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Funny story: In Germany there is currently a "movement" of people calling for stricter immigration control (to abbreviate an endless discussion about what they

Funny story: In Germany there is currently a "movement" of people calling for stricter immigration control (to abbreviate an endless discussion about what they actually want), called Pegida. During one of their demonstrations a comedy/satire show dressed up an actor as a "Russian" journalist from "Russia Today", a news caster/online magazine financed by the Russian state. The Pegida participants were very willing to talk to him. They said that western media is all corrupt and unfree, and that Russia Today is a "welcome" and more honest alternative. Which is so far from the truth it isn't even funny.

rational-future 12y ago
You're funny as well :) RT, BBC, Al Jazeera are official state propaganda machines, but that doesn't mean ALL they say is propaganda. As a matter of personal opinion on many subjects (not directly connected with the Russian government) RT is more honest than the big international media outlets (that cant afford to alienate the western governments, big advertisers or powerful interest groups).
- lispm 12y ago
  RT is pure propaganda. We have now a German program by RT. Website: http://www.rtdeutsch.com http://www.rtdeutsch.com Straight from Putin's mouth...
  - blumkvist 12y ago
    The situation is a lot worse in post-soviet countries in the EU like Bulgaria and Romania. When the regime fell the same people who ruled during that era staged everything so they remained in power. From political and official power to power through capital and corruption. A known mafia boss (Delyan Peevski) has control of over 50% of the newspapers and 80% of the distribution of all newspapers through another company. All the attorney generals of Bulgaria have been obviously corrupt, having dinners with prominent mafia bosses on yachts, etc. Everything in the judiciary system is made corrupt by design. All forms of opposition are crushed in infancy either by propaganda, intimidation or infiltrating the opposing organization and breaking it from the inside. It's HELL. We don't know what to do. When we think the situation can't be any more dire, another, greater scandal is already looming. It's depressing and crushing.
    - bayesianhorse 12y ago
      Emmigrate to Germany...
    - lispm 12y ago
      I doubt that Bulgaria and Romania are 'a lot worse'. The situation in Russia is quite bad. The free press index lists Russia quite a bit behind Bulgaria or Romania... http://rsf.org/index2014/data/index2014_en.pdf http://rsf.org/index2014/data/index2014_en.pdf
    - markvdb 12y ago
      According to Reporters Without Vorders, the press situation seems to be significantly better in the Baltics [1]. There was a bit more of a real change of parties in power over there I guess. Estonia in particular seems to be doing the best, better than Ireland, Belgium, Luxemburg and Swiztzerland. But if the RSF metrics are to believed, all the Baltics seem to perform significantly better than countries like Spain, the UK, France, the US or Italy... [1] http://index.rsf.org http://index.rsf.org
  - rational-future 12y ago
    Sure, if they say 2+2=4 that's Putin propaganda ...
    - lispm 12y ago
      If you look for statements like that in RT's media, you are looking for zero content. Much more you can see plain lies, conspiracies, missing facts, ...
  - pluma 12y ago
    Sometimes all you need to do to create propaganda is just show some unpopular facts in isolation. Sure, they're biased, but that doesn't mean they are always outright lying -- at least not more than American media. The idea of a unbiased news is a pipedream. I'm fully aware that German public television was intentionally created in a way that would supposedly protect it from the government's influence, but that doesn't mean they succeeded. The "Lügenpresse" chants are asinine, of course. It's not anyone's fault media isn't trustworthy, we were just wrong to think that it could ever be made to be unbiased, considering how biased the source material always is. I think the only safe way to consume information is to keep its origin in mind. I distrust RT and CNN equally -- but if they both share the same details in a story, there's likely some truth to it.
    - lispm 12y ago
