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The difference between the U.S. and China/Russia is that the people in China/Russia know the media is controlled by the powers that be. Here, our press is also

by abalone 12y ago

The difference between the U.S. and China/Russia is that the people in China/Russia know the media is controlled by the powers that be. Here, our press is also "defined by the vision of the oligarchy and information is carefully controlled to produce a desired set of beliefs." We just believe that it's free. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent

obstinate 12y ago
It is rather stupid to equate the degree of media manipulation in the West vs. China and Russia.
- _abattoir 12y ago
  Not at all. The Western governments simply have to hide it better.
- abalone 12y ago
  I didn't equate them. I said mind control is worse in the West. And, I cited a detailed analysis of the topic.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - nilbot 12y ago
    The fact that you at least have an analysis article to cite from kinda proves he was on point, and you are not, not entirely. Which control is more ultimate, you can type some but mainstream ignores you or you cannot type at all?
- colordrops 12y ago
  You are right. The degree and sophistication of media manipulation is profoundly greater in the west. While the Chinese block a lot of media, the manipulation is minimal. Most Chinese are very cynical and know exactly what is going on. The west, or at least the US, traps people in a matrix of sorts where they don't even see the manipulation. The narrative is exquisitely framed and guided to leave people with a sense of moral superiority and basic faith in the system despite perceived flaws, as is ironically exhibited by your comment. edit: some good resources on the history and nature of western media manipulation are the BBC documentary "The Century of Self" and Noam Chomsky's book "Manufacturing Consent".
  - simonh 12y ago
    If you want to publish your own newspaper, you can. Nobody will stop you. Start your own online video news service, weblog or nes site - nobody will stop you. Post whatever you like to Reddit, or any other discussion platform. In China and Russia you cannot do these things. Published mdeia are strictly monitored and censored. The state employs thousands of astroturfers to flood social media with pro-government messages, trash anti-government messages and even directly hook into messaging platforms to delete messages the government don't like. Be persistent at it, and you'll get a visit from the police, or just get beaten up a few times. The very fact that the BBC could publish that report, and Noam Chomsky could publish his book, is strong evidence for freedom of expression in the west. There are no such equivalent sources published in Russia and China exposing their government's manipulations. Why do you think that is?
    - psykovsky 12y ago
      Yet that Guantanamo ex-prisioner has his book for sale everywhere except in the US... Care to guess why it isn't for sale in the US?
      - simonh 12y ago
        A handful of books banned for a few individual legal issues does not make for a suppressive state. Are you seriously arguing that the USA is more suppressive of coimmunications and publications that China? Really?
        tripa 12y ago
        > Are you seriously arguing that the USA is more suppressive of coimmunications and publications that China? Really? He never was. And as seen from the outside, you're completely making his point.
    - xentronium 12y ago
      > If you want to publish your own newspaper, you can. Nobody will stop you. Start your own online video news service, weblog or nes site - nobody will stop you. Post whatever you like to Reddit, or any other discussion platform. > In China and Russia you cannot do these things. It's not as bad in Russia yet. But we are going there.
- vidarh 12y ago
  Is it? Check out the CNN international edition and US edition on their website after a terrorist attack, and you'll see how blatant it can get (CNN is interesting in that respect since both versions are readily available from a selector at the top of their page). They don't even need to hide it - it's "sold as a feature" because most people are not interested in seeking out alternative viewpoints. You see it even with more mundane cases in subtle differences in headlines even when they run the same articles. Many of the changes are perfectly reasonable and simply reflects differences in language or relative importance to different audiences. But a lot of the time there are blatant biases being introduced. There certainly is a difference: In democratic countries people can get alternative viewpoints easily without risk of imprisonment if they want to. But unless they are already questioning the status quo, most people simply doesn't bother, so it doesn't make much real difference if they're censored or not. As someone who has travelled quite extensively to the US for business, turning on the news channels when I arrived was always a shock, no matter how many times I did it, because even between the US and the UK, the difference in mainstream media world view is massive, and clearly one or both is heavily distorted (I'd go for both...).
  - comex 12y ago
