3 ms·

Seems a bit premature. Maduro is gone but nothing has fundamentally changed. His government is intact, just with a warning from Trump to follow orders “or else”

Seems a bit premature. Maduro is gone but nothing has fundamentally changed. His government is intact, just with a warning from Trump to follow orders “or else”.

clanky 9mo ago
Anything printed in mainstream Western press in the immediate aftermath of something like the Maduro op should be read as perception management first and foremost, with only a tangential relationship to disseminating truth.
- dfxm12 9mo ago
  perception management Is this any different from manufactured consent?
  - clanky 9mo ago
    I feel like they've mostly dispensed with the pretense of needing "consent" from anyone who isn't calling shots on what to print in the newspapers in the first place. This seems more like "we'll do what we want and don't care to even conceal our motives anymore." And other commenters are right to point out that it's very premature when it's not clear there's been a genuine change in power, so it may be calculated to make that seem inevitable as well.
  - SpicyLemonZest 9mo ago
    "Manufactured consent" was a term Chomsky introduced for the way in which US mass media operates, so it shouldn't be terribly surprising to find that the pattern matches. (One thing I'd encourage people to think about: would it be better to have a media that avoids manufacturing consent by never challenging the general public's biases and preconceptions?)
    - jjj123 9mo ago
      Are you saying the opposite of manufacturing consent would result in a media that isn’t challenging and conforms to people’s biases? The way I see it you can do both at once. Exaggerating/downplaying stories in a way that confirms biases is something the media does today (see MSNBC/Fox News), and I’d argue it’s absolutely a form of manufactured consent.
      - SpicyLemonZest 9mo ago
        I'm saying that it's wrong to understand "manufacturing consent" as some specific action a news outlet might or might not be performing. Most nontrivial reporting involves shaping the public's perspective of events, and that shaping is always going to be subject to the biases and incentives of the people reporting it. The thesis of the original book (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent) was that modern mass media is structurally biased towards advertisers and government sources, not that specific people are making bad or corrupt editorial decisions and mass media could become unbiased if we found a way to make them stop.

Seems a bit premature. Maduro is gone but nothing has fundamentally changed. His government is intact, just with a warning from Trump to follow orders “or else”.

clanky 9mo ago

Anything printed in mainstream Western press in the immediate aftermath of something like the Maduro op should be read as perception management first and foremost, with only a tangential relationship to disseminating truth.

dfxm12 9mo ago
perception management Is this any different from manufactured consent?
- clanky 9mo ago
  I feel like they've mostly dispensed with the pretense of needing "consent" from anyone who isn't calling shots on what to print in the newspapers in the first place. This seems more like "we'll do what we want and don't care to even conceal our motives anymore." And other commenters are right to point out that it's very premature when it's not clear there's been a genuine change in power, so it may be calculated to make that seem inevitable as well.
- SpicyLemonZest 9mo ago
  "Manufactured consent" was a term Chomsky introduced for the way in which US mass media operates, so it shouldn't be terribly surprising to find that the pattern matches. (One thing I'd encourage people to think about: would it be better to have a media that avoids manufacturing consent by never challenging the general public's biases and preconceptions?)
  - jjj123 9mo ago
    Are you saying the opposite of manufacturing consent would result in a media that isn’t challenging and conforms to people’s biases? The way I see it you can do both at once. Exaggerating/downplaying stories in a way that confirms biases is something the media does today (see MSNBC/Fox News), and I’d argue it’s absolutely a form of manufactured consent.
    - SpicyLemonZest 9mo ago
      I'm saying that it's wrong to understand "manufacturing consent" as some specific action a news outlet might or might not be performing. Most nontrivial reporting involves shaping the public's perspective of events, and that shaping is always going to be subject to the biases and incentives of the people reporting it. The thesis of the original book (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent) was that modern mass media is structurally biased towards advertisers and government sources, not that specific people are making bad or corrupt editorial decisions and mass media could become unbiased if we found a way to make them stop.