The Russia investigation coverage changed my view on the limits and possibilities of propaganda. Have never been more cynical of humanity, or rather, people running the show commonly have the same abilities as the school teacher at the local public school
> The Russia investigation coverage changed my view on the limits and possibilities of propaganda.
What strikes me is the gall and brazen dishonesty in American “news” media. Billionaire Russians are “oligarchs” and painted as Russia’s .1% who influence or control the country. And don’t forget about Russia’s “state-run media”, who surely we should never trust.
Meanwhile, America’s media itself is controlled by wealthy private interests - the same ones that influence minds and shape political outcomes. They’ve done immeasurable damage insofar as dividing this country, turning even families against one another over politics.
What’s especially striking is how much American media interests want to glue eyeballs and sell the Ukraine conflict. It’s no doubt a horrible, horrible disaster for the Ukrainian people. But the powers that be have decided to go next level in humanizing the conflict. We’re shown footage of blue eyes white people escaping bombs, often carrying their cats and dogs. We’re even given names of individuals murdered by the Russian bombing.
Where has all this coverage been in all of Americas own war, often bombing brown people everywhere from the Middle East to South East Asia?
The propaganda is on overdrive. Yesterday, I saw a CNN segment where they kept parroting Biden’s pitch that Putin is responsible for Americas inflation.
Journalists, almost entirely as a group, are experts in nothing. Colossaly ill informed on every subject, and "research" consists of scrolling through Twitter to find a point of view that backs up their preexisting predudices. These days, many struggle with even basic English and grammar.
I'm not even giving them the credit of indulging in propaganda, because that requires some actual critical thought and intelligence. They're just bad at their job.
> Journalists, almost entirely as a group, are experts in nothing. Colossaly ill informed on every subject, and "research" consists of scrolling through Twitter to find a point of view that backs up their preexisting predudices. These days, many struggle with even basic English and grammar.
News outlets have incentives to create clickbait (or to favor stories that otherwise align with the motivations of their financial stakeholders), and "access reporters" have incentives to cozy up to their subjects.
But there are many, many journalists out there doing the actual work of researching subjects in depth and reporting on them to the best of their capability.
This story we're discussing right now - which exposes the corruption at CNN - wasn't generated by some layabout scrolling through their twitter timeline.
Spent some time in tech side of journalism in late 90s. LA times related.
Someone would write an article bashing some group of other. Group would gets pissed. We meet with group. Guys in charge won’t talk about past. Only about moving forward.
Rinse and repeat.
Higher ups only lived in the moment.
This [1] an interesting and possibly relevant video. The video is going to be from somewhere around late 1992, long before Jeff Zucker had even joined CNN. It's a hot mic moment between Bill Clinton just before taking the presidency, and the iconic Larry King who was the biggest voice on CNN at the time :
---
King: "It's crazy - [CNN owner] Ted Turner changed the world. He's a a big fan of yours.
Clinton: Is he?
King: He would, uh, serve you. You know what I mean?
Clinton: You're kidding?
King: Oh you'd be surprised. He's ready, what's he got left in life to gain? I'd call him after you're elected. Think about it. No dope.
Clinton: That's for sure.
King: Great guy to work for too.
---
I have no clue what King was suggesting. Clinton seemed literally less than interested, or at least more cautious about saying things you don't want heard around mics. But I also don't think it's likely that Larry was just randomly mouthing off, so it does make this quite relevant. As does the fact that it wasn't especially long after this, relatively speaking at least, that news started its rapid transition to what it's turned into now a days.
Cable news is a waste. Anything worth hearing about will be written up by a newspaper. And with newspapers now having websites, cable news doesn't even have an immediacy advantage. The only thing cable news can do better than newspapers is show you live footage of something happening, but that's good for little but gawking at.
And if you really must get CNN's take on things, https://lite.cnn.com/en is much better than their cable channel. No filler, rambling talking heads, flashy hypnotic animations and music, or commercial breaks.
> Anything worth hearing about will be written up by a newspaper.
True. Old complaint. TV news has always been a parasite on newspaper news rooms. With some rare exceptions.
I did student broadcasting (radio, public access cable, job shadowing) in the 80s. Learned about the history, the players, "journalism", etc. I loved the gear, working in the studio. (At least as much as I love programming computers.)
Corporate media has always been as bad as everyone imagines. Completely walked away from the industry after some interning. Once I got a peek behind the curtain, I simply loathe the entirety of it. I even refuse to own a TV, watch the news, etc.