    Personally, I think... (Well, I suppose that's an odd start, since half the problem with politics is people trusting their personal thoughts overmuch rather than gathering evidence. Then again, those who do gather evidence in politics, the softest science, rarely seem to find any that upsets their preconceived notions. Anyway-) ...that this would happen with or without any overt government interference. I'm sure that the soft pressure described by Mr. Chomsky plays a part, and that most government officials in democracies are happy that it exists. But just look at smaller scales: say, at the umpteen "camp A vs. camp B" divisions that come up in one capacity or another on this site. JavaScript is a horrible language that's killing the web, or it's a cool language with some flaws. Go is a language firmly stuck in the 1980s with the goal of treating its programmers like disposable pawns[0], or it's a fluid pragmatic language with an emphasis on maintainability. Apple has a track record of producing shiny overpriced crap, or perhaps innovative products that usually beat the competitors'. Google is an advertising company and absolutely everything it does has some direct connection to invading its users' privacy, or it's a geeky paradise, tech culture's truest representative among large corporations. The NSA is a villainous organization through and through that's killing everything important about American freedom (common opinion on this site, not as pervasive elsewhere) or it's just doing its job and has little, if anything, to answer for. Feminism... well, I think that word is enough. These are just some of the biggest examples; there are countless others, and obviously you can get far more examples by broadening the scope from tech. In each case, people tend to divide themselves based on their opinions into one of (usually) two opposing groups. Each group is self-reinforced by memes spreading through its echo chamber, each is very confident it's right, and importantly, eventually members of the two completely fail to understand each other, speaking with different terminology about different principles and both almost certainly far from objective neutrality. Some of the camps have some potential equivalent to Chomsky's cited explicit manipulation - c.f. the recent Fear of Apple post. Most don't. People self-manipulate, and they're rewarded with positive emotions generated from discussions with other people that share their views. In politics, the camps form within political parties, geographical areas, and often entire countries. It would be interesting and powerful to think of ways to reduce this; on the other hand, I don't think it's fair to blame Western governments for what's basically human nature. My suspicion is that people look at the distortion of reality in democratic country X's politics, compare it to censored country Y's, find the proportion too large, and blame the government of X... but miss that a large portion of each side's distortion is natural, and if you subtract that from each side, the proportion gets far smaller. YMMV. [0] opinions on Go aren't usually that strong, I think, but I've heard exactly that claim from one firebrand on Twitter.
kbart 12y ago
"The difference between the U.S. and China/Russia is that the people in China/Russia know the media is controlled by the powers that be." That knowledge, sadly, doesn't prevent from believing propaganda made by the same media. I know a lot of Russians, and most of them (even otherwise smart ones) honestly believe even the most absurd propaganda statements.
peteretep 12y ago
No, the difference is that in the west you can access Russia Today (http://www.rt.com http://www.rt.com) and China Daily (http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/en/ http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/en/), state-owned propaganda channels who delight in publishing anything that would make the U.S. look bad, and in China you can't access the NYT which helped break the Snowden stuff. The Guardian is owned by a trust who have legal obligations based on fair and balanced reporting, and all TV news in the UK - including Murdoch's channels - have a legal obligation to not editorialised, underpinned by a legal system that's been sticking two fingers to vested interests since the Magna Carta. Your sense of perspective is broken.
- mike_hearn 12y ago
  Oddly, the Guardian is in fact not owned by a trust any more. It's owned by a private corporation that calls itself The Scott Trust, but it stopped being an actual trust in 2008.
  - _delirium 12y ago
    That's true, though they seem to be trying to set up the corporation in a trust-like way. It has a corporate charter that prohibits dividend payments, makes it difficult to cash out any profits, requires the company to treat its newspaper assets in certain ways, etc. I don't know how bulletproof that arrangement is, though.
- abalone 12y ago
  The Snowden/NSA stuff doesn't fall outside of oligarchical perspectives. Tons of Silicon Valley companies for example, some of the most valuable in the world, are super anti domestic spying. The U.S. media system vigorously debates stuff that falls within the elite spectrum of opinion. But on issues that fall outside of that it is quite propagandistic. In fact that vigorous debate masks the ultimate bias of it. For example, major media is usually very nationalistic about U.S. wars. There may be some debate about how costly they are (to us) but rarely over their morality. That's why you can hold up Snowden as an example, but not the U.S. wars in the Middle East.

by abalone 12y ago

obstinate 12y ago

It is rather stupid to equate the degree of media manipulation in the West vs. China and Russia.

