News Is Propaganda

https://www.joshualiu.org/blog/news-is-propaganda

by Fred34 • 3 years ago

44 41 3 years ago

8 The world will continue to spin on and the sky is not falling. The sun will rise again tomorrow.

At least until mushroom clouds dot the horizons and the nuclear winter starts. Then the sun won't rise for a few years.

I agree completely that "news" (especially corporate/government "news) is propaganda, but that doesn't mean that it's okay to keep your head in the sand and pretend everything is going to be okay. There is a very good argument to be made that we are far closer to civilization-ending nuclear war right now than we have been at any time in history.

emodendroket5• 3 years ago

There is a very good argument to be made that we are far closer to civilization-ending nuclear war right now than we have been at any time in history.

I wouldn't say there's a very good argument that we're closer to that than we were in, like, October 1962.

p-e-w6• 3 years ago

I'd say the crucial difference is that back then, such crises were created and resolved behind closed doors and the masses were helpless onlookers, while crises today are created in public, and the masses are active participants. This makes the eventual outcome much more unpredictable.

StanislavPetrov3• 3 years ago

I wouldn't say there's a very good argument that we're closer to that than we were in, like, October 1962.

NATO is in a direct proxy war with Russia, who has repeatedly said that they consider this war an "existential threat". The 1962 crisis was resolved when the Soviet Union eventually stood down and agreed not to stage their troops and missiles in Cuba. NATO has insisted it has every right to stage their troops and missiles in Ukraine. Reasonable people can disagree about whether or not we are actually closer to the precipice than we were in 1962, but nobody who understands the situation thinks a serious argument can't be made. We are at the point right now where nuclear war can break out at any moment.

throwawaylinux• 3 years ago

At least until mushroom clouds dot the horizons and the nuclear winter starts. Then the sun won't rise for a few years.

That's more fearmongering though. Nuclear winter doesn't mean blotting out the sun, it would be mostly imperceptible fine particles that might reduce global temperatures by a degree. But it's also pretty speculative and past predictions have over estimated the effect. So it's not a great way to disagree with this point. Global nuclear war would obviously be devastating but nuclear winter would be the least of our worries.

echelon2• 3 years ago

A narrative with no villain or hero is incoherent: It doesn't have a point. Narratives must construct the bad guys and outgroup (the villains) in a dynamic with the good guys and ingroup (the heroes) to be complete. The friend-enemy distinction. Is there a reference frame outside of this dynamic?

I like