      The propaganda of RT is pretty easy to spot almost everywhere and is systemic. > Sometimes all you need to do to create propaganda is just show some unpopular facts in isolation RT does quite a bit more than that. In Russia there are less alternatives to state media. CNN, sure, I would not trust them, too.
      - pluma 12y ago
        Implying English RT is targeted at Russians, which it is not. English RT and English Al Jazeera are international channels, like BBC World. That said, some of the programming on RT is pretty similar in nature to what you'd find on, say, Arirang TV (an English South Korean channel). I.e. less (political) propaganda and more good old (commercial) PR. If I'd have to say anything good about RT versus other international news channels, it's their coverage of the protests in Turkey. Even in Germany (where Turkey is seen as no more foreign than Greece or Italy and a significant share of the population has ties to Turkey) the protests were at best a footnote of the regular news reporting. RT on the other hand would have reporters right in the middle of it, getting teargassed and documenting the different motivations for the various groups involved. Oh, and of course our media was extremely supportive of the rebellion in Syria despite the growing influence of Islamist groups. Until they decided to change directions completely when ISIS/ISIL showed up. And now they refer to them (supposedly objectively!) as "terror militia IS". Frankly, calling anything a "terror militia" while pretending to be objective is pretty damn insulting. It completely discards any notion of them having any motives or being in fact humans. It's how you talk about an enemy in your propaganda when you're at war, it's not how you cover a news story. Calling German media "Lügenpresse" is silly, but not because it's outrageously inaccurate. It's silly because all media is inadvertently lying. You can't just present the "facts" because they're inconsistent, disjointed and confusing (because they're not only incomplete, but also always subjective). But as soon as you start to create a narrative, you're simplifying the facts and introducing a biased perspective. Yet you have to create narratives to make the news relateable and interesting to your audience (and stakeholders). What's the alternative? I don't think there is one. Blogging and "YouTube journalism" is a start, but it's already been subverted at this point. It's no more difficult to feed misleading or biased information via individual "citizen reporters" than it is to influence corporate/national media. I guess correct attribution would go a long way, but now that "official" news programmes directly copy YouTube videos and online articles seem to be more about editorialising than citing the actual sources, I don't see that happening -- no party (other than the audience) would benefit from more accountability in the news, sadly.
A_COMPUTER 12y ago
They're on to something, but they don't know the whole picture. Which is that in a world where mass media is under the control of one superpower or another, you are only going to hear painful criticism of your own government from the opposing superpower's media arm. What I find just as painful as you about your countrymen's opinion of RT, is that people in my country will criticize RT as propaganda and then comically think the media in our own country isn't propaganda at us, and against Russia.
- hindsightbias 12y ago
  The funny thing is even if RT is an propaganda arm of Hitler-Putin, the US would objectively have been better off listening to it. Russia was in opposition to the Iraq War, destabilizing Libya, supporting the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and toppling Assad in Syria. Putin was never cryptic that Ukraine was a "red line" and now we're all shocked at that outcome. Now we've got ISIS, have given up toppling Assad, troops headed back to Iraq, 'advisors' going to Ukraine and Putin is getting the grand tour in Cairo. Arguably, Putin was looking out for western interests more than the clowns running the show for the last 14 years.
  - bayesianhorse 12y ago
