on the other side of the political divide because they believe a completely different set of facts. Meanwhile, in China, everyone knows the news is B.S and they only trust information they get directly. In the past, before the Internet, there was a lot more time invested in maintaining relationships just to get good information. Is that the case in China? It reminds me of this business litigation a company I was an investor in had between the partners. I wasn't very close to the situation, so I had no first hand knowledge of what actually happened, but each side had a contradictory set of facts. Both could not be true at the same time. Each side asked me to join their side, but I told them that that's what the judicial process is for: to find out who's facts the jury believes. Unfortunately, this means it's going to be a long process that will go to trial because they are so totally far apart on the facts that they will have to have a trial. Also unfortunately, this also probably means someone is lying in a pretty pathological way. The same thing seems to be occurring in American politics and there's no real neutral arbiter I guess except the voters.
- AnimalMuppet 1y ago
  In US politics, while one side may lie considerably more than the other, neither side is really committed to truth. One is selective in the truth and distorts the interpretation to push their narrative; one just blatantly lies to push whatever is their position of the moment.
moron4hire 1y ago
This sounds like "nobody drives in NYC because the traffic is so bad".
K0balt 1y ago
This is perfectly reasonable when people know that they have no control of the government, it’s like the weather then…you just deal with it. The problem is that in the USA , we’ve been told that we have a democratic republic, and that we have significant self-determination in affairs of the state, and that justice, freedom, and the right to live relatively un-disturbed are inalienable rights. It’s bullshit in practice, of course, but we’ve been told this, and we’ve been told it’s our duty to protect those rights, up to and specifically including armed insurrection. Many people actually believed what they were told.
ghm2199 1y ago
Perhaps none of us have living memory of how when the chips are down there is no place to turn to but a source of truth. For every propaganda(ish) outlet, there is a place you can check for real news NYTimes,CNN,Fox juxtaposed to things like propublica,snopes or icij. One friend got taken in by a fake news story and rued the internet is full of fake news and propaganda that spreads in a minute, I am so dismayed, how can I know what is real?. a friend replied: the internet is wonderful too you can check in under a minute if something is fake.
eddywebs 1y ago
Amen !
CrulesAll 1y ago
No. In the West, there are competing news sources(despite the best efforts of many). They might be equally biased but you do get a devil's advocate system. China is a one party state that controls all media. Not remotely the same. In China, you would not have known the story was bogus.
CommieBobDole 1y ago
I'd like to point out that the student's advice, "of course the news is ridiculous propaganda, just ignore it and go about your life and focus on your friends and family" is the the response desired by the authoritarian Chinese government who has carefully engineered the situation in the first place. The purpose of constantly publishing obvious lies is not for people to believe them (though some always will), it's to devalue the idea of truth in general. Combine that with overt (but unpredictable) penalties for supporting the 'wrong' cause, and a disinterest in politics becomes the easiest and safest path for a member of the public. As long as the economy's good, people just don't care about anything that doesn't harm them directly.
- throaway5445454 1y ago
  also was the outcome fostered by the USSR
- pixl97 1y ago
  > it's to devalue the idea of truth in general. You see a common theme in some people talking about science related things, aka "The science was wrong", which is very rarely the case. Most of the time when that is said it's "The conclusion was slightly incorrect because of statistically insignificant findings" (probability based) versus wrong (binary). You end up with a class of people that start thinking all science is wrong and at any moment their crackpot crap is suddenly going to be correct.
  - istjohn 1y ago
    I mostly blame bad journalism for this. Always looking for sensational content to capture attention, outlets publish credulous articles on single journal articles without providing enough context for their unsophisticated audience. It would take much more time and effort to properly contextualized them, and in many cases, it would be apparent that it is too early for the general public to draw any conclusions from the research. It wouldn't be newsworthy.
- pphysch 1y ago
  There is really some wild fan-fiction on HN. If you're being serious, how do you know any of this? Based on what evidence?
throaway5445454 1y ago
The problem with this statement is that your Chinese friend comes from a place where every information source allowed by the government can be safely assumed to be propaganda, by definition. That's how their system works. Not so in the west.
- ancientworldnow 1y ago
  This extreme naivete is exactly what the parent comment's story is addressing.
  - throaway5445454 1y ago
    No, it's not. There is a big difference between Chinese-level control of information and what is seen in the west. Naivete would be believing that the west has none, or maybe that the West has so much that it is somehow already an Orwellian Big Brother state.
- yatopifo 1y ago
  I object your reference to the collective west. As a Canadian, i believe my country has very little in common with the US. In fact, the US is pretty similar to China when it comes to propaganda.
  - throaway5445454 1y ago
    Im Canadian too and I fear our country becomes more American every year.
baxtr 1y ago
So you are saying that experts on CNN are paid by the government?
tootie 1y ago
That's a ridiculous statement and honestly this blog post itself is very misleading. The quote taken on condition of anonymity is someone saying there is no evidence this was a national security threat. The NYT article is not at all a hair on fire credulous tale of near disaster. It quotes government officials and experts, connects it to "normal" criminal cartels and offers some opinions on what could be a worst case scenario. As much as this could easily be a simple criminal case, it was already connected to threats made to politicians so it's not far-fetched.
cm2012 1y ago
This is just wrong. There is a huge difference between having a free press vs not. And while publications like the NY times are not perfect, they pretty much never outright lie, unlike state propaganda.
- stefantalpalaru 1y ago
  [dead]
philwelch 1y ago
The good news is, the only people who watch cable news in the US anymore are either boomers or in an airport.
spaceisballer 1y ago
There are certainly some news outlets that operate like propoganda. I mean Fox comes to mind, if you ever watch you’ll notice they carefully craft their statements and rarely talk about facts, mostly feelings. News is at its core a business, and they know they get eyes on things by scaring people or talking about things that seem shocking at face value. NYT and other outlets that do long form articles (Wired) have invaluable information. But we live in a world where most people (especially perpetually online people) just browse the headlines and take what they want from it. We’ve lost nuance, and because of that in the US one party is using that to their advantage.
- SmirkingRevenge 1y ago
  Fox (and the right-wing media more broadly) act as boosters for the right and negative partisanship generators for the left. They protect republicans from accountability. They manufacture scandals about the opposition. And it's so effective we couldn't even collectively manage to banish from public life the guy who nearly murdered congress and his veep on television. Truly scary.
Rover222 1y ago
I agree from a high level, but I think the major difference is that: - Chinese news is propoganda in the traditional sense - directed/approved by the central government - US news is not centrally controlled like that, but most sources lean heavily left or right, and distort narratives to fit their views. I feel like liberals believe that, while Fox News is clearly presenting things from a right-leaning perspective, most of their chosen news sources are neutral. That's absurd. NYT is certainly far left in how they spin the majority of their stories.
- VerminOctopus1 1y ago
  The fact that you think NYT is “far left” is a great example of how incredibly far the overton window has shifted.
  - Rover222 1y ago
    The whole democratic party has shifted drastically left in the last 10 years. If you can't recognize this, you're just deep in the echo chamber, IMO.
    - VerminOctopus1 1y ago
      Where did I mention the democratic party? I’m talking about the NYT. I also disagree with your statement, irrelevant as it is.
      - Rover222 1y ago
        NYT is staffed by democrats (I'm a disaffected democrat too, believe it or not), but the democratic platform is far left of what it was when Clinton was in office.
- SmirkingRevenge 1y ago
  NYT is definitely not far left and is still the cream of the crop when it comes to fact-based reporting According to this outfit the NYT "skews left": https://app.adfontesmedia.com/chart/interactive https://app.adfontesmedia.com/chart/interactive Their opinion section is mostly center left but has pretty wide ideological diversity
