Ahead of the mutiny, steps were taken to boost security at the Kremlin, but Putin was uncertain how to respond to a warlord critical to many global operations.
It is silly to compare Voice of America (an excellent journalistic institution with a great reputation), to the Washington Post (overall pretty good), to Russia Times (literal state propaganda). These are all very different sources and painting them with the same brush is just factually incorrect.
They might, but being state-run is actually no guarantee of bias! Some state-run media is certainly very biased (RT). Others less so (VOA). This might surprise you but you have to do things like “research” and “consider the source,” in addition to determining where its funding comes from.
“Actually being state-run is okay when our guys do it”
Before you whine, let me add that RT is a rag, though every now and then it has a good article and sometimes covering things western outlets refuse to is a good thing (like the recent-ish stuff with Seymour Hersh), but to say that VoA isn’t notoriously propaganda or that BBC articles aren’t mostly rightwing drivel is unhinged neoliberal bullshit.
(BBC does have some good TV programs, but those are fiction and documentaries, the news is awful)
“Actually being state-run is okay if those journalistic institutions can be independently verified to offer high-quality, objective reporting, based on nothing more than an analysis of that reporting – especially with regards to that institution’s stances of its government’s actions.”
Not sure why this is so hard for you all. Like, actually, in order to determine if a news source is good, we have to – shockingly! – examine the output of that news source. By this metric, the VOA and BBC are pretty good… uh, single Tweets notwithstanding.
We’ll look at an example from another US state media outlet: Radio Free Asia
In 2014, Radio Free Asia wrote a story claiming North Korean students were forced to get the Kim Jong Un haircut. The story spread like wildfire. It was on all the news stations, all the talk shows, Kimmel, Colbert, John Oliver. TV commercials riffed on it. The whole American media ecosystem was unanimous, everyone believed this shit. Regular people on the street could tell you about it.
Then it came out that Radio Free Asia made it up. Someone at Radio Free Asia sat down and deliberately wrote a false story with the intent to deceive the public, and then Radio Free Asia published that story as fact in order to smear an enemy of the United States.
Radio Free Asia, like VoA, has excellent scores on all the media bias and fact-checking sites. This is because they sprinkle their bullshit carefully. RFA’s hit pieces are mixed in among hundreds of ordinary, mundane, reputable current events stories. You go to the site and you see headlines like you might see on any other site. But when you go digging, you start to find dozens of unsourced claims about China and North Korea mixed in. The rest is just reputation laundering to support the bullshit.
If you asked an intelligent person, “how would you publish propaganda,” RFA is the format they would come up with.
I briefly researched this and it looks like the initial version of the article (as described by the Washington Post) was indeed wrong. The Diplomat claims RFA updated the English translation of the article and made it more accurate:
The instruction for male students to get the same haircut as their leader is not based on any directive from Kim but on a recommendation from the ruling Workers’ Party, according to a North Korean from North Hamgyong province near the border with China.
So I’m not sure the takeaway is “someone sat down and wrote a bullshit story with the intent to deceive the public,” so much as “an article stub appears to have gotten into the wild and was corrected in translation.”
Certainly it’s easier to believe RFA made an error and/or mispublication here than they’re just publishing propaganda, right? Unless we’re saying the standard for a US-backed media source is “zero errors, and any errors are intentional propaganda.”
But let’s assume that’s true: they don’t make any errors and this is indeed propaganda. Why did they publish it? What would be the utility of false haircut propaganda, except to tip their hands that they are a propaganda outlet, which would certainly make its utility as a propaganda outlet worthless? Wouldn’t they want to get this story right so you believe the really big important stuff?
If you asked an intelligent person, “how would you publish propaganda,” you’d just do it like Russia Times: just straight-up repeat the state’s lies and never bother reporting anything close to the truth. I think the multilayered conspiracy theories required for the assertion that institutions intentionally seed their stories with propaganda are difficult to swallow, and not particularly well-supported. Like there’s no evidence RFA intentionally lied here, at least none that I can find.