    Where did Putin say Ukraine is a "red line" before that crisis. Just a reminder: Their elected president rejected a trade agreement with the EU. His people didn't like that, and coupled with lots of grief about extreme corruption and other things, things escalated. The US or the EU did not intervene at all, whereas all the invading and conquering forces where Russian... The western governments also didn't want to topple Assad. But they also can't be opposed to deposing him, because that would contradict all democratic values: Assad and his father are mass murderers who rule their country dictatorily in a reign of terror. Regime change was never a goal in Libya. If at any point Gaddafi had just stopped shelling civilian settlements, the bombardment would have been stopped, and the rebels wouldn't have had a snow flake's chance in hell of deposing him. The UN resolution was followed to the letter. Gaddafi's stupidity is a whole different matter.
- bayesianhorse 12y ago
hindsightbias 12y ago
> so far from truth Western media isn't corrupt and unfree, or is more honest? Citation required. Yes, RT is a propaganda organ, just like much of the western media (corporate or otherwise). But at least on RT, I get to see alternative viewpoints of western concerns. You'll never see someone like a Chomsky on NBC/CBS/ABC/Fox/CNN - at least alternatives get a microphone on RT. In western media, I get to see alternatives to non-Western propaganda organs. Here's RT covering Syria/Lebanon in 2012. Way more objective than anything you'll ever see on US networks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yho_m0HRa9c#t=1076 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yho_m0HRa9c#t=1076 And also, more accurate - if you'd been watching CNN, they'd have been telling you Assad's days were numbered.
- mahranch 12y ago
  Are you really trying to equate CNN with a state-owned and operated news agency? Those news agencies are explicitly biased. Their sole goal in news reporting isn't profit or appeasing shareholders, but pushing their narrative of world events. Pushing their countries' ideology out onto the world. That's their only reason for existing. They don't care about profit or integrity in the slightest. If you think that's the same as a for-profit company, you're incredibly deluded. The lesser of two evils is a real thing, life isn't black or white. Just because I jaywalked yesterday and committed a crime doesn't mean I'm the same as a meth dealer. The equivalence is beyond naive.
  - hindsightbias 12y ago
    You clearly have never watched RT. You have been indoctrinated by some illusion of free market delusion - typical of HN. If CNN cared about integrity nobody would be working there anymore. That you see this as an absolute black/white, good/evil and a strawman speaks to your ideology, not mine.
    - mahranch 12y ago
      > You clearly have never watched RT. I don't need to, to know that it's a state-run news agency looking to push their narrative out into the world. They don't even try to hide it. That's quite literally their sole reason for existing. Do they have good articles from time to time? I don't know, probably or they wouldn't be as successful as they are. But I'm not going to find out. I try to minimize the bias in getting my news, not expose myself to as much of it as possible. That's like forcing myself to read nazi propaganda because they might make a valid point in the second paragraph of chapter 23. In the end, it's still rubbish.
kingmanaz 12y ago
"The Pegida participants were very willing to talk to him. They said that western media is all corrupt and unfree, and that Russia Today is a "welcome" and more honest alternative." And how are any of the the above concerns baseless? Media cartels, whether Western or otherwise, are organized in a hierarchy, wherein editors review and cull the content of their subordinate journalists. Such an arrangement results in a militaristic concentration of power which can be exploited to control discourse locally, regionally, nationally, or, globally. Frankly---and this may ruffle some feathers here---rather than questioning the Putin régime’s influence on Russian media, the West should be collectively asking why Israel-partisan Jews have such disproportionate influence in Western media. If Germans who are concerned with the effects of mass migration are being targeted for satire by Western media, why isn't Israel receiving the same biting criticism for recently sterilizing and deporting its black population? Why can some peoples express their national concerns democratically without being painted as pariahs, while other peoples are mocked and ridiculed by an self-titled "impartial" media. Many here spare themselves exposure to the hypocrisies of Western/global media by directing their free time toward coding. Personally, the parade of Jewish "experts" who harangued the West's airwaves over the necessary WMD war in Iraq long ago convinced me of the corrupt nature of Western, and possibly, every organized media.