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
dionian 1y ago
unfortunately we are trending toward that direction, trust in media is hitting all time lows in the US.
sjw987 1y ago
The constant news consumption isn't just an American thing. I live in Britain and have colleagues and friends who (admittedly) watch or read news first thing after waking up, and read news website articles constantly throughout the day. We're talking, multiple times per hour. They read the news more frequently than things happen to be in the news.
JTbane 1y ago
Okay I got a little bit rage baited by this but to summarize- we Westerners value openness in government to prevent abuse and corruption, so getting mad about propaganda is common.
nixosbestos 1y ago
I basically agree with every word you wrote. But also, it means you wake up one day one day and tanks are rolling through the capital city, and the President is threatening American cities with illegal military occupation.
starky 1y ago
>They are fully aware that all of it is propaganda and just go about their life. In my experience with people I've interacted with in China is that there is quite a range of belief in the propaganda. I've had people say some truly wild things that were clearly the result of how news and history have been presented to them. Its also important to consider that we are interacting with people that are more engaged with the West and aren't seeing the perspective of a lot of the country.
StefanBatory 1y ago
Ah, so like Russia. The ultimate dream of all authoritarians. A society that no longer even dreams of freedom, that becomes fully apathetic. Do you know how many independent newspapers there are in China? Zero. Even ones with what we'd call liberal ones are controlled and will be dealt with if they go too far. Just because things aren't working well does not mean we have to tear it all down
kneeGrr 1y ago
[flagged]
0xbadcafebee 1y ago
What's the most popular tag-line for YouTube/TikTok videos and online spammy ads? "The TRUTH about ..." Americans have PTSD, and paranoia. Before Nixon, Americans had an idylic belief in "America" as some bastion of exceptionalism, independence, idealism. We're the best, and we can do anything. We never got attacked, we had the most money, power, etc. Everything's good and we're the best. But since Nixon, they learned their most-venerated politicians lie to them. But not only politicians; the news lies, corporations lie, scientists lie, their neighbors lie. And when 9/11 happened, suddenly the facade of invulnerability fell (because it was a foreign terrorist, rather than domestic, like Oklahoma City). Year after year, the media bombards Americans with terrifying stories of somebody lying to them, secretly hurting them. They're all out to get you. And polls show year after year that Americans are less trusting of their institutions. To function in a society, you have to trust somebody. So they still watch the news, listen to politicians. They hide in some in-group, like a political party or ideology, or even just a Facebook group. But they are hyper-aware that anybody could be lying to them at any time. That some commonly-held truth is actually a weapon used to hurt them. They have been bombarded with fear for decades by the media and politicians. Every single day they are told that "the enemy" is working to destroy everything they love. This isn't an exaggeration, this is literally the line given by politicians, and then parroted by their favorite media source. This is why Americans both obsessively watch media, and are really emotional about everything they hear in the media. It's why so many Americans latch onto conspiracy theories now (they didn't used to). We are all afraid because our system has made us afraid, and we don't know who to trust.
iphone_elegance 1y ago
That's fine but it's also the end of self-rule and agency
NooneAtAll3 1y ago
I disagree about "the government pushing" it's *different groups* of power - some have more control, some less but all push one big agenda or the other, so instead of centralized propaganda you get affected by targetted propaganda
turkishdelight 1y ago
I had a teacher in high school that married a Chinese woman, and when her parents came over they said "Your propaganda is so refreshing, you hardly even notice it." It's always struck me how hamfisted the Chinese government sound in its communications.
chrononaut 1y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect > Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. > In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know. > That is the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. I'd point out it does not operate in other arenas of life. In ordinary life, if somebody consistently exaggerates or lies to you, you soon discount everything they say. In court, there is the legal doctrine of falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus, which means untruthful in one part, untruthful in all. But when it comes to the media, we believe against evidence that it is probably worth our time to read other parts of the paper. When, in fact, it almost certainly isn't. The only possible explanation for our behavior is amnesia. Surprised this hasn't been posted within a comment yet :)
lanfeust6 1y ago
They aren't mutually exclusive; Westerners get emotional about news, but still understand that there is a propaganda component. That doesn't mean the news isn't useful. Outlets might be selective about what they say, but the truth in reporting sort of stands in plain sight; if you read a balance of sources, you get a decent idea what's happening, surrounding a particular issue. News organizations very rarely lie. They might be misleading in framing or selective wording, but they won't outright put something in print that is a complete lie.
arrozconcosas 1y ago
The Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012 changed restrictions on disseminating propaganda materials domestically. Passed as part of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013, it amended the 1948 Smith-Mundt Act, which had previously blocked the domestic distribution of content produced by U.S. government agencies like the State Department. This is a driving factor behind a lot of the decline in quality of news as propaganda starts to drown out legitimate reporting.
calandoa 1y ago
[dead]
_DeadFred_ 1y ago
I mean your comment, number one on this post, is propaganda to ignore the major sourcing of information that least pretend to have a system for evaluating what i true, what is worthy to present and replace it with.......? In the USA we have historically tried to keep abreast of what is going on in the world, partly because we are a nation of immigrants with ties/emotional ties around the world. Is that a thing in China? It didn't seem so when I was working with people in China. Giving a Chinese cultural position (ignore the world) might not be a fit for an American.
dmbche 1y ago
Look up Manufacturing Consent - good read!
PicassoCTs 1y ago
[dead]
thomastjeffery 1y ago
Propaganda gets too much credit. The entire Republican platform (especially since ~2016) has switched focus to something less like propaganda, and more like engagement for engagement's sake. Conservative talking heads do tend to frame everything from a particular perspective (that's the propaganda part), but rather than try to convince everyone to agree with them, they do the opposite: try to get as many people as possible to disagree with them, so they can get themselves and their audience into eternal "arguments". These "arguments" are never intended to be logically defensible. Instead, they are intended to fail as spectacularly as possible. Naturally, most other media outlets love this, because they get to profit from their own participation. The only value left in this dynamic is engagement. By leveraging the alleged "two sides" of American politics, both politicians and media corporations have managed to create an infinite feedback loop of engagement with their media; and at the same time have managed to direct that feedback into political support for their preferred policies. Knowing this, it's entirely unsurprising that many of the highest positions in government are now held by household TV personalities, like Dr. OZ and Donald Trump. --- So what can we do about it? If engagement is the new currency, can we simply boycott this entire thing by disengaging? I doubt it will be possible to get enough people to actually participate, particularly those who are currently the most engaged. Disengagement only creates an implicit victory for whoever is speaking loudest. Honest argument is incredibly important. There is no value in diversity of thought until differing positions meet each other and collaborate. Media corporations have found huge success by replacing argument with bickering. I think the first step in undoing that damage is to help people understand the difference between the two: argument is goal-oriented, whereas bickering is goal-avoidant. Knowing that difference, I think we should find ways to practice argument with each other, and redirect our engagement into collaborative progress.
knowitnone3 1y ago
Perhaps propaganda is not the right word. I think a better word is "sensationalized" which happens often even here on HN with titles trick people into clicking on the link. With each click having monetary value, this is just the norm.
geeunits 1y ago
Sounds like Americans are engaged in a democracy they see the ability to shape whereas China is a lost cause, so just bend over and ignore it? :)