Of course, I also think you should be cautious of media sources in general and it’s a fine idea to keep in mind who pays RFA’s bills. But the way to judge whether a place gets it right or wrong is to examine its history and accuracy; dismissing it outright because the US funds it is intellectually lazy.
They changed one unsourced claim to another unsourced claim. Neat.
Why did they publish it?
Because it vilifies an enemy state, which is convenient when you want public support for sanctions against that enemy
If you asked an intelligent person, “how would you publish propaganda,” you’d just do it like Russian Times: just straight-up repeat the state’s lies and never bother reporting anything close to the truth.
Uh, if they’re just going to publish total outright lies, why not just claim they eat babies or something equally horrific? Villifying the state via haircut shaming is certainly not how I’d go about it.
Could you explain why you think this?
Well yeah: it’s easier to do and gets the same results in the end.
Journalists are actually people. Let’s assume that care about what they do and want to do it with integrity (as most of us seek to act). Convincing them to constantly lie and compromise their work for political reasons seems like a lot of work, and they’d just wind up quitting and writing scandalous tell-alls anyway. So why bother to begin with? It’d just cause drama and is frankly a dead-end for your goals in any event. Just hire a bunch of hatchet job propagandists whose explicit goal is lying. Then everyone’s happy and you’ve made your life much much easier.
Of course, you miss out on “truthful articles” that fool people into believing you’re a good institution. But most people will see that you’re publishing intentional lies and have fired your good journalists anyway, so no one is going to believe you’re a reliable journalistic institution even if you cram in some incisive, hard-hitting truths. Again, it’s just a waste of time and effort; people who are smart enough to do the research will see through you in any case. So, just go straight for the propaganda.
There are plenty of people (right here in this thread) who will falsely equivocate between your propaganda and actual journalism anyway, so it’s not like you’re even sacrificing that much.
Why not just claim they eat babies or something equally horrific?
They do publish many horrific claims.
gets the same results in the end
No it doesn’t. When your outlet is obvious propaganda, fewer people believe you. RFA’s sheen of reputability was a huge factor in the haircut story’s enormous reach in western media.
Hire a bunch of hatchet job propagandists
…the sort of people who would write this disproven haircut story and dozens of other goofy unsourced claims they’ve published, yes. You can even tell them to write normal stories too just to mix it up.
Convincing journalists to lie seems like a lot of work
Not if some or all of your journalists are US intelligence — Radio Free Asia began as a CIA front operation (google it), and might still be one.
Of course I looked. An anonymous source is actually fine, especially when reporting on a regime known for torturing sources.
You’re right that fewer people believe it; but again, it is obviously propaganda when it is and it’s not a secret. So again why bother with the fig leaf when no one will believe it anyway?
And certainly you have a source for your absurd conspiracy theory that the CIA actually runs RFA, right?
For the love of god, listen to some Citations Needed and stop self-congratilating your media literacy because some fucking dork with a website tells you the New York Times and Washington Post aren’t biased.
I think it’s hilarious people are telling me I need some nuance and research, when I’m the one arguing there are differences between these sources and we need to evaluate them individually. And the person I responded to is arguing they’re all the same because, well, Journalism Bad I guess!
For the love of god read the comments before you reply.
And the person I responded to is arguing they’re all the same because, well, Journalism Bad I guess!
If you only consider corporate media and western state-run and state-sponsored outlets to be purveyors of “Journalism,” then let me emphatically say yes, Journalism Bad.
Can you point out where I said it wasn’t? I’m just saying the severity of what happened in Russia is completely incomparable to what happened in the US. You’re talking about a fully armed military with sophisticated mechanized weapons and armor versus some Facebook rednecks with Trump flags.
I know it’s tough to believe, but government-funded things aren’t necessarily bad. To discover if they’re bad you have to do more research than seeing who funds them!