- bayesianhorse 12y ago
  If you say stupid things, then that is your right. But if I then say that I think you are stupid, that is also my right. What you don't seem to understand is that our media is "controlled" by a free market. There are tons of online magazines which share your world view. The audience can choose these outlets. If news media with these world views were popular enough, they would get their own TV channels, and the money from advertising and subscription would enable them to reach even more people. But they suck. The vast majority disagrees with their views, "logic" and "solutions". That's why they are called "fringe" media.
  - kingmanaz 12y ago
    >What you don't seem to understand is that our media is "controlled" by a free market. What you don't seem to understand is that you're arguing against yourself. On one hand you decry the increasingly mainstream "Russia Today"'s alleged partiality. On the other hand, you use an appeal to economics to dismiss Western media's pro-Israel partiality. In other words, the manipulation of discourse by Israel-partisan Jews is excused via free market economics, yet, Russia's national media outlet---created by way of the market with Russia's wealth---is dismissed via appeals to ethics... ethics which Western media itself fails to practice. Gentile-controlled media outlets such as Al Jazeera and Russia Today can no longer be dismissed as "fringe". Indeed, the West may be just one more WMD-war away from a widespread loss of trust in Western, Israel-first media.
deepyearning 12y ago
Actually this shows the opposite. The mainstream media is unwilling to engage in discussion with someone who is anti-immigration (unless that person is is an Israeli politician). Instead they do cheap tricks to humiliate the speaker without addressing their actual arguments. The mainstream media, like all people, has the accusation of "racism" hanging over their heads so they are unable to speak freely on topics like immigration (see [0] for a deconstruction of the concept of racism). I know that the mainstream media in the UK, for example, publish some controversial materials on immigration and culture. But these are always from the perspective of "we're doing immigration wrong". All the mainstream right is allowed to say is that immigrants need to assimilate better. And they are only really allowed to say this about Muslims. They can't say it about Africans outside the context of Islam. And they can't say that assimilation is impossible, or that immigration is not worth the effort. I don't believe that the Russian press in general is more free than the Western press, but the person you are referring to is correct in that the Russian press is able to say things about immigration that the Western press can't. [0] http://beyondtheright.blogspot.com/2014/12/why-i-am-not-anti-racist.html http://beyondtheright.blogspot.com/2014/12/why-i-am-not-anti...
- guard-of-terra 12y ago
  In Russia immigration is a hot topic too, and internal Russian press is virtually not allowed to express opinions about limiting immigration just as well.
- bayesianhorse 12y ago
  Unwilling to engage? You seem to watch the wrong shows... I've seen tons of interviews with people advocating immigration control. Some where even quite friendly. There is a problem you don't seem to have noticed: The AFD Party does not only advocate tighter immigration control, but it also wants to hold offices. So if the news media document the utter failure of this party to even conduct their basic business without minor and major scandals, it saves us from voting some complete idiot into office. And where they got into office they continue to disappoint. Some just quit the party, others don't do any constructive work, some collaborate with the extreme right (and then they say they didn't). The media has an obligation to inform the public about the quality of politicians. That the AFD mostly fields ridiculously incompetent or inadequate candidates is not the media's fault.