alansammarone 1y ago

While I think I agree with most of what you're saying, I think it can be misunderstood and it can be very damaging when taken to an extreme, so I'll just leave a quote from the absolutely fantastic 20 lessons from the 20th century by Timothy Snyder: > Believe in truth. To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.

ynniv 1y ago
[flagged]
- runlaszlorun 1y ago
  Unless you get your eyes open to Intuitionist Math and then you realize math isn't "true". Then again... where in the trillion or so parameters of any LLM is The Law of the Excluded Middle that classical math requires to be "true". Even more comical is that there are certainly embeddings in there _about_ an excluded middle. With thousands of dimensions and billions of values in each one. Lord help us all... Lol
- T-A 1y ago
  Thank you for reminding me of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9299539 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9299539
  - ludicrousdispla 1y ago
    and here I was just going to say that math requires numbers, and numbers are often made up
- brookst 1y ago
  It is possible to accept that one can’t know the absolute, complete, detailed truth without giving up on identifying and rejecting lies. That’s the whole authoritarian / fascist shtick: if you can’t be 100% certain that no formulation of any vaccine has ever increased illness, then “vaccines kill people” is just as true as “vaccines save lives”. I don’t need to have personally reviewed all records of every single version of every single vaccine to confidently assert the two statements are not remotely equivalent in accuracy.
  - zmgsabst 1y ago
    Both statements as written are true: vaccines do kill people and vaccines do save lives. If you insert the implicit “all”, then both are false: not all vaccines save lives and not all vaccines kill people. But your knowledge of medicine is quite deep if you know the relative rates of vaccines with zero deaths ever versus the rate at which defective vaccines are produced. Do you have a good source you can share?
    - brookst 1y ago
      So many fallacies. To be charitable, I will assume you are just trying to wind people up with nonsensical rhetoric. There are no zero-death vaccines, as you know. There are also no zero-death diseases, as you probably know. The relative rates of death between the two are not even close, as you know.
- stogot 1y ago
  relativism is indeed wrong, but thinking that because knowing the truth is somehow “hard”, that you should throw out objectivism is also wrong.
fidotron 1y ago
The important point is to distinguish between truth and the co-ordinated release of information in the NYT, BBC etc. The latter is very much intended to send a message, but it is not to be taken as literal truth.
- hnlmorg 1y ago
  I cannot about the NYT, but the BBC is one of the most impartial sources available. So much so that the left and the right accuse the BBC of biasing the other in equal measures! If you want to talk about bias in the UK press then you’re better off looking towards The Sun, The Mail and anything owned by Murdoch (that guy has done so much damage to the world it’s unreal).
  - whatsupdog 1y ago
    > BBC is one of the most impartial sources available. I really hope that is sarcasm. BBC is highly skewed to the left. No debate on that. Can you show me any story on BBC that is biased to the right?
    - ptaffs 1y ago
      I hope you're being sarcastic. If you do want a debate, there's plenty of research on bias at the BBC, and there are examples of bias left and right, pun intended.
    - retsibsi 1y ago
      > Can you show me any story on BBC that is biased to the right? They're saying that the BBC is relatively impartial, not that it is biased to the right. If you're saying that the BBC has left-biased stories, and therefore the claim of impartiality requires evidence of counterbalancing right-biased stories, I think you need to start by providing evidence of the former. (Even if you think it's blindingly obvious that the left-biased content exists, your examples will clarify what would be required to balance it out.)
    - pixl97 1y ago
      Is the BBC highly skewed to the left, or is reality?
suddenlybananas 1y ago
Well, Snyder himself is a bit of a propagandist with his ridiculous double genocide theory. Here's a longer discussion[1] with examples of how he is an ideologue. (I would have liked to post a reply to the people responding to me but alas, I cannot.) [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1brdk1l/comment/kx9p2hp/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1brdk1l/comm...
- ImPostingOnHN 1y ago
  Indeed, everybody except me is a propagandist with their ridiculous 'saying things I don't believe or want to agree with'. I, on the other hand, am always right.
  - suddenlybananas 1y ago
    There are many academics who disagree with his characterisation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_genocide_theory#Bloodlands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_genocide_theory#Bloodla... The point is, he's an ideologue (who may end up being right even if I think he's not) which makes it a bit ironic to mention in the context of talking about propaganda.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - ImPostingOnHN 1y ago
      Indeed, everybody except me is a ideologue with whom at least 2 academics and a reddit poster disagree. I, on the other hand, am always right, of course! Additionally, as a jew, I was raised on an ironclad ideological assertion that the holocaust was the worst thing people have ever done to each other, and no genocides have or will ever rival it. I'm keenly aware that there is a vested interest in maintaining that view [0], even if it is not true (many academics say that an equal, perhaps greater number died in The Holodomor, for example – not that that need be true for the two to be compared). Take your own link, for example: it describes David Katz, a holocaust scholar, who commented, "Snyder flirts with the very wrong moral equivalence between Hitler and Stalin". This is just a dude saying his opinion, even though a moral equivalence between Hitler and Stalin is not, in fact, "very wrong". 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust_uniqueness_debate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust_uniqueness_debate
snickerbockers 1y ago
That is actually orwellian as fuck.
whatamidoingyo 1y ago
This reminded me of a YouTube clip I watched years ago. It was basically a retired KGB agent explaining how the media purposely puts out conflicting stories. This breaks the brain of the citizens, and they're unable to know what is true. We indeed see this here in the US. I can't tell you what is true or false (in media) objectively. I can choose what I want to believe is true, though.
- pixl97 1y ago
  Known as the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firehose_of_falsehood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firehose_of_falsehood
  - lt_snuffles 1y ago
    This wikipedia article needs some work.
    - ceejayoz 1y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Firehose_of_falsehood&action=edit https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Firehose_of_false...
    - free_bip 1y ago
      Be the change you wish to see in the world
      - cindyllm 1y ago
        [dead]
  - th0ma5 1y ago
    I'd also put Gish Gallop in there somewhere as well. Or "unfalsifiable" is also certainly in the neighborhood.
