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I just mean for news that comes directly from US sources. I find things like the Wuhan lab theory to be fascinating, worrying and plausable. But I struggle to find any reliable information about it because (not just, but mainly) US publications have saturated the media with politically driven articles instead of just trying to get to the bottom of it. I get the impression that most Americans see the rest of the world like some form of a cartoon. They are weirdly detached from the reality of it all. I even get that impression when speaking to regular Americans about other countries and I think the media feeds on, and feeds, this incredibly strange outlook. If there is any truth to the Wuhan lab leak story, it is an incredibly important thing for every single human on the planet. The idea of a country purposfully, or accidentally, releasing a lab made virus is such a massive threat to every society in the world, even worse than chernobyl, that we need the story to be scrutinised and and reported on with perfect accuracy. Instead, it has somehow become a fuel left/right wing driven click-bait. The articles I have come across on this subject have been pretty much baseless nonsense, or incredibly untrustworthy, and that is just scary. Europe has problems of course, but it is definitely better. They are partisan but they are less at taking digs at the opposition. America seems to be going through a media war. In the UK it is pretty rotten too, but the writing is usually more accurate and one can find well researched articles. The most striking thing for me during covid was when it started to make daily news in the US. Up until that point, I felt like I had a really good understanding of what was going on. I found there to be a lot of scientific reporting making it to the mainstream etc.. As soon as it reached America though, it was game over. I was lost. I genuinely just couldn't follow what was going on because of all the noise generated by US media, which inevitably spills over, and intertwines, with all other media. I probably can't explain it very well, but the amount of noise in American news just seems to drown out anything that can actually help regular people get a grasp on what is actually happening. |
Funny, just yesterday I got convinced of the opposite. So yesterday Germany played Hungary in the European Soccer Championship; before that Hungary passed some anti-gay legislation and in response some German activists wanted to light the Munich stadium up in rainbow colors, which UEFA ultimately forbid.
Watching the match on ZDF (the most well known German TV channel), literally 50% of halftime was spent talking about how great of an effort that was. There was zero talk about the actual game (and there was enough to talk about), instead they showed people handing out rainbow flags and snippets of interviews, where everyone basically agreed that "soccer is unpolitical but the Hungarians definitely crossed a line with this law."
They never mentioned the actual law. Hungary banned homosexuality from children's movies. If you ask me that's about as softcore as homophobia gets, yet everyone in the segment was completely dramatic, like the Hungarians were going to deport gay people or something. The whole thing was devoid of actual information, instead basically just repeating "Hungary bad! UEFA bad! Activists good! Everyone agrees!" (keep in mind, without telling you what Hungary even did!) It was kind of surreal to watch, completely unlike what you would expect from a reputable TV station, and utterly out of the blue if you just followed the sport casually. Definitely a cheap stab at the opposition.