[greatpostman]

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

[ozzythecat]

> 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.

[chimpansteve]

It's the Gell-Mann amnesia effect (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmn...) in full flow.

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.

[JeremyNT]

> 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.

[gutitout]

At this point it is beyond clickbait / views / funding. It’s clearly pushing the agenda of a small group of people.

[Zerverus]

Which is yet to be proven worse than the stupidity of the masses

[treeman79]

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.