Local news at least has one advantage over cable news; it only runs for a few hours a day so they aren't trying to stretch everything out to fill a full 24/7 schedule. But even so it's still crap, I don't watch local TV news either. The only TV news I've ever considered to be worth a damn was News Hour with Jim Lehrer, which was only an hour a day. Even in that case, I might just have rose-tinted glasses on.
It really depends who owns the station. I've seen great work from Nexstar stations. So far, the stories I've seen from their approach to cable news, NewsNation aren't bad. They might get more CNN like as they approach 24 hour coverage.
Edit: I work for a competitor to Nexstar who overall does very good work but I wouldn't recommend to avoid a conflict of interest.
I’ve been taking a note from the open source world. I like software free as in speech and free as in press.
The only thing free about our press anymore is that they’re free to make money using whatever hyper optimized feedback loop gives the best profit margin.
I no longer call it a free press, but instead a profit press.
I reserve the term “free press” for news organizations that in practice or legal constitution are non profit.
Is a non-profit-based press necessarily a better thing? I'm not entirely convinced that FOSS-like press is the better alternative -- open source has its own fair share of problems.
When it comes to low-quality journalism today, I notice that most (if not all) of the notorious cases follow a pattern where the shttier the news the cheaper it is. Could it be that journalistic quality is proportional to the costs the reader has to pay?
If so, rather than seeking a news source untainted by monetary interests, wouldn't it be more productive to seek costly news sources with individual interests you are clearly aware of?
I’m not looking for “free as in beer” press. Journalism takes effort that is real and should be remunerated. Without that, all you get is people who have an incentive to broadcast their version of the truth based on some other feedback that usually boils down to propaganda/proselyting/evangelism.
What I’m looking for is to have the profit motive detached from the news. I was intrigued when Jon Huntsman bought the Salt Like Tribune and changed it to a non profit organization a couple of years ago. I’m not a regular reader of the Trib, since I live up in Washington state these days, so I don’t know if it’s made a real difference. I read the occasional article from it, and it seems less click baity and sensationalistic, but I couldn’t say that with any depth.
But I do think there is an irreconcilable conflict of interest when you want to publicize information AND make a profit from it. It’s been there for a long time, but the precision of analytics feedback has moved that conflict up a whole notch in the digital age.
I’m surprised this is what did it for you. The entire purpose of inviting guests to a show of this format is to ask the guest questions and have an interesting dialog. It would be more problematic in my opinion if the hosts offered their own answers to the questions without any qualifications, but that’s what often happens along with the rhetoric and logical fallacies.
Is it a stupid and ignorant question, yea. Did someone in the audience find it interesting, extremely likely.
It's become very clear to me that the people who call themselves leaders are as flawed, weak, and corruptible as anyone else. Arguably moreso. They're not especially moral and strong. So when they're put in (or ascend to) these expansive positions of power, we all feel their flaws, weakness, and corruption. Their problems become all of our problems, because their problems flow outwards, throughout everything that they influence.
>Rolling Stone has come under fire for sharing a dubious story about rural hospitals in Oklahoma being overwhelmed by those taking the veterinary medicine ivermectin to treat Covid-19 – an unproven treatment.
>If you want to know why Republicans have no faith in news organizations, look no further than the Rolling Stone story shared liberally across Twitter this weekend claiming that Oklahoma hospitals were turning away gunshot victims because they were overwhelmed by “horse dewormer overdoses.”
>Headlined “Gunshot Victims Left Waiting as Horse Dewormer Overdoses Overwhelm Oklahoma Hospitals, Doctor Says,” the Rolling Stone story, written by Peter Wade, quoted a Dr. Jason McElyea who claimed, “The ERs are so backed up that gunshot victims were having hard times getting to facilities where they can get definitive care and be treated.”
I remember watching recently a discussion on CNN about how Virginia voters were white supremacists because the CNN-preferred candidate had lost the state election.
Note: These would be the same voters that voted for Obama in previous elections.
I am not educated enough about Virginia candidates to weigh in on the truth of if he is a white supremacist. I can say that your logic is garbage. The governor got fewer votes in Virginia than either McCain or Romney did when they ran against Obama. It's possible that everyone who voted in the gubernatorial race voted for the candidate of the same party in every presidential election going back at least that far.
No, the issue in Virginia has to do with Asian students being discriminated against by schools like Thomas Jefferson High because they are overrepresented at these prestigious schools.