- throwaway894345 1y ago
phkahler 1y ago
>> Believe in truth. To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. That means every time the press says something about what Trump did, you have to find a direct quote or video of him saying it. Or read an actual executive order. The media abandons facts to criticize power they don't like. During covid the Governor of Michigan banned shopping for gardening supplies. This raised a big fuss. One of my FB friends shared a reporters story saying the ban was fake news and that the order did not include anything like that. He even provided a link directly to the order itself so you could see for yourself. Most people would not bother because hey, he went to the source! I followed the link, found the paragraph - which was super clear and explicit about the gardening thing - and posted a direct quote of it in response. I lost a FB friend that day. Facts are hard to find (you must do it yourself) and just piss people off when they don't like them.
- tw04 1y ago
  > That means every time the press says something about what Trump did, you have to find a direct quote or video of him saying it. Or read an actual executive order. The media abandons facts to criticize power they don't like. You’re implying they don’t include a video of what they claim he said and any reputable news source pretty much always does. Don’t get your news from Facebook and Twitter and you’ll be starting from a much better position.
  - nocoolnametom 1y ago
    Indeed, source very much still matters. "It's difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it." "Qui bono," who benefits, is a great question to ask about the organization and the story when reading it, especially when combined with Hanlon's Razor. Tend not to attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. And when malice is reasonable, then make sure to ask Who Benefits from the malice. If that's difficult to determine or the benefit seems small in comparison to likelihood of human stupidity, assume human stupidity. Is the organization historically trustworthy? (MSNBC and Fox News, when not being talking heads and not talking about the current culture war buzzwords, tend to do good reporting.) If the story is wrong, is it reasonable to assume it's because someone somewhere misread something, mistyped something, misstated something, or otherwise made a mistake? (Perhaps the story breaking or otherwise too recent for slow, quality research. Perhaps the reporter, while trained in research, is not expert enough to come to the correct conclusions of their research, or is not researching or can't find nonexistent peer criticism to the research, both big problems in science reporting, especially when the reporting is of initial findings that haven't been peer reviewed.) If the story is not accidentally wrong through human stupidity, then qui bono, who benefits from malice? (Does it present a politician as unhinged or out of control? Does it ? And especially, would the story impact wealth, either to hurt it or protect it?) Sources like PBS, which (while they are NOT immune) are impacted far less by click-through ad rates and through funding partially derived from donations and public funding have less incentive to push narratives that benefit particular monied and/or political interests, or foreign sources like BBC or AJ don't get as much benefit when it comes to stories about US events that don't tie directly back to their organizational/political benefits. (When these are NOT the case, of course, then malice become far more easy to assume for these sources!) So is it more likely that Governor Whitmer targeted gardening supply stores during the early pandemic because she was testing/pushing the limits of government power to limit the freedom of citizens to go where they wished or to expand government's economic control over the American marketplace, or is it more likely that there was political power to be derived from presenting the image of the governor as petty, tyrranical, and nonsensical? Or is it more likely that everything, both the initial EO's presentation, the angry response to it, and the fact-checking of the response, were victims of our human foibles? Personally, I think it's far more likely a mix of human stupidity in writing the EO in a way where it was easy to misread the EO as specifically targeting gardening stores, combined with a malice decision to push hard on what was probably originally a misreading because it presented a view of the governor that worked to politically tear down her trustworthiness as she was taking actions that were having an economic impact on monied interests in the state (the EO essentially tried to turn big box stores into grocery-only stores to limit gathering, which during the Fog of War of the early pandemic was a reasonable health goal even if years of hindsight have given us a far better view of how impactful that actually was or not). Plus some stupidity on pushing back far too hard on the fact-checking response to give the impression that the EO didn't even mention gardening (it completely did, very clearly, in the list of attempts to pre-empt loopholes to the EO's attempt to limit the uses of large stores in order to minimize the reasons for people to gather in them to limit crowd sizes). Also, the Facebook/Twitter viral news sources get their money from clicks, so their stories tend to be far more about pathos than ethos or logos and truth is all-too-often a casuality for them. I'm sorry about the length of my thoughts here. Bevity is the soul of wit, and I'm a rather witless man.
terminalshort 1y ago
But what if you don't know the facts? And how can you if you don't have eyes on the situation or know someone who does. I'd rather go with Mark Twain: > It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
chrisweekly 1y ago
Fantastic quote. Spot on. Thanks for sharing it!
stronglikedan 1y ago
> I think it can be misunderstood and it can be very damaging when taken to an extreme That applies to anything, when taken to an extreme.
ctrlp 1y ago
[dead]
fasbiner 1y ago
I can’t think of a worse person to cite that principle; Snyder has lied and evaded historians with basic inquiries about his work. As we speak, his official position is that Russia and China are both engaged in genocides and another state categorically is not and you should be punished for inquiring. I don’t think that position is going to age well, for him or for you. The propaganda is so effective because the propagandists can rely on your lack of basic rigor and media bubble to present abstractions as a real moral position. And there’s no way to say this without hurting feelings and causing people to get defensive. Look up what any historian who isn’t on tv has say about Snyder’s work on libgen, it’s not sensationalist or context-free, it’s just someone going through and documenting mendacious claims and poor historiography: https://defendinghistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Omer-Bartovs-review-of-Bloodlands.pdf https://defendinghistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Omer... What is telling is not that one reviewer can be authoritative, but more that the response is "Shut up and go away, I'm trying to have a media career." Pretending to be a controversial truth-teller speaking for principles is how Americans like to be propagandized to and how we like to become niche celebrities instead of doing work that requires accuracy and rigor.