_abattoir 12y ago
Not at all. The Western governments simply have to hide it better.
abalone 12y ago
I didn't equate them. I said mind control is worse in the West. And, I cited a detailed analysis of the topic.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- nilbot 12y ago
  The fact that you at least have an analysis article to cite from kinda proves he was on point, and you are not, not entirely. Which control is more ultimate, you can type some but mainstream ignores you or you cannot type at all?
colordrops 12y ago
You are right. The degree and sophistication of media manipulation is profoundly greater in the west. While the Chinese block a lot of media, the manipulation is minimal. Most Chinese are very cynical and know exactly what is going on. The west, or at least the US, traps people in a matrix of sorts where they don't even see the manipulation. The narrative is exquisitely framed and guided to leave people with a sense of moral superiority and basic faith in the system despite perceived flaws, as is ironically exhibited by your comment. edit: some good resources on the history and nature of western media manipulation are the BBC documentary "The Century of Self" and Noam Chomsky's book "Manufacturing Consent".
- simonh 12y ago
  If you want to publish your own newspaper, you can. Nobody will stop you. Start your own online video news service, weblog or nes site - nobody will stop you. Post whatever you like to Reddit, or any other discussion platform. In China and Russia you cannot do these things. Published mdeia are strictly monitored and censored. The state employs thousands of astroturfers to flood social media with pro-government messages, trash anti-government messages and even directly hook into messaging platforms to delete messages the government don't like. Be persistent at it, and you'll get a visit from the police, or just get beaten up a few times. The very fact that the BBC could publish that report, and Noam Chomsky could publish his book, is strong evidence for freedom of expression in the west. There are no such equivalent sources published in Russia and China exposing their government's manipulations. Why do you think that is?
  - psykovsky 12y ago
    Yet that Guantanamo ex-prisioner has his book for sale everywhere except in the US... Care to guess why it isn't for sale in the US?
    - simonh 12y ago
      A handful of books banned for a few individual legal issues does not make for a suppressive state. Are you seriously arguing that the USA is more suppressive of coimmunications and publications that China? Really?
      - tripa 12y ago
        > Are you seriously arguing that the USA is more suppressive of coimmunications and publications that China? Really? He never was. And as seen from the outside, you're completely making his point.
  - xentronium 12y ago
    > If you want to publish your own newspaper, you can. Nobody will stop you. Start your own online video news service, weblog or nes site - nobody will stop you. Post whatever you like to Reddit, or any other discussion platform. > In China and Russia you cannot do these things. It's not as bad in Russia yet. But we are going there.
vidarh 12y ago
Is it? Check out the CNN international edition and US edition on their website after a terrorist attack, and you'll see how blatant it can get (CNN is interesting in that respect since both versions are readily available from a selector at the top of their page). They don't even need to hide it - it's "sold as a feature" because most people are not interested in seeking out alternative viewpoints. You see it even with more mundane cases in subtle differences in headlines even when they run the same articles. Many of the changes are perfectly reasonable and simply reflects differences in language or relative importance to different audiences. But a lot of the time there are blatant biases being introduced. There certainly is a difference: In democratic countries people can get alternative viewpoints easily without risk of imprisonment if they want to. But unless they are already questioning the status quo, most people simply doesn't bother, so it doesn't make much real difference if they're censored or not. As someone who has travelled quite extensively to the US for business, turning on the news channels when I arrived was always a shock, no matter how many times I did it, because even between the US and the UK, the difference in mainstream media world view is massive, and clearly one or both is heavily distorted (I'd go for both...).
- comex 12y ago
  Personally, I think... (Well, I suppose that's an odd start, since half the problem with politics is people trusting their personal thoughts overmuch rather than gathering evidence. Then again, those who do gather evidence in politics, the softest science, rarely seem to find any that upsets their preconceived notions. Anyway-) ...that this would happen with or without any overt government interference. I'm sure that the soft pressure described by Mr. Chomsky plays a part, and that most government officials in democracies are happy that it exists. But just look at smaller scales: say, at the umpteen "camp A vs. camp B" divisions that come up in one capacity or another on this site. JavaScript is a horrible language that's killing the web, or it's a cool language with some flaws. Go is a language firmly stuck in the 1980s with the goal of treating its programmers like disposable pawns[0], or it's a fluid pragmatic language with an emphasis on maintainability. Apple has a track record of producing shiny overpriced crap, or perhaps innovative products that usually beat the competitors'. Google is an advertising company and absolutely everything it does has some direct connection to invading its users' privacy, or it's a geeky paradise, tech culture's truest representative among large corporations. The NSA is a villainous organization through and through that's killing everything important about American freedom (common opinion on this site, not as pervasive elsewhere) or it's just doing its job and has little, if anything, to answer for. Feminism... well, I think that word is enough. These are just some of the biggest examples; there are countless others, and obviously you can get far more examples by broadening the scope from tech. In each case, people tend to divide themselves based on their opinions into one of (usually) two opposing groups. Each group is self-reinforced by memes spreading through its echo chamber, each is very confident it's right, and importantly, eventually members of the two completely fail to understand each other, speaking with different terminology about different principles and both almost certainly far from objective neutrality. Some of the camps have some potential equivalent to Chomsky's cited explicit manipulation - c.f. the recent Fear of Apple post. Most don't. People self-manipulate, and they're rewarded with positive emotions generated from discussions with other people that share their views. In politics, the camps form within political parties, geographical areas, and often entire countries. It would be interesting and powerful to think of ways to reduce this; on the other hand, I don't think it's fair to blame Western governments for what's basically human nature. My suspicion is that people look at the distortion of reality in democratic country X's politics, compare it to censored country Y's, find the proportion too large, and blame the government of X... but miss that a large portion of each side's distortion is natural, and if you subtract that from each side, the proportion gets far smaller. YMMV. [0] opinions on Go aren't usually that strong, I think, but I've heard exactly that claim from one firebrand on Twitter.