I apparently think about it more critically than you do. All journalism is not propaganda; some is good in fact, and we can determine which is good and which is bad. And I at least have sources, whereas you have, uh… brain damage I guess?
Also that’s a laughable and total misunderstanding of Voice of America’s history, mission, and goals. It has a reputation basically everywhere as being as close to objective and reliable reporting as you can get outside the BBC. I guess you’re just assuming it’s bad based on its name, which is not great on the critical thinking front!
I don’t disagree with you about VOA not being 100% propaganda, but I think the thing that RT and VOA do share in common is that they are state-funded. With that being said, WaPo (just like the BBC) isn’t state funded so it’s still a poor comparison.
I concede it’s a stretched argument but WaPo is known for hiring ex-State Department/ex-CIA staff onto its editorial board. I’m too lazy to find source but say something that gets me riled up and I’ll find the source out of spite.
Suggesting I have Brain Damage and then doubling down on your argument that VOA is as good as another state-owned media outlet that promotes its own nation with a history of imperialism, colonialism, and a bunch of other atrocities. I’m not sure if you think you’re convincing me or anyone beyond your echo chamber of anything or just like to read your own words as reaffirmation of your own beliefs. Either way it’s useless.
Oh sorry, read the first paragraph on that page. You don’t need to read anything else. Usually when someone shares a link I read the first few sentences if there’s no further explanation.
It is silly to compare Voice of America (an excellent journalistic institution with a great reputation), to the Washington Post (overall pretty good), to Russia Times (literal state propaganda). These are all very different sources and painting them with the same brush is just factually incorrect.
Here’s some research for you:
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/washington-post/
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/rt-news/
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/voice-of-america/
As for your second point, Trump is still walking free and he tried to overthrow the government. These things apparently do happen.
your source says the VOA is a US government official news arm, you don’t see how they might have a bias when reporting on Russia?
They might, but being state-run is actually no guarantee of bias! Some state-run media is certainly very biased (RT). Others less so (VOA). This might surprise you but you have to do things like “research” and “consider the source,” in addition to determining where its funding comes from.
“Actually being state-run is okay when our guys do it”
Before you whine, let me add that RT is a rag, though every now and then it has a good article and sometimes covering things western outlets refuse to is a good thing (like the recent-ish stuff with Seymour Hersh), but to say that VoA isn’t notoriously propaganda or that BBC articles aren’t mostly rightwing drivel is unhinged neoliberal bullshit.
(BBC does have some good TV programs, but those are fiction and documentaries, the news is awful)
“Actually being state-run is okay if those journalistic institutions can be independently verified to offer high-quality, objective reporting, based on nothing more than an analysis of that reporting – especially with regards to that institution’s stances of its government’s actions.”
Not sure why this is so hard for you all. Like, actually, in order to determine if a news source is good, we have to – shockingly! – examine the output of that news source. By this metric, the VOA and BBC are pretty good… uh, single Tweets notwithstanding.
lol. lmao.
We’ll look at an example from another US state media outlet: Radio Free Asia
In 2014, Radio Free Asia wrote a story claiming North Korean students were forced to get the Kim Jong Un haircut. The story spread like wildfire. It was on all the news stations, all the talk shows, Kimmel, Colbert, John Oliver. TV commercials riffed on it. The whole American media ecosystem was unanimous, everyone believed this shit. Regular people on the street could tell you about it.
Then it came out that Radio Free Asia made it up. Someone at Radio Free Asia sat down and deliberately wrote a false story with the intent to deceive the public, and then Radio Free Asia published that story as fact in order to smear an enemy of the United States.
Radio Free Asia, like VoA, has excellent scores on all the media bias and fact-checking sites. This is because they sprinkle their bullshit carefully. RFA’s hit pieces are mixed in among hundreds of ordinary, mundane, reputable current events stories. You go to the site and you see headlines like you might see on any other site. But when you go digging, you start to find dozens of unsourced claims about China and North Korea mixed in. The rest is just reputation laundering to support the bullshit.