RamRodification 1y ago

...and let someone else pay the price in the end for letting these things happen unchecked. Perhaps your children :)

alansammarone 1y ago
This. I can't keep myself from quoting another 20th century lesson from Snyder: > Be as courageous as you can. If none of us is prepared to die for freedom, then all of us will die in unfreedom.
contrarian1234 1y ago
you caring a lot doesn't change reality in your favor. You get one vote that you can exercise once a year or so. Thats about all the agency you have on the wider world (and probably rightly so, if its to be proportional to the population) Being informed just enough to choose the less horrible of the two clowns the systems presents you... takes very little effort. Everything past that is a waste of brain cycles. Spend your energy on things you can affect. If you care about your children then spend the emotional energy on your friends, family and community. It'll help them more
- alansammarone 1y ago
  That's right, one person caring and not acting doesn't change reality, neither does one person caring and acting (most of the time). A relatively small number of people caring and acting, however, can change the course of history. While it is in nobody's interest to care, individually, we're all better off if we care and act just a little bit.
  - contrarian1234 1y ago
    i assume caring and acting here you mean in the context of larger issues. bc effort spent on your immediate world definitely does change reality there is no mechanism past voting to change the big picture. Nor should there be. The person going around with the megaphone convincing other people their right inherantly feels their feelings are more right than others' And you dont need to care an aweful lot when it comes to voting. Any caring past that is basically like getting worked up about the weather

pookha 1y ago

What your Chinese friend isn't saying is that all those Substack writers in the US would be disappeared into Chinese gulag's. The US has a strong freedom of speech clause baked into its core governance system...When I was fifteen I'd be subscribed to five different punk zines and would be creating mix-tapes from 10 different sources (and much of it wildly offensive and political).

bongodongobob 1y ago
And yet people are getting fired over making comments about Charlie Kirk on social media.
- jonnybgood 1y ago
  By the government?
  - pjc50 1y ago
    No, but by Party supporters running campaigns against their employers. Or by the use of the administrative state to pressure the employers.
  - imcritic 1y ago
    Even if gov isn't involved directly - it could very easily press some corps for such firings.
    - baggachipz 1y ago
      As we've already seen.
  - ioasuncvinvaer 1y ago
    Government officials are specifically calling for it.
  - ceejayoz 1y ago
    In some cases, yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disciplinary_actions_for_commentary_on_the_assassination_of_Charlie_Kirk?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disciplinary_actions_for_comme... > Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that any non-citizens who celebrated Kirk's death would be immediately deported… > Attorney General Pam Bondi indicated on Katie Miller's podcast and in subsequent Department of Justice announcements that she intended to "target" speech against Kirk following his death as hate speech… Plus teachers in public schools and universities.

seydor 1y ago

I think the main difference is, in liberal countries people depend on the media to manufacture consensuses, while China does not need anyone but the leader to create them. No society can survive without a certain degree of consensus

r3trohack3r 1y ago
I believe it’s a mistake for liberal countries to rely on centralized content distribution platforms for consensus - that’s how you end up with consensus being for sale.
- micromacrofoot 1y ago
  that's capitalism baby, look at sinclair broadcast group for example
- bluGill 1y ago
  I would need to see an alternative before I can agree. There are other things tried on the margins, but so far none really seem better to me.
rjdj377dhabsn 1y ago
Don't the results of elections that are generally perceived to be fair give leaders a mandate that is accepted by most to do what they campaigned on?
eddywebs 1y ago
Could be, I think the main point missing here is the independence of media from the state, wherever the place.

np- 1y ago

Isn’t it a feature that people are vocally dissatisfied with what the media reports? To just accept it quietly in silence seems in fact the worse outcome. Even if everyone knows the media reporting is wrong, keeping quiet about it creates a strange meta state where the reporting is true enough that no one wants to publicly question it, because nobody else is questioning it, so it’s unclear whether your fellow citizens accept it as true or not, so you need to assume they believe it’s true.