kbart 12y ago

"The difference between the U.S. and China/Russia is that the people in China/Russia know the media is controlled by the powers that be." That knowledge, sadly, doesn't prevent from believing propaganda made by the same media. I know a lot of Russians, and most of them (even otherwise smart ones) honestly believe even the most absurd propaganda statements.

peteretep 12y ago

No, the difference is that in the west you can access Russia Today (http://www.rt.com http://www.rt.com) and China Daily (http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/en/ http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/en/), state-owned propaganda channels who delight in publishing anything that would make the U.S. look bad, and in China you can't access the NYT which helped break the Snowden stuff. The Guardian is owned by a trust who have legal obligations based on fair and balanced reporting, and all TV news in the UK - including Murdoch's channels - have a legal obligation to not editorialised, underpinned by a legal system that's been sticking two fingers to vested interests since the Magna Carta. Your sense of perspective is broken.

mike_hearn 12y ago
Oddly, the Guardian is in fact not owned by a trust any more. It's owned by a private corporation that calls itself The Scott Trust, but it stopped being an actual trust in 2008.
- _delirium 12y ago
  That's true, though they seem to be trying to set up the corporation in a trust-like way. It has a corporate charter that prohibits dividend payments, makes it difficult to cash out any profits, requires the company to treat its newspaper assets in certain ways, etc. I don't know how bulletproof that arrangement is, though.
abalone 12y ago
The Snowden/NSA stuff doesn't fall outside of oligarchical perspectives. Tons of Silicon Valley companies for example, some of the most valuable in the world, are super anti domestic spying. The U.S. media system vigorously debates stuff that falls within the elite spectrum of opinion. But on issues that fall outside of that it is quite propagandistic. In fact that vigorous debate masks the ultimate bias of it. For example, major media is usually very nationalistic about U.S. wars. There may be some debate about how costly they are (to us) but rarely over their morality. That's why you can hold up Snowden as an example, but not the U.S. wars in the Middle East.