If you asked an intelligent person, “how would you publish propaganda,” RFA is the format they would come up with.
An interesting story!
I briefly researched this and it looks like the initial version of the article (as described by the Washington Post) was indeed wrong. The Diplomat claims RFA updated the English translation of the article and made it more accurate:
So I’m not sure the takeaway is “someone sat down and wrote a bullshit story with the intent to deceive the public,” so much as “an article stub appears to have gotten into the wild and was corrected in translation.”
Certainly it’s easier to believe RFA made an error and/or mispublication here than they’re just publishing propaganda, right? Unless we’re saying the standard for a US-backed media source is “zero errors, and any errors are intentional propaganda.”
But let’s assume that’s true: they don’t make any errors and this is indeed propaganda. Why did they publish it? What would be the utility of false haircut propaganda, except to tip their hands that they are a propaganda outlet, which would certainly make its utility as a propaganda outlet worthless? Wouldn’t they want to get this story right so you believe the really big important stuff?
If you asked an intelligent person, “how would you publish propaganda,” you’d just do it like Russia Times: just straight-up repeat the state’s lies and never bother reporting anything close to the truth. I think the multilayered conspiracy theories required for the assertion that institutions intentionally seed their stories with propaganda are difficult to swallow, and not particularly well-supported. Like there’s no evidence RFA intentionally lied here, at least none that I can find.
Of course, I also think you should be cautious of media sources in general and it’s a fine idea to keep in mind who pays RFA’s bills. But the way to judge whether a place gets it right or wrong is to examine its history and accuracy; dismissing it outright because the US funds it is intellectually lazy.
They changed one unsourced claim to another unsourced claim. Neat.
Because it vilifies an enemy state, which is convenient when you want public support for sanctions against that enemy
Are you serious? Is this really what you think?
Could you explain why you think this?
That claim includes a source.
Uh, if they’re just going to publish total outright lies, why not just claim they eat babies or something equally horrific? Villifying the state via haircut shaming is certainly not how I’d go about it.
Well yeah: it’s easier to do and gets the same results in the end.
Journalists are actually people. Let’s assume that care about what they do and want to do it with integrity (as most of us seek to act). Convincing them to constantly lie and compromise their work for political reasons seems like a lot of work, and they’d just wind up quitting and writing scandalous tell-alls anyway. So why bother to begin with? It’d just cause drama and is frankly a dead-end for your goals in any event. Just hire a bunch of hatchet job propagandists whose explicit goal is lying. Then everyone’s happy and you’ve made your life much much easier.
Of course, you miss out on “truthful articles” that fool people into believing you’re a good institution. But most people will see that you’re publishing intentional lies and have fired your good journalists anyway, so no one is going to believe you’re a reliable journalistic institution even if you cram in some incisive, hard-hitting truths. Again, it’s just a waste of time and effort; people who are smart enough to do the research will see through you in any case. So, just go straight for the propaganda.
There are plenty of people (right here in this thread) who will falsely equivocate between your propaganda and actual journalism anyway, so it’s not like you’re even sacrificing that much.
Yeah, an anonymous source. Did you look at it?
They do publish many horrific claims.
No it doesn’t. When your outlet is obvious propaganda, fewer people believe you. RFA’s sheen of reputability was a huge factor in the haircut story’s enormous reach in western media.
…the sort of people who would write this disproven haircut story and dozens of other goofy unsourced claims they’ve published, yes. You can even tell them to write normal stories too just to mix it up.
Not if some or all of your journalists are US intelligence — Radio Free Asia began as a CIA front operation (google it), and might still be one.
Of course I looked. An anonymous source is actually fine, especially when reporting on a regime known for torturing sources.
You’re right that fewer people believe it; but again, it is obviously propaganda when it is and it’s not a secret. So again why bother with the fig leaf when no one will believe it anyway?
And certainly you have a source for your absurd conspiracy theory that the CIA actually runs RFA, right?