thebruce87m 1y ago

I used to work for a large semiconductor manufacturer and the first time I visited the headquarters in the US I was shocked to see Fox News was on 24/7 in the cafeteria. Whenever I see a major negative news story about republicans I always visit the Fox News website and you’re lucky if it’s a sub heading at the bottom. If it’s a particular bad story there will always be a Biden or Hillary story dug up as a headliner to change the narrative.

pjc50 1y ago

I keep joking that instead of the normal repressive state-controlled media, the West has media-controlled states. Electing a TV host is just a culmination of that. Or a media owner, like Berlusconi. Coincidentally he was brought down by his underage sex trafficking. Westerners voluntarily tune into their propaganda, leaving the 24/7 news channels blaring. But there is a critical difference in that elections do happen, they do get counted, and they do make a genuine difference in the political and economic outcomes which affect millions of people.

dfedbeef 1y ago
For now.
walleeee 1y ago
Wolin is insightful in this regard

squidproquo 1y ago

The other thing to note is that journalism in the US has gotten really lazy. A lot of the articles you will see in the MSM are based on leaked info and press-releases from PR firms, etc. It's easier to for journalists to regurgitate stories hand-fed to them than doing truly hard and costly investigative work.

SmirkingRevenge 1y ago
I think it's less laziness than the fact that the news media has been in a constant state of disruption since the internet. It's a much riskier business than it used to be.

stetrain 1y ago

I think treating the government as a singular entity pushing a narrative is missing a bit. There is no singular government moving in lock-step, I think we've seen a lot of those seams showing recently. There are factions, supported by various wealthy powerful interests. Those factions include people in government but also people funding or controlling media. The owner and CEO of a major social network was literally given a public-facing government position, and others in the administration were previously TV personalities. Wealth, media, and government are an ouroboros, not a one-directional megaphone from The Government to The Citizens.

herval 1y ago
This is true in a _well functioning democratic government_ - by design: as long as there are differences, a single actor cannot take over. Understanding that the media is owned by powerful people, and people have agendas, is a key point to media literacy that should be taught at schools. It doesn't mean media should be ignored, nor that they always aim to manipulate (with some exceptions). It's, again, healthy if you understand it as it is (a viewpoint, espoused by people with a specific worldview). Interpreting the news require critical thinking. Most people never develop critical thinking.
- UpsideDownRide 1y ago
  Lack of critical thinking is a bit of a worldwide schooling system failure. Underfunding on one hand and not having an education plan for people to develop those skills leads to what we have. Some are lucky to get those skills from home or from top tier schools. I imagine that this state of things was somewhat beneficial for the ruling elites but Russia is now showing the whole western world, that dumb population is a huge liability.
  - herval 1y ago
    Indeed it is - and likely by design anyway (critical thinking is bad for political control, after all). You generally want the ones in power (preferably the ones aligned to you) to be better educated than the masses.

alexpit 1y ago

Comparing Chinese media with American media is insane. One can argue most big media companies in the US have an editorial line that is aligned with one ideology, particularly true for most legacy media outlets. But many are still putting out very high quality mostly unbiased content. News are not meant to be consumed as facts but to challenge one’s own beliefs and seek out the truth or truths. Living in a bubble completely disconnected from both national and global events that impact us all is irresponsible and usually exactly what totalitarian regimes expect us to do.

narrator 1y ago

The other thing is the completely different information universes left and right live in in America. It's difficult to have a conversation with someone on the other side of the political divide because they believe a completely different set of facts. Meanwhile, in China, everyone knows the news is B.S and they only trust information they get directly. In the past, before the Internet, there was a lot more time invested in maintaining relationships just to get good information. Is that the case in China? It reminds me of this business litigation a company I was an investor in had between the partners. I wasn't very close to the situation, so I had no first hand knowledge of what actually happened, but each side had a contradictory set of facts. Both could not be true at the same time. Each side asked me to join their side, but I told them that that's what the judicial process is for: to find out who's facts the jury believes. Unfortunately, this means it's going to be a long process that will go to trial because they are so totally far apart on the facts that they will have to have a trial. Also unfortunately, this also probably means someone is lying in a pretty pathological way. The same thing seems to be occurring in American politics and there's no real neutral arbiter I guess except the voters.

AnimalMuppet 1y ago
In US politics, while one side may lie considerably more than the other, neither side is really committed to truth. One is selective in the truth and distorts the interpretation to push their narrative; one just blatantly lies to push whatever is their position of the moment.

moron4hire 1y ago

This sounds like "nobody drives in NYC because the traffic is so bad".

K0balt 1y ago

This is perfectly reasonable when people know that they have no control of the government, it’s like the weather then…you just deal with it. The problem is that in the USA , we’ve been told that we have a democratic republic, and that we have significant self-determination in affairs of the state, and that justice, freedom, and the right to live relatively un-disturbed are inalienable rights. It’s bullshit in practice, of course, but we’ve been told this, and we’ve been told it’s our duty to protect those rights, up to and specifically including armed insurrection. Many people actually believed what they were told.

ghm2199 1y ago

Perhaps none of us have living memory of how when the chips are down there is no place to turn to but a source of truth. For every propaganda(ish) outlet, there is a place you can check for real news NYTimes,CNN,Fox juxtaposed to things like propublica,snopes or icij. One friend got taken in by a fake news story and rued the internet is full of fake news and propaganda that spreads in a minute, I am so dismayed, how can I know what is real?. a friend replied: the internet is wonderful too you can check in under a minute if something is fake.

eddywebs 1y ago

Amen !

CrulesAll 1y ago

No. In the West, there are competing news sources(despite the best efforts of many). They might be equally biased but you do get a devil's advocate system. China is a one party state that controls all media. Not remotely the same. In China, you would not have known the story was bogus.