Democrat educators tried to introduce racial quotas to increase the number of non Asian students and the national media called any resistance to those quotas white supremacy
This became a whole controversy and then the pandemic took place and parents started to realize these racist ideas were also being taught in the curricula, and the Democrat candidate committed political seppuku by telling parents they had no right to decide what the curriculum is
If the winning candidate is a white supremacist, then it is perfectly reasonable to prefer a different candidate, and wonder if those votes may also be white supremacists as an election is a reflection of the population, and often people that agree with these ideas were also voters for Obama, yes.
I think it's because CNN is supposed to be dialing more towards 'center' in an effort to pump up dismal ratings. Maybe Rolling Stone is 'punishing' them for the betrayal.
Eating their own is an intrinsic behavior. It's more like "What made them target CNN?" It looks like assigning responsibility for Trump and the fact that some women were victimized.
Maybe progressives aren’t willing to support their “own” unconditionally? These aren’t sports teams. Bad behavior hurts us all and should be called out regardless of it’s on your side or not
Really disappointing what CNN became under Zucker. I'm of the generation where CNN was our window to the world - pre-mass Internet connectivity, if you had cable, or were passing through an airport, or in a hotel with it, you had access to a whole world of people and places that could plug into.
Really shameful what they did - from turning into a political mouthpiece, to finding new ways to heighten the temperature in society and divide people into ever more atomised units, CNN in recent history has been an absolute stain on society. The liars they have hired to stare into the camera day after day, solemnly declaring what is and is not "good" for you, while completing ignoring the issues that affect regular working-class people, are the true sociopaths to keep doing this daily without any self-reflection.
Zucker's success in the media/entertainment industry is baffling because his reputation is basically as a wrecking ball. I have not seen any praise of his stewardship of NBC which made his selection as the person to run CNN bewildering.
One can only speculate about how he landed the position, but none of it seems to be based on observable successes at what he was paid to do.
It's a shame what became of CNN. It used to be my most trusted news. I believed everything they told me.
Their credibility allowed them to be carried into very dark territory and they took me with them. Once the cracks started to show through I started looking into other sources and slowly became totally disillusioned.
They are a political mouthpiece more than a news organization. They sowed so much division in the country and created false narratives at the beck and call of their political benefactors. The Russia-gate scandal was a total fabrication that they reported on long after the facts and government investigations showed it was all bullshit and continued to spread misinformation and strife among the citizenry.
They don't inform their viewers, they weaponize them.
I’m just surprised that so many people on HN seem to have cable at all. If you asked me what I thought of any of the news networks on cable, I’d give you a blank stare, they haven’t been relevant to most techies for more than a decade now. The only reason FoxNews is winning the ratings battle is that older (and more conservative) people have been cutting the cord much slower than younger people.
The polarization and desperate rating grabs are merely a death throw of an industry that has lost relevance.
It isn't "whataboutyou" ism to point out that essentially the entire news industry has become little more than fear-mongering clickbait (on one hand) or propaganda for one of the two political parties of the U.S (on the other hand).
CNN is just a symptom of a much larger problem and it's that much larger problem which needs to be addressed -which will continue until it is addressed.
More than 95% of what news sites/tv "report" on isn't remotely actionable or relevant for the average viewer.
It's basically something that scratches the itch of human curiosity, but with manipulative and lowest common denominator garbage. We'd all be better off if we scratched that curiosity itch by reading about things we're interested in, rather than current events.
Isn't the problem simply that democrat-leaning media have fallen prey to partisan division , as a reaction to the same thing happening to republican-leaning media? Media on the right are protecting themselves by creating a bubble around their audience, and the other side responds by doing the same?
EDIT: replaced left and right with democrat/republican.
This article doesn't seems to describe any sort of "left-wing bubble" to me, but rather in dealing between politicians and news sources. Coupled with sexual harassment.
I don't think this article draws a picture of a news org that will do anything to defend their party, but rather a news org that will do anything for power. Which it then uses to reward the loyalists. It will gladly play into trump if he gives good ratings, just like it will happily shit on trump if there's ratings in that. It'll create conflicts of interest when it asks a journalist to interview his own brother, as long as there's ratings in it. It'll even cover for sexual misconduct, if the abusers are loyal and produce ratings.
Basically, there's no political party in this story. Only power hungry amoral people.
Well the problem is indeed that conservatives would definitely think of CNN as left, or liberal, even if CNN should not or is not thinking of itself that way. The behavior at CNN is reminiscent of Sean Hannity on Fox during the insurrection, i.e., both media's are trying to support their respective favorite politician. I'm not trying to justify it, but I think it's more driven by bi-partisan divide and loyalty to a particular politician, than it is by a hunger for ratings.