rational-future 12y ago

You're funny as well :) RT, BBC, Al Jazeera are official state propaganda machines, but that doesn't mean ALL they say is propaganda. As a matter of personal opinion on many subjects (not directly connected with the Russian government) RT is more honest than the big international media outlets (that cant afford to alienate the western governments, big advertisers or powerful interest groups).

lispm 12y ago
RT is pure propaganda. We have now a German program by RT. Website: http://www.rtdeutsch.com http://www.rtdeutsch.com Straight from Putin's mouth...
- blumkvist 12y ago
  The situation is a lot worse in post-soviet countries in the EU like Bulgaria and Romania. When the regime fell the same people who ruled during that era staged everything so they remained in power. From political and official power to power through capital and corruption. A known mafia boss (Delyan Peevski) has control of over 50% of the newspapers and 80% of the distribution of all newspapers through another company. All the attorney generals of Bulgaria have been obviously corrupt, having dinners with prominent mafia bosses on yachts, etc. Everything in the judiciary system is made corrupt by design. All forms of opposition are crushed in infancy either by propaganda, intimidation or infiltrating the opposing organization and breaking it from the inside. It's HELL. We don't know what to do. When we think the situation can't be any more dire, another, greater scandal is already looming. It's depressing and crushing.
  - bayesianhorse 12y ago
    Emmigrate to Germany...
  - lispm 12y ago
    I doubt that Bulgaria and Romania are 'a lot worse'. The situation in Russia is quite bad. The free press index lists Russia quite a bit behind Bulgaria or Romania... http://rsf.org/index2014/data/index2014_en.pdf http://rsf.org/index2014/data/index2014_en.pdf
  - markvdb 12y ago
    According to Reporters Without Vorders, the press situation seems to be significantly better in the Baltics [1]. There was a bit more of a real change of parties in power over there I guess. Estonia in particular seems to be doing the best, better than Ireland, Belgium, Luxemburg and Swiztzerland. But if the RSF metrics are to believed, all the Baltics seem to perform significantly better than countries like Spain, the UK, France, the US or Italy... [1] http://index.rsf.org http://index.rsf.org
- rational-future 12y ago
  Sure, if they say 2+2=4 that's Putin propaganda ...
  - lispm 12y ago
    If you look for statements like that in RT's media, you are looking for zero content. Much more you can see plain lies, conspiracies, missing facts, ...
- pluma 12y ago
  Sometimes all you need to do to create propaganda is just show some unpopular facts in isolation. Sure, they're biased, but that doesn't mean they are always outright lying -- at least not more than American media. The idea of a unbiased news is a pipedream. I'm fully aware that German public television was intentionally created in a way that would supposedly protect it from the government's influence, but that doesn't mean they succeeded. The "Lügenpresse" chants are asinine, of course. It's not anyone's fault media isn't trustworthy, we were just wrong to think that it could ever be made to be unbiased, considering how biased the source material always is. I think the only safe way to consume information is to keep its origin in mind. I distrust RT and CNN equally -- but if they both share the same details in a story, there's likely some truth to it.
  - lispm 12y ago
    The propaganda of RT is pretty easy to spot almost everywhere and is systemic. > Sometimes all you need to do to create propaganda is just show some unpopular facts in isolation RT does quite a bit more than that. In Russia there are less alternatives to state media. CNN, sure, I would not trust them, too.
    - pluma 12y ago
      Implying English RT is targeted at Russians, which it is not. English RT and English Al Jazeera are international channels, like BBC World. That said, some of the programming on RT is pretty similar in nature to what you'd find on, say, Arirang TV (an English South Korean channel). I.e. less (political) propaganda and more good old (commercial) PR. If I'd have to say anything good about RT versus other international news channels, it's their coverage of the protests in Turkey. Even in Germany (where Turkey is seen as no more foreign than Greece or Italy and a significant share of the population has ties to Turkey) the protests were at best a footnote of the regular news reporting. RT on the other hand would have reporters right in the middle of it, getting teargassed and documenting the different motivations for the various groups involved. Oh, and of course our media was extremely supportive of the rebellion in Syria despite the growing influence of Islamist groups. Until they decided to change directions completely when ISIS/ISIL showed up. And now they refer to them (supposedly objectively!) as "terror militia IS". Frankly, calling anything a "terror militia" while pretending to be objective is pretty damn insulting. It completely discards any notion of them having any motives or being in fact humans. It's how you talk about an enemy in your propaganda when you're at war, it's not how you cover a news story. Calling German media "Lügenpresse" is silly, but not because it's outrageously inaccurate. It's silly because all media is inadvertently lying. You can't just present the "facts" because they're inconsistent, disjointed and confusing (because they're not only incomplete, but also always subjective). But as soon as you start to create a narrative, you're simplifying the facts and introducing a biased perspective. Yet you have to create narratives to make the news relateable and interesting to your audience (and stakeholders). What's the alternative? I don't think there is one. Blogging and "YouTube journalism" is a start, but it's already been subverted at this point. It's no more difficult to feed misleading or biased information via individual "citizen reporters" than it is to influence corporate/national media. I guess correct attribution would go a long way, but now that "official" news programmes directly copy YouTube videos and online articles seem to be more about editorialising than citing the actual sources, I don't see that happening -- no party (other than the audience) would benefit from more accountability in the news, sadly.