CommieBobDole 1y ago

I'd like to point out that the student's advice, "of course the news is ridiculous propaganda, just ignore it and go about your life and focus on your friends and family" is the the response desired by the authoritarian Chinese government who has carefully engineered the situation in the first place. The purpose of constantly publishing obvious lies is not for people to believe them (though some always will), it's to devalue the idea of truth in general. Combine that with overt (but unpredictable) penalties for supporting the 'wrong' cause, and a disinterest in politics becomes the easiest and safest path for a member of the public. As long as the economy's good, people just don't care about anything that doesn't harm them directly.

throaway5445454 1y ago
also was the outcome fostered by the USSR
pixl97 1y ago
> it's to devalue the idea of truth in general. You see a common theme in some people talking about science related things, aka "The science was wrong", which is very rarely the case. Most of the time when that is said it's "The conclusion was slightly incorrect because of statistically insignificant findings" (probability based) versus wrong (binary). You end up with a class of people that start thinking all science is wrong and at any moment their crackpot crap is suddenly going to be correct.
- istjohn 1y ago
  I mostly blame bad journalism for this. Always looking for sensational content to capture attention, outlets publish credulous articles on single journal articles without providing enough context for their unsophisticated audience. It would take much more time and effort to properly contextualized them, and in many cases, it would be apparent that it is too early for the general public to draw any conclusions from the research. It wouldn't be newsworthy.
pphysch 1y ago
There is really some wild fan-fiction on HN. If you're being serious, how do you know any of this? Based on what evidence?

throaway5445454 1y ago

The problem with this statement is that your Chinese friend comes from a place where every information source allowed by the government can be safely assumed to be propaganda, by definition. That's how their system works. Not so in the west.

ancientworldnow 1y ago
This extreme naivete is exactly what the parent comment's story is addressing.
- throaway5445454 1y ago
  No, it's not. There is a big difference between Chinese-level control of information and what is seen in the west. Naivete would be believing that the west has none, or maybe that the West has so much that it is somehow already an Orwellian Big Brother state.
yatopifo 1y ago
I object your reference to the collective west. As a Canadian, i believe my country has very little in common with the US. In fact, the US is pretty similar to China when it comes to propaganda.
- throaway5445454 1y ago
  Im Canadian too and I fear our country becomes more American every year.

baxtr 1y ago

So you are saying that experts on CNN are paid by the government?

tootie 1y ago

That's a ridiculous statement and honestly this blog post itself is very misleading. The quote taken on condition of anonymity is someone saying there is no evidence this was a national security threat. The NYT article is not at all a hair on fire credulous tale of near disaster. It quotes government officials and experts, connects it to "normal" criminal cartels and offers some opinions on what could be a worst case scenario. As much as this could easily be a simple criminal case, it was already connected to threats made to politicians so it's not far-fetched.

cm2012 1y ago

This is just wrong. There is a huge difference between having a free press vs not. And while publications like the NY times are not perfect, they pretty much never outright lie, unlike state propaganda.

stefantalpalaru 1y ago
[dead]

philwelch 1y ago

The good news is, the only people who watch cable news in the US anymore are either boomers or in an airport.

spaceisballer 1y ago

There are certainly some news outlets that operate like propoganda. I mean Fox comes to mind, if you ever watch you’ll notice they carefully craft their statements and rarely talk about facts, mostly feelings. News is at its core a business, and they know they get eyes on things by scaring people or talking about things that seem shocking at face value. NYT and other outlets that do long form articles (Wired) have invaluable information. But we live in a world where most people (especially perpetually online people) just browse the headlines and take what they want from it. We’ve lost nuance, and because of that in the US one party is using that to their advantage.

SmirkingRevenge 1y ago
Fox (and the right-wing media more broadly) act as boosters for the right and negative partisanship generators for the left. They protect republicans from accountability. They manufacture scandals about the opposition. And it's so effective we couldn't even collectively manage to banish from public life the guy who nearly murdered congress and his veep on television. Truly scary.

Rover222 1y ago

I agree from a high level, but I think the major difference is that: - Chinese news is propoganda in the traditional sense - directed/approved by the central government - US news is not centrally controlled like that, but most sources lean heavily left or right, and distort narratives to fit their views. I feel like liberals believe that, while Fox News is clearly presenting things from a right-leaning perspective, most of their chosen news sources are neutral. That's absurd. NYT is certainly far left in how they spin the majority of their stories.

VerminOctopus1 1y ago
The fact that you think NYT is “far left” is a great example of how incredibly far the overton window has shifted.
- Rover222 1y ago
  The whole democratic party has shifted drastically left in the last 10 years. If you can't recognize this, you're just deep in the echo chamber, IMO.
  - VerminOctopus1 1y ago
    Where did I mention the democratic party? I’m talking about the NYT. I also disagree with your statement, irrelevant as it is.
    - Rover222 1y ago
      NYT is staffed by democrats (I'm a disaffected democrat too, believe it or not), but the democratic platform is far left of what it was when Clinton was in office.
SmirkingRevenge 1y ago
NYT is definitely not far left and is still the cream of the crop when it comes to fact-based reporting According to this outfit the NYT "skews left": https://app.adfontesmedia.com/chart/interactive https://app.adfontesmedia.com/chart/interactive Their opinion section is mostly center left but has pretty wide ideological diversity

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

dionian 1y ago

unfortunately we are trending toward that direction, trust in media is hitting all time lows in the US.

sjw987 1y ago

The constant news consumption isn't just an American thing. I live in Britain and have colleagues and friends who (admittedly) watch or read news first thing after waking up, and read news website articles constantly throughout the day. We're talking, multiple times per hour. They read the news more frequently than things happen to be in the news.

JTbane 1y ago

Okay I got a little bit rage baited by this but to summarize- we Westerners value openness in government to prevent abuse and corruption, so getting mad about propaganda is common.

nixosbestos 1y ago

I basically agree with every word you wrote. But also, it means you wake up one day one day and tanks are rolling through the capital city, and the President is threatening American cities with illegal military occupation.

starky 1y ago

>They are fully aware that all of it is propaganda and just go about their life. In my experience with people I've interacted with in China is that there is quite a range of belief in the propaganda. I've had people say some truly wild things that were clearly the result of how news and history have been presented to them. Its also important to consider that we are interacting with people that are more engaged with the West and aren't seeing the perspective of a lot of the country.

