[nuccy]

I was also surprised by this. I find it absolutely crazy. The reason is that just few days ago the parliament of Russia introduced a law on "fakes about Russian army" with 15 years in prison penalty. What is "fake" is not defined so anyone for any statement about the war could be put in prison. Ah yes, people are also forbidden to call this a war, an agression or an invasion. You may say that there are other outlets of information, but no, all critical to Russian government newspapers, radio stations, tv channels were recently closed. Facebook, BBC, DW, YouTube blocked. The best analogy to what is going on there would be: a frog slowly boiling in a pan.

[nuccy]

People from the west may say: well yes, our media is biased also. And that is true, but direction of this bias is different for each media outlet, so by watching something else you can find discrepancies and inconsistencies. While in Russia all tv, radio, newspapers are government controlled, so they put the same fake and propaganda which due to lack of anything else (all blocked) yields brain washing on a whole country scale.

[jl6]

Western media bias works by using selective reporting and omission, plus artful mixing of fact and opinion. It doesn’t too often make up outright bare-faced lies like we see coming from the Russian government.

[mushbino]

Exactly. The news doesn't lie to me about the wealthy dodging taxes, but they sure don't report on it. There are also lots of technical truths, but heavily spun.

[maigret]

Huh? I read almost everywhere about it. Never heard about the Panama Papers?

[Tepix]

Look at every single article discussing new taxes for the rich. You will find people (sometimes the article itself) arguing that the rich shouldn't be taxed because their money will "trickle down", despite this myth having been refuted decades ago.

[maigret]

I know at least as many articles saying the opposite. I consume news from at least 4 countries, and I see some countries are more leaning toward one direction. I suggest you widen your news intake then.

[jillesvangurp]

Actually it's worse, there are lots of media publishing opinions, factoids, and things interesting to their audience. But depending on which media you read you are going to end up with a very different understanding of what is going on.

Russia has used this polarization to its advantage in recent years by adding its own targeted misinformation to the mix designed to further increase polarization (as opposed as to merely convincing people of their notion of the truth). Weaponized propaganda basically. Divisions in society erode the strength of alliances like NATO, it causes people to vote for outlier politicians, etc. Zelenski is a good example of such a politician where this actually backfired: he really stepped up. But the strategy was perhaps successful in the sense that Ukrainian governance has probably not been that great in recent years. The usual mix of populism, inept politicians, corruption, and mismanagement.

The Russians are world leading experts when it comes to mass delusion, propaganda, and misinformation and they completely control domestic media and information distribution. As far as many Russians are concerned this is a peace mission that is being frustrated by armies of neo-nazis sponsored by evil westerners. That's the official narrative right now. It's bat shit crazy of course but it follows many years of misinformation, indoctrination, and propaganda in a country that hasn't had a free press for a long time to correct any of these believes.

Also a note of caution: The Russians are extremely clued in and all over public fora like this. So, beware that what you read might be written by them. It might look and sound reasonable to you but that doesn't mean it isn't carefully designed to manipulate you into disagreeing with others. It would be preying on your confirmation bias. It doesn't matter what that bias is, they'll feed it. It's a divide and conquer strategy. They'll happily feed inflammatory opinions to both sides of a debate just to make them hate each other some more.

If you hadn't noticed, politics were kind of intense lately.

[mushbino]

Russian propaganda has been completely steamrolled regarding the current war. The US has by far the most sophisticated propaganda apparatus in world history and it shows when Americans think they are completely free from propaganda. Have you ever seen an American news outlet be against a US involved war? I remember when journalists were threatened with being fired for even trying to speak out against the Iraq war. Does the news ever talk about universal healthcare? All of the American news outlets are owned by the American oligarchy and publish the news that's in their interest. We keep fighting wars, the rich get richer, the middle class continues to disappear, and wages stagnate.

[ngcc_hk]

You just do not have media h many cases. You can go to the Poland station and send a YouTube. Can you go to a Russian …

All these rubbish on freedom of speech ignore the key difference. Individual still matters.

[pydry]

On this topic I can think of two that I'm seeing on a regular basis.

1. NATO is solely a defensive organization. Libya is the clearest counterexample but there others.

2. NATO never gave assurances it wouldnt move east. There are a number of recently released diplomatic caches that prove this to be false https://larouchepub.com/other/2021/4824-chatham_house_lies_a...

https://news.antiwar.com/2022/02/21/uncovered-document-revea...

2 is sometimes done selectively (by saying NATO never gave legal guarantees) but sometimes not.

[mopsi]

1. Lots of things get discussed. This was such a minor topic that Gorbachev didn't even recall it ever having been on agenda. Ultimately discussions lead to a formal agreement with a text approved by all sides and that's what counts. There is no formal agreement, only tiny snippets that mention it ever having been discussed.

2. The Soviet Union doesn't exist anymore. Even if such assurances had been made, a number (most by now?) of former parts of the Soviet Union have stepped away from it and applied for NATO. Why should Lithuania be eternally bound to an assurance made to the Soviet delegation, which at the time represented Lithuania? Even if all former members of the USSR applied for NATO, should they be denied because of the alleged assurance in the past to an entity that no longer exists?

[pydry]

>Lots of things get discussed.

Yes, and the contents of those discussions have been released under FOIA.

>This was such a minor topic that Gorbachev didn't even recall it ever having been on agenda.

I have no idea why Gorbachev's memory failed but it's clearly there in the minutes. In many discussions.