Some of the opinion pieces on CNN and MSNBC (Maddow etc) are basically left-wing version of Qanon. Whilst FoxNews gets rightly criticized when voicing such nonsense, the more liberal channels get a free pass. It’s wildly divisive and has severely damaged society over the last 5 years. But CNN and MSNBC got their ad-clicks, which I guess is the important thing.
I agree. Fox News wears what it is on it's sleeve. CNN proports to be a fair, truthful source of news and very rarely outright lies to people, but there is too much missing context, misleading headlines, and late corrections. It takes too much mental energy to figure out what is worth paying attention to on CNN, it is easier to just ignore it.
If CNN is so neutral why do you assume that if I am against them that I like Fox News. News isn't a fucking red team vs blue team sport. I just want a good non-partisan news source. Fox News is terrible but CNN and MSNBC seem to be racing to be them.
I didn't say CNN is neutral, I don't believe that. Nor have I assumed you like Fox News, I didn't insinuate anything of the sort. All I'm saying is Fox News does not wear what they are on their sleeve; they purport to be "fair and balanced" which is plainly a lie.
Yeah, because the channel is called Fox News any rational person understands that shows like "Tucker Carlson Tonight", "Watter's World", or "Gutfeld!" are news and not entertainment/opinion. Same rational people are completely fine with trusting the legitimate news shows from respectable journalists on Comedy Central and HBO channels though.
There is no major left-wing equivalent to the Tucker Carlson original series Fox pushes. I’m not sure I buy that the left-wing
media stoops to quite the lows that Fox does. The Patriot Purge series specifically intones that Jan. 6 was a false flag operation from the FBI to institute martial law and arrest Trump supporters - that, from the most watched cable news host in the US.
but probably untrue since it was allowed on mainstream media. Anything that really threatens the narrative will be banned outright or at mission critical times, like this documentary removed from youtube after being available for 6 years:
Exactly. This article on Rolling Stone only gets published because there is a market for it, i.e., there are Right-wingers out there looking for 'evidence' that CNN is just as bad as 'fair & balanced' Fox News. In a free enterprise world, pieces only get published when there is a demand for it. I'm not quite persuaded by the Rolling Stone piece. To me, it has 'what about CNN' written all over it.
Well there's the Russians under every bed paranoia
Look how they treated Trump from the start. 2020 was the most secure election in American history. 2016 was stolen by secret Russian collusion, that even a multi year long Mueller probe was unable to find any connections or collusion.
You can also find the limits on information through polling. Over half of fox News viewers believe that the US government found WMDs in Iraq in 2003. Over half of Democrats believe Russians hacked vote tallies and compromised voting machines in 2016
The coverage on the BLM protests also.
The hypocracy of liberal media .
Nurses with “see you next week” signs during Trump ralleys and then one week later full 100% support for rallying.
Just ad long as the cause is considered politically correct.
There was an article ( oped ) in Nature magazine on these protests that claimef the only covid spread that happening during BLM protests was because some people brought their unmasked children.
Nature magazine wrote that.
Ill try to dig up a link
I personally feel it is healthy to have your eyes opened to your own political sides hypocracy.
The Mueller investigation did however find evidence of obstruction of justice. There was also undisputably communication between the Trump campaign and the Russians. A reasonable person can still believe that it’s within the realm of possibility that something illegal went down there, although I concede it has not been proven.
Contrast that with what I asked for, claims as deranged as what QAnon put forth. Are you telling me that you think that what you mentioned is on par with stories about a cabal of satanic cannibal pedophiles secretly controlling the entire US government, with Trump being the only one in power fighting back (also in silence, by the way)?
The entire Trump-Russia collusion story was invented by the Clinton campaign and fed to leftists eager to hear anything that explained how Trump could have been elected. The fact is that Trump appealed to enough people in enough states to win in 2016, but instead of believing that, leftists jumped on this collusion nonsense. That story is literally the biggest conspiracy theory of all time, and it sounds like you bought it hook, line, and sinker. Believing that Trump was taking orders from Putin is comparable to believing that the world is controlled by cabal of pedophiles. Your bias may prevent you from seeing it, or the four years of media spreading the conspiracy theory, but they are equally unrealistic.
I’m just going to feed this quote back to you. I doubt we will be able to reconcile our respective understandings of this in short order because they’re so far apart, but suffice it to say I believe yours is much further from reality than mine.