StefanBatory 1y ago

Ah, so like Russia. The ultimate dream of all authoritarians. A society that no longer even dreams of freedom, that becomes fully apathetic. Do you know how many independent newspapers there are in China? Zero. Even ones with what we'd call liberal ones are controlled and will be dealt with if they go too far. Just because things aren't working well does not mean we have to tear it all down

kneeGrr 1y ago

[flagged]

0xbadcafebee 1y ago

What's the most popular tag-line for YouTube/TikTok videos and online spammy ads? "The TRUTH about ..." Americans have PTSD, and paranoia. Before Nixon, Americans had an idylic belief in "America" as some bastion of exceptionalism, independence, idealism. We're the best, and we can do anything. We never got attacked, we had the most money, power, etc. Everything's good and we're the best. But since Nixon, they learned their most-venerated politicians lie to them. But not only politicians; the news lies, corporations lie, scientists lie, their neighbors lie. And when 9/11 happened, suddenly the facade of invulnerability fell (because it was a foreign terrorist, rather than domestic, like Oklahoma City). Year after year, the media bombards Americans with terrifying stories of somebody lying to them, secretly hurting them. They're all out to get you. And polls show year after year that Americans are less trusting of their institutions. To function in a society, you have to trust somebody. So they still watch the news, listen to politicians. They hide in some in-group, like a political party or ideology, or even just a Facebook group. But they are hyper-aware that anybody could be lying to them at any time. That some commonly-held truth is actually a weapon used to hurt them. They have been bombarded with fear for decades by the media and politicians. Every single day they are told that "the enemy" is working to destroy everything they love. This isn't an exaggeration, this is literally the line given by politicians, and then parroted by their favorite media source. This is why Americans both obsessively watch media, and are really emotional about everything they hear in the media. It's why so many Americans latch onto conspiracy theories now (they didn't used to). We are all afraid because our system has made us afraid, and we don't know who to trust.

iphone_elegance 1y ago

That's fine but it's also the end of self-rule and agency

NooneAtAll3 1y ago

I disagree about "the government pushing" it's *different groups* of power - some have more control, some less but all push one big agenda or the other, so instead of centralized propaganda you get affected by targetted propaganda

turkishdelight 1y ago

I had a teacher in high school that married a Chinese woman, and when her parents came over they said "Your propaganda is so refreshing, you hardly even notice it." It's always struck me how hamfisted the Chinese government sound in its communications.

chrononaut 1y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect > Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. > In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know. > That is the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. I'd point out it does not operate in other arenas of life. In ordinary life, if somebody consistently exaggerates or lies to you, you soon discount everything they say. In court, there is the legal doctrine of falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus, which means untruthful in one part, untruthful in all. But when it comes to the media, we believe against evidence that it is probably worth our time to read other parts of the paper. When, in fact, it almost certainly isn't. The only possible explanation for our behavior is amnesia. Surprised this hasn't been posted within a comment yet :)

lanfeust6 1y ago

They aren't mutually exclusive; Westerners get emotional about news, but still understand that there is a propaganda component. That doesn't mean the news isn't useful. Outlets might be selective about what they say, but the truth in reporting sort of stands in plain sight; if you read a balance of sources, you get a decent idea what's happening, surrounding a particular issue. News organizations very rarely lie. They might be misleading in framing or selective wording, but they won't outright put something in print that is a complete lie.

arrozconcosas 1y ago

The Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012 changed restrictions on disseminating propaganda materials domestically. Passed as part of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013, it amended the 1948 Smith-Mundt Act, which had previously blocked the domestic distribution of content produced by U.S. government agencies like the State Department. This is a driving factor behind a lot of the decline in quality of news as propaganda starts to drown out legitimate reporting.

calandoa 1y ago

[dead]

_DeadFred_ 1y ago

I mean your comment, number one on this post, is propaganda to ignore the major sourcing of information that least pretend to have a system for evaluating what i true, what is worthy to present and replace it with.......? In the USA we have historically tried to keep abreast of what is going on in the world, partly because we are a nation of immigrants with ties/emotional ties around the world. Is that a thing in China? It didn't seem so when I was working with people in China. Giving a Chinese cultural position (ignore the world) might not be a fit for an American.

dmbche 1y ago

Look up Manufacturing Consent - good read!

PicassoCTs 1y ago

[dead]

thomastjeffery 1y ago

Propaganda gets too much credit. The entire Republican platform (especially since ~2016) has switched focus to something less like propaganda, and more like engagement for engagement's sake. Conservative talking heads do tend to frame everything from a particular perspective (that's the propaganda part), but rather than try to convince everyone to agree with them, they do the opposite: try to get as many people as possible to disagree with them, so they can get themselves and their audience into eternal "arguments". These "arguments" are never intended to be logically defensible. Instead, they are intended to fail as spectacularly as possible. Naturally, most other media outlets love this, because they get to profit from their own participation. The only value left in this dynamic is engagement. By leveraging the alleged "two sides" of American politics, both politicians and media corporations have managed to create an infinite feedback loop of engagement with their media; and at the same time have managed to direct that feedback into political support for their preferred policies. Knowing this, it's entirely unsurprising that many of the highest positions in government are now held by household TV personalities, like Dr. OZ and Donald Trump. --- So what can we do about it? If engagement is the new currency, can we simply boycott this entire thing by disengaging? I doubt it will be possible to get enough people to actually participate, particularly those who are currently the most engaged. Disengagement only creates an implicit victory for whoever is speaking loudest. Honest argument is incredibly important. There is no value in diversity of thought until differing positions meet each other and collaborate. Media corporations have found huge success by replacing argument with bickering. I think the first step in undoing that damage is to help people understand the difference between the two: argument is goal-oriented, whereas bickering is goal-avoidant. Knowing that difference, I think we should find ways to practice argument with each other, and redirect our engagement into collaborative progress.

knowitnone3 1y ago

Perhaps propaganda is not the right word. I think a better word is "sensationalized" which happens often even here on HN with titles trick people into clicking on the link. With each click having monetary value, this is just the norm.

geeunits 1y ago

Sounds like Americans are engaged in a democracy they see the ability to shape whereas China is a lost cause, so just bend over and ignore it? :)