Pretending that it never happened is a lie.

>The Soviet Union doesn't exist anymore

Russia is the successor state.

[satellite2]

It depends on the subject. Try to find a western media that defend the point of view of the Talibans for instance. Or their history and significance to the population for instance. Even in the most niche papers you won't find that. There will always be a line on their barbarian and anti democratic aspect. And that's why western medias didn't get that the US lost the war because the Talibans always had the backing of the majority of the population.

[mijamo]

It is not about defending but presenting the point of view. It is easy to find articles explaining the Taliban point of view and why they had support in Afghanistan (I even saw a very interesting 5 hours documentary on the national french television not long ago with interviews of prominent talibans). It is not easy to find articles explaining the Ukrainian point of view in current Russian media.

[satellite2]

> It is not easy to find articles explaining the Ukrainian point of view

Is it? Or is it just like the documentary you mention, somehow factual but leaving you only with contempt and outrage?

[ithkuil]

If I had access to true Taliban information, produced by Talibans honestly explaining their positions , what they do, what they want their world to be like, etc, do you think it's likely I would just say "oh sure, it makes sense, I've been brainwashed into thinking you were something completely different"?

[everfrustrated]

Sure but representing the biases of their own reporters/population is very different than representing a censorship board run by a government.

[irrational]

Yes, I’ll just watch something else.

https://youtu.be/_fHfgU8oMSo

[clusterfish]

You don't get it. In the US you can watch something else, despite the oversized influence of media conglomerates.

[londons_explore]

Not so much... Russian media is getting blocked in some places in the west too. RT was blocked from YouTube and TV in the UK for example.

[ArnoVW]

Agree with you on the fact that it was a questionable move.

But there is a big difference between excluding one source (which is directly and formally controlled by the Russian state).. and putting 15 year sentences on "publishing things that are not coming from the state news agency" (TAS)

BTW, and just FYI, if you want you can still read rt.com using 1.1.1.1 and 8.8.8.8

[bergie]

Which totally makes sense. Russia is a dictatorship waging a war of aggression a democratic neighbour. Why should we give their state propaganda outlets any amplification?

[TMWNN]

I am reading Clark's Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia (<https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002RI9PMM/>). Right after hearing about YouTube shutting down Russian state media channels, I was surprised to learn in the book of the extent of the freedom of the press in late 18th-century Prussia. A British visitor wrote that people were as free to speak as back home, citing a work that was very critical of the king in the context of Poland. During the Napoleonic wars, despite the existential threat to Prussia from France, at least four newspapers that celebrated Revolutionary France as the next step in human freedom were allowed to publish.

It's always preferable to counter propaganda with free speech. Even liars deserve the opportunity to speak. This is especially true when there is no formally declared war between the US and Russia.

[sdb0]

Because you believe in freedom of speech?

[raffraffraff]

I work with Russians. I want to know what lies they're being told. Right now it's tough to ask them for daily updates because frankly a lot of them hate this situation very much and are saddened and embarrassed by what their country is doing. I would also find it difficult to ask.

[jacquesm]

Russian propaganda. Russia doesn't have any functional media at the moment.

[ArnoVW]

While it is true that journalism has suffered recently, this is a false equivalent.

It is true that in the US, if you want to live in a bubble, you can. However, that's a choice. There are many, many other information channels. And they are free to say whatever they want.

The real issue in the US, is the fact that so many people choose to live in a bubble. I bumped into this Vox piece the other day, "How American conservatives turned against the vaccine", that illustrates quite well how it really is destroying the US

  https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sv0dQfRRrEQ

[yk]

There are also a lot of systematic biases in western media, first of all they all write that the west is really, really great. If they don't write that, and only write that the west is really great, then their readers will look for a publication that uses an appropriate number of "really" when telling their readers that the west, and by extension the presumably western reader, is great.

[Etherlord87]

Can you point to some examples of that? Sorry but your revelations sound like utter bs...

[yk]

Iran's nuclear program, that looks actually a lot like Germany's in the 60ies. Both are most likely some kind of nuclear threshold strategy, that is one tries to exploit dual use technology and push the actual decision wether it is a civilian or military nuclear program as far out as possible. Now, it is possible to interpret that as a military program, however the qualifier that that is an interpretation, and that it wasn't actually shown is always lost. And that is precisely how these kinds of biases work, it is not that newspapers outright lie, they just use their wiggling room in a consistent manner.

Actually best to observe is at the Olympics, there is across competitions and therefore across commentators, a very consistent national hierarchy for which athletes the moderator will make excuses or for which athletes the moderator seeks to qualify the performance. (Think of doping for example.)

[watwut]

This is ... just not true. I mean, it is not true about media in EU. It is not true about right wing media in America. It is not true about centrist media in America. And not true about their leftist ones.

[EugeneOZ]

You wrote everything correct, I just want to explain a little bit for the western audience: “fake” here doesn't mean that facts will be checked. It means: “if you are posting something we don't like - chief editor and some journalists will be jailed”.

And chief editor of this newspaper has this prize: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2021/muratov/facts/

[topper-123]

This is actually easy to know:

Did you say something positive (judged by the state)? It is not fake news.

Did you say something negative (judged by the state)? It is fake news.

It is a simple erosion of citizen rights, giving the state vastly more power over its citizens than previously.

[Aeolun]

“The recent unpleasantness in Ukraine”