A_COMPUTER 12y ago

They're on to something, but they don't know the whole picture. Which is that in a world where mass media is under the control of one superpower or another, you are only going to hear painful criticism of your own government from the opposing superpower's media arm. What I find just as painful as you about your countrymen's opinion of RT, is that people in my country will criticize RT as propaganda and then comically think the media in our own country isn't propaganda at us, and against Russia.

hindsightbias 12y ago
The funny thing is even if RT is an propaganda arm of Hitler-Putin, the US would objectively have been better off listening to it. Russia was in opposition to the Iraq War, destabilizing Libya, supporting the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and toppling Assad in Syria. Putin was never cryptic that Ukraine was a "red line" and now we're all shocked at that outcome. Now we've got ISIS, have given up toppling Assad, troops headed back to Iraq, 'advisors' going to Ukraine and Putin is getting the grand tour in Cairo. Arguably, Putin was looking out for western interests more than the clowns running the show for the last 14 years.
- bayesianhorse 12y ago
  Where did Putin say Ukraine is a "red line" before that crisis. Just a reminder: Their elected president rejected a trade agreement with the EU. His people didn't like that, and coupled with lots of grief about extreme corruption and other things, things escalated. The US or the EU did not intervene at all, whereas all the invading and conquering forces where Russian... The western governments also didn't want to topple Assad. But they also can't be opposed to deposing him, because that would contradict all democratic values: Assad and his father are mass murderers who rule their country dictatorily in a reign of terror. Regime change was never a goal in Libya. If at any point Gaddafi had just stopped shelling civilian settlements, the bombardment would have been stopped, and the rebels wouldn't have had a snow flake's chance in hell of deposing him. The UN resolution was followed to the letter. Gaddafi's stupidity is a whole different matter.
bayesianhorse 12y ago

hindsightbias 12y ago

> so far from truth Western media isn't corrupt and unfree, or is more honest? Citation required. Yes, RT is a propaganda organ, just like much of the western media (corporate or otherwise). But at least on RT, I get to see alternative viewpoints of western concerns. You'll never see someone like a Chomsky on NBC/CBS/ABC/Fox/CNN - at least alternatives get a microphone on RT. In western media, I get to see alternatives to non-Western propaganda organs. Here's RT covering Syria/Lebanon in 2012. Way more objective than anything you'll ever see on US networks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yho_m0HRa9c#t=1076 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yho_m0HRa9c#t=1076 And also, more accurate - if you'd been watching CNN, they'd have been telling you Assad's days were numbered.

mahranch 12y ago
Are you really trying to equate CNN with a state-owned and operated news agency? Those news agencies are explicitly biased. Their sole goal in news reporting isn't profit or appeasing shareholders, but pushing their narrative of world events. Pushing their countries' ideology out onto the world. That's their only reason for existing. They don't care about profit or integrity in the slightest. If you think that's the same as a for-profit company, you're incredibly deluded. The lesser of two evils is a real thing, life isn't black or white. Just because I jaywalked yesterday and committed a crime doesn't mean I'm the same as a meth dealer. The equivalence is beyond naive.
- hindsightbias 12y ago
  You clearly have never watched RT. You have been indoctrinated by some illusion of free market delusion - typical of HN. If CNN cared about integrity nobody would be working there anymore. That you see this as an absolute black/white, good/evil and a strawman speaks to your ideology, not mine.
  - mahranch 12y ago
    > You clearly have never watched RT. I don't need to, to know that it's a state-run news agency looking to push their narrative out into the world. They don't even try to hide it. That's quite literally their sole reason for existing. Do they have good articles from time to time? I don't know, probably or they wouldn't be as successful as they are. But I'm not going to find out. I try to minimize the bias in getting my news, not expose myself to as much of it as possible. That's like forcing myself to read nazi propaganda because they might make a valid point in the second paragraph of chapter 23. In the end, it's still rubbish.

