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by yucky 1456 days ago
Do we have our version of propaganda in the West, and if so, what are some of the methods to look out for?
1 comments

We have mostly politically motivated twisting of the words against political opponents (like NYT is against Trump etc). I always recommend to look what was actually said and in what context.
That's it?

With all of the vast wealth and intelligence agencies we have, the best we do on the propaganda front is when the NY Times says mean things about Trump?

Does that sound right to you?

Well, define "we" first.

How much American TV watch people in South America? How much English TV watches a German for example, or Italian? I would say, close to zero. So the first issue is that Western media landscape is fragmented. So it is difficult to project such possible attack to outside.

Second issue is media freedom. Media is truly privately owned and there is strong culture of press freedom. Still, there is probably also some level of cooperation with the government. So we should always pay attention if the government is trying to sell us something through media.

>So we should always pay attention if the government is trying to sell us something through media.

Isn't this how our entire "news media" landscape works (with the exception of a handful of legit investigative journalists)?

"My anonymous sources tell me..." really means "someone in the government wanted me to put this message out to the public."

Also, hasn't the US been busted funding revolutions/freedom fighters in 3rd world countries multiple times, utilizing propaganda at every step along the way? Or is that all BS?

War and propaganda go always hand in hand but the main difference here is in capability and scale.
Yes, and who has more scale or capability than the US? So we should fear our own propaganda more than any, right?