[lo_zamoyski]

Also Time magazine.

It's not uncommon to hear from people who lived behind the Iron Curtain how propagandistic American media is. If anything, it's less coarse than the Soviet variety.

So, two reasons:

1. The more conspicuous varieties of manipulation in the Soviet Union and elsewhere sensitized people to the existence of such manipulation everywhere else, even in subtler and more insidious forms.

2. The classic "fish don't know what water is": what Americans can't see, because they were raised from birth and marinating in it, foreigners can spot more readily by contrast.

And because the US was effectively a sort of godfather and guardian of countries west of the Iron Curtain following the War, it had a lot of pull with the media in those countries and cooperated with the appropriate people to promote and cement the Pax Americana.

[mzl]

> The classic "fish don't know what water is": what Americans can't see, because they were raised from birth and marinating in it, foreigners can spot more readily by contrast.

Learning that US schoolchildren recite the pledge of allegiance in school baffled my mind when I first realized it was actually true. As an outsider, it sounded like an obvious parody/caricature of nationalism, especially with the religious part.

[mk89]

I think that thanks to the internet we have more access to a lot of literature like never before, so in theory we can recognize certain "patterns" more easily now than some years ago.

People from the East Europe will tell you that American media is clearly a propaganda machine, but they themselves grew up during difficult times and the one lesson they all learnt is: don't trust. You cannot trust your neighbors, you cannot trust your friends, you cannot trust anyone.

Therefore, media in the West appears as a big pile of propaganda (which in many cases is true). However, they also have their own propaganda, maybe "drier" and more straightforward, but one way or another, all countries need to keep the flock of humans in line.

[underlipton]

It's a little stunning how well this also describes dynamics of racism in the US. Very Baldwin-esque observations. Something to consider any time you hear criticism, on the basis of "bias", of the assessment of someone from a group who have themselves been subjected to "more conspicuous varieties" of bigotry than the average American.

Might also be applied to class consciousness. An acquaintance (liberal, Southern, white) once described the voting patterns of less-affluent white Southerners as, essentially, trying to front-run the greed and cruelty of the elite class. Give them what they think they want, even if it hurts, so that they don't linger on the subject and come up with something worse. A dynamic where you really would have to know your oppressor better than they know themselves, or you.

[dotancohen]

  > A dynamic where you really would have to know your oppressor better than they know themselves, or you.

Sun Tze's most famous proverb informs us that this ensures that one will win half their battles.

[TeeMassive]

I like to read the propaganda / state funded media of most major nation states of the world: Al Jazeera, TRT, CGTN, RT, BBC, CBC, PBS, etc.

Western "propaganda" is the most insidious and frankly insane. At least with other state media it is clear they are being advocates and their own population don't believe it and won't defend it in private conversations. But in the West we have a way to make people want to believe, it is very uncanny. If I see another "let's go to war for Afghan/Iranian/Syrian women" documentary from the CBC I will lose my mind.

[throwawayqqq11]

3. You can actually afford to bring more nuanced, maybe even self-critical reports because your moral baseline is more then a superficial symbol like "freedom".

[dbtc]

3.1. Might is right and money helps the medicine go down.

[leoh]

No it’s not

[SauntSolaire]

How to make heavy handed propaganda out to be a virtue.

[czl]

Faced with subtle lies you may prefer the obvious ones.

[underlipton]

That depends on whether or not the obviousness of the lies tracks with the zeal with which atrocities enabled by that dislocation from reality are undertaken.

But I suppose that there's plenty of evidence that it doesn't.