kingmanaz 12y ago

"The Pegida participants were very willing to talk to him. They said that western media is all corrupt and unfree, and that Russia Today is a "welcome" and more honest alternative." And how are any of the the above concerns baseless? Media cartels, whether Western or otherwise, are organized in a hierarchy, wherein editors review and cull the content of their subordinate journalists. Such an arrangement results in a militaristic concentration of power which can be exploited to control discourse locally, regionally, nationally, or, globally. Frankly---and this may ruffle some feathers here---rather than questioning the Putin régime’s influence on Russian media, the West should be collectively asking why Israel-partisan Jews have such disproportionate influence in Western media. If Germans who are concerned with the effects of mass migration are being targeted for satire by Western media, why isn't Israel receiving the same biting criticism for recently sterilizing and deporting its black population? Why can some peoples express their national concerns democratically without being painted as pariahs, while other peoples are mocked and ridiculed by an self-titled "impartial" media. Many here spare themselves exposure to the hypocrisies of Western/global media by directing their free time toward coding. Personally, the parade of Jewish "experts" who harangued the West's airwaves over the necessary WMD war in Iraq long ago convinced me of the corrupt nature of Western, and possibly, every organized media.

bayesianhorse 12y ago
If you say stupid things, then that is your right. But if I then say that I think you are stupid, that is also my right. What you don't seem to understand is that our media is "controlled" by a free market. There are tons of online magazines which share your world view. The audience can choose these outlets. If news media with these world views were popular enough, they would get their own TV channels, and the money from advertising and subscription would enable them to reach even more people. But they suck. The vast majority disagrees with their views, "logic" and "solutions". That's why they are called "fringe" media.
- kingmanaz 12y ago
  >What you don't seem to understand is that our media is "controlled" by a free market. What you don't seem to understand is that you're arguing against yourself. On one hand you decry the increasingly mainstream "Russia Today"'s alleged partiality. On the other hand, you use an appeal to economics to dismiss Western media's pro-Israel partiality. In other words, the manipulation of discourse by Israel-partisan Jews is excused via free market economics, yet, Russia's national media outlet---created by way of the market with Russia's wealth---is dismissed via appeals to ethics... ethics which Western media itself fails to practice. Gentile-controlled media outlets such as Al Jazeera and Russia Today can no longer be dismissed as "fringe". Indeed, the West may be just one more WMD-war away from a widespread loss of trust in Western, Israel-first media.

deepyearning 12y ago

Actually this shows the opposite. The mainstream media is unwilling to engage in discussion with someone who is anti-immigration (unless that person is is an Israeli politician). Instead they do cheap tricks to humiliate the speaker without addressing their actual arguments. The mainstream media, like all people, has the accusation of "racism" hanging over their heads so they are unable to speak freely on topics like immigration (see [0] for a deconstruction of the concept of racism). I know that the mainstream media in the UK, for example, publish some controversial materials on immigration and culture. But these are always from the perspective of "we're doing immigration wrong". All the mainstream right is allowed to say is that immigrants need to assimilate better. And they are only really allowed to say this about Muslims. They can't say it about Africans outside the context of Islam. And they can't say that assimilation is impossible, or that immigration is not worth the effort. I don't believe that the Russian press in general is more free than the Western press, but the person you are referring to is correct in that the Russian press is able to say things about immigration that the Western press can't. [0] http://beyondtheright.blogspot.com/2014/12/why-i-am-not-anti-racist.html http://beyondtheright.blogspot.com/2014/12/why-i-am-not-anti...

guard-of-terra 12y ago
In Russia immigration is a hot topic too, and internal Russian press is virtually not allowed to express opinions about limiting immigration just as well.
bayesianhorse 12y ago
Unwilling to engage? You seem to watch the wrong shows... I've seen tons of interviews with people advocating immigration control. Some where even quite friendly. There is a problem you don't seem to have noticed: The AFD Party does not only advocate tighter immigration control, but it also wants to hold offices. So if the news media document the utter failure of this party to even conduct their basic business without minor and major scandals, it saves us from voting some complete idiot into office. And where they got into office they continue to disappoint. Some just quit the party, others don't do any constructive work, some collaborate with the extreme right (and then they say they didn't). The media has an obligation to inform the public about the quality of politicians. That the AFD mostly fields ridiculously incompetent or inadequate candidates is not the media's fault.