[stelonix]

If it were only the WaPo the ones saying things such as the comment I was replying to, then "them" would mean the WaPo. But since every corporate news outlet uses the same wording to make it seem like the CIA was "evil back in the day but it's fine now", in this context, "them" means pretty much every corporate outlet out there. Each one of them who pretends Julian Assange is not a political prisoner by orders of Washington. Each and every one of them who publish stories whose source is "unnamed officials" (aka "trust me bro") and are usually just copying verbatim the government narrative without batting an eye. Since that's all of the big ones, NYT, WaPo, Guardian, even Reuters nowadays; might as well consider "them" all of them who do this kind of propaganda.

[woodruffw]

This comes off as a screed. There’s a significant difference between media biases and state control: major news outlets in the US tend to have pro-corporate and pro-government views, but this doesn’t make them state affiliated.

Proper consumption of biased news sources requires a finer-toothed comb than “pro-government is bad, and therefore is compromised by the government.”

[skissane]

> major news outlets in the US tend to have pro-corporate and pro-government views, but this doesn’t make them state affiliated.

There’s a double standard here though - many of the same people who defend US media as “not state affiliated just because it has a pro-government bias” will then label Hungarian media “state-affiliated” when similarly it isn’t under direct state control, it is just owned by private interests with a pro-government bias.

[woodruffw]

Where’s the double standard? China and US are different in kind; the US and Hungary are similar in kind, but different in degree.

Many things can be bad at once, in many different ways!

[skissane]

If Hungary can have a significantly high degree of pro-government bias in its privately owned media to justify calling that media “state-affiliated”, why can’t the United States? What makes the label justifiable for a greater degree of the same kind not a lesser? Opinions differ on how great the difference in degree is.

[stelonix]

I believe it's disingenuous to pass it off as "well it's just semantics" when, in reality since the 80s neolib explosion and after the 2010s Snowden revelations, it's pretty clear the relationship between Washington and corporations/the press is as intermingled as the Chinese and their equivalents.

[woodruffw]

Again: it’s hard to take this seriously. The Chinese government has direct control over all domestic news; in even the strongest sense, the US government exercises influence over mainstream domestic news.

Both are bad, but equating between the two doesn’t do anybody any particular service: they have different proximate causes, and different remediations.

[stelonix]

If you find it hard to take it seriously, I find it even more to take you seriously. What you're saying only makes sense if there's no such thing as coercion and deception, 2 things we know are practiced by Washington. A small, meaningless semantic meaning of hierarchy, when you have secret courts and plain, obvious examples of government & corporate media working together, it's like you're asking us to believe in fairy tales. And it's all backed by "we wouldn't lie, they would", which is xenophobia, quite simply.

You'd have to ignore Snowden and all the leaks of the past 20 to 50 years, to have such a misconception of how the USG operates. You'd have to have the USG's trustworthiness as the pillar of your belief system and then comes the usual philosophy. That's exceptionalism and xenophobia.

[George83728]

You've brought up Snowden twice but I'm unfamiliar anything Snowden revealed about the relationship between the Washington Post and the government. Can you expand on this point, ideally with some specifics?

Usually when people talk about the CIA being involved with American media, it's in relation to things like Operation Mockingbird, but as far as I know Snowden didn't reveal anything about programs like that. Snowden revealed things like the existence of PRISM, and the Washington Post (along with The Guardian) was one of the first newspapers to publish such revelations.

[alookatsbg]

I would take a peek at Sinclair Broadcast Group. Just one of the CIA cronies out there.

[numair]

This exchange is pretty funny to anyone who knows the background on the extremely cozy relationship between Katherine Graham and the CIA. It seems that, in our post-truth world, facts have become conspiracies and conspiracies have become facts. Alas.

[woodruffw]

Graham’s institutional connections were infamous; they also famously didn’t stop the WaPo from publishing the Pentagon Papers.

Confusing the media’s (noted) biases for compromise is an error in principled media consumption.

[stelonix]

If you look at the number of ex-CIA/intelligence now working for mainstream media, you'd have to suffer from a very bad case of American exceptionalism to suggest the fact they do not stand up to power (after Snowden) is NOT linked to their roles as state assets.