To be clear, I never said I believed Trump took actual orders from Putin directly. Did he try to illegally cooperate with and got manipulated by him and his cronies? Yes, that I believe, even though I haven’t seen enough evidence to put it beyond a reasonable doubt (potentially because of the aforementioned obstruction of justice).
I mean, all Trump had to do was sneeze and CNN, MSNBC, NYT all worked themselves into a furious seethe for the next two weeks about how that sneeze was literally basically Hitler and that’s it, that’s the final straw, the world is coming to a literal end now because he’s an unhinged fascist dictator or something.
Mind you this is all coming from “respected” and “establishment-accepted” news organizations to boot.
It's clear the American left establishment went apeshit and lost their rationality when that orange guy was elected. They may have been mostly emotional and hiding it behind virtue signaling before, not sure as I didn't pay that much attention to American politics. But after orange guy got in omg their biased agendas were just so incredibly obvious to anyone objectively looking from outside, and their constant 'trumping up' anything was so ridiculous it was pathetic. Pot meet kettle of what they accused other side of, but honestly they looked worse.
Somehow people seem to believe that media became worse over time. No, that didn't happen. It's just that people found out exactly how the media works because they had access to the source material.
I remember the Trump election cycle when they kept coming up with "the beginning of the end" for Trump by mis-reporting what he said in rallies, debates, speeches... only to find out that the supporters kept growing... because turns out, considerable number of people actually looked for the source video (out of curiosity than suspicion, I imagine) and found that the media were either manipulating the videos or clipping out the context to misrepresent what he was talking about.
They have always been doing this but the masses didn't have access to the source material so they could report anything and get away with it. What has changed is that a lots of people can now see things for themselves (lots of people still choose not to, but I think it is out of habit than anything). The post-internet media has to take this into consideration and only lie about things that is difficult to document in video. Had they considered this during the campaign, "news" like "Russiagate" would have been much more effective.
The always on nature of online has made it worse, in the sense that the medium is the message and feedback algorithms can influence/control peoples state of mind, ala FB etc.
"To your request of my opinion of the manner in which a newspaper should be conducted so as to be most useful, I should answer ‘by restraining it to true facts & sound principles only.’ yet I fear such a paper would find few subscribers. it is a melancholy truth that a suppression of the press could not more compleatly deprive the nation of it’s benefits, than is done by it’s abandoned prostitution to falsehood.
nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. the real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knolege with the lies of the day.
I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens, who, reading newspapers, live & die in the belief that they have known something of what has been passing in the world in their time: whereas the accounts they have read in newspapers are just as true a history of any other period of the world as of the present, except that the real names of the day are affixed to their fables.
general facts may indeed be collected from them, such as that Europe is now at war, that Bonaparte has been a successful warrior, that he has subjected a great portion of Europe to his will &c &c. but no details can be relied on. I will add that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors. he who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false."
- Thomas Jefferson, 1807 [1]
------
His words may correspond to your own, but the fact that such views were generally widespread contradicts them. I think what has happened is modern times is not that the media becoming worse than ever, but rather that for some very brief window in time we actually had a media with integrity and ethics, even if completely serendipitously. So all we're doing is, seemingly like many things in modern society, is simply returning to how things were for nearly all of society's existence.
> that for some very brief window in time we actually had a media with integrity and ethics, even if completely serendipitously
I would like to request you to entertain the possibility that the media became so powerful and influencial for a brief period that they convinced everyone of that idea... the information revolution just helped break the facade by democratising access to information... because of which their model of story-telling which was based on large uninformed masses (or masses homogenously disinformed with biased story-telling) no longer worked.
I'm always open the consideration of any reasonable idea, but you need evidence. I can provide plenty to the contrary. For instance in the 1970s the media, spearheaded by the NYTimes no less, published the Pentagon Papers which (predictably) put the paper in direct confrontation with the government and the endlessly influential military industrial complex in particular.
And that led to a high stakes confrontation with the paper itself facing government pressure and lawsuits that went all the way to the Supreme Court with what would have been devastating consequences had they lost. Of course by 2013 when the Snowden leaks hit this had all changed. The NYTimes had already long since turned into the sort of agency that chose to more regularly run with headlines like "British Intelligence Chiefs Say Leaks by Snowden Hurt Security", "Leaker's Flight Raises Tension", and such other tripe - frequently engaging in a mixture of ignoring, misrepresenting, or defending what Snowden had revealed.
But the in the heyday of media, I do not see any reason to believe that people's judgement of the media was flawed. I'm certainly interested to see why you think so though!