For the love of god, listen to some Citations Needed and stop self-congratilating your media literacy because some fucking dork with a website tells you the New York Times and Washington Post aren’t biased.
I think it’s hilarious people are telling me I need some nuance and research, when I’m the one arguing there are differences between these sources and we need to evaluate them individually. And the person I responded to is arguing they’re all the same because, well, Journalism Bad I guess!
For the love of god read the comments before you reply.
If you only consider corporate media and western state-run and state-sponsored outlets to be purveyors of “Journalism,” then let me emphatically say yes, Journalism Bad.
deleted by creator
His supporters forced their way into the Capitol Building in order to keep him in office by throwing out the election results.
If that ain’t an attempted coup, then what is?
Can you point out where I said it wasn’t? I’m just saying the severity of what happened in Russia is completely incomparable to what happened in the US. You’re talking about a fully armed military with sophisticated mechanized weapons and armor versus some Facebook rednecks with Trump flags.
You don’t think critically about mediabiasfactcheck?
Voice of America was created to promote American propaganda, it’s literally the US propaganda outlet. You’re a shill.
😂😅
lol, even that site directly states VoA is funded by the US government.
I know it’s tough to believe, but government-funded things aren’t necessarily bad. To discover if they’re bad you have to do more research than seeing who funds them!
It’s shocking I know.
Have you done any research on VoA?
Yes; have you? If you have you’d know they have a reputation basically everywhere for journalistic integrity, high objectivity, and high factuality.
You’re making this up. It’s known around the world for being US propaganda. Next you’ll be saying Stars and Stripes is highly objective.
I apparently think about it more critically than you do. All journalism is not propaganda; some is good in fact, and we can determine which is good and which is bad. And I at least have sources, whereas you have, uh… brain damage I guess?
Also that’s a laughable and total misunderstanding of Voice of America’s history, mission, and goals. It has a reputation basically everywhere as being as close to objective and reliable reporting as you can get outside the BBC. I guess you’re just assuming it’s bad based on its name, which is not great on the critical thinking front!
I don’t disagree with you about VOA not being 100% propaganda, but I think the thing that RT and VOA do share in common is that they are state-funded. With that being said, WaPo (just like the BBC) isn’t state funded so it’s still a poor comparison.
I concede it’s a stretched argument but WaPo is known for hiring ex-State Department/ex-CIA staff onto its editorial board. I’m too lazy to find source but say something that gets me riled up and I’ll find the source out of spite.
“Russian state owned media bad. British state owned media good.”
No, we know it’s bad because it’s literally run by the US government.
Suggesting I have Brain Damage and then doubling down on your argument that VOA is as good as another state-owned media outlet that promotes its own nation with a history of imperialism, colonialism, and a bunch of other atrocities. I’m not sure if you think you’re convincing me or anyone beyond your echo chamber of anything or just like to read your own words as reaffirmation of your own beliefs. Either way it’s useless.
Cite reliable sources proving it’s “another state-owned media outlet that promotes its own nation” or at least give us a demostrable example.
https://www.insidevoa.com/p/5831.HTML
🤡
What about it? You can’t just link to a page with a thousand words on it and pretend that it all proves your point. Elaborate.
Oh sorry, read the first paragraph on that page. You don’t need to read anything else. Usually when someone shares a link I read the first few sentences if there’s no further explanation.
This is how I know to avoid MBFC and avoid anyone praising CIA outlets.
so we’re just going straight-up conspiracy theory here now? ok.
More like you spreading pro-NATO disinformation. Tell us already, are you a ragebaiting troll, or someone on a CIA payroll?
So no sources or evidence for your conspiracy theory, eh?
I honestly pity you. Why not crawl back to lemmygrad where you belong?
Why not crawl back to Reddit, the house of neoliberal and fascist brainworms?
It’s sad the only thing you have is insults. What would be even more impressive is facts. Oh well.
It’s sad the only thing you have is insults. What would be even more impressive is moral integrity with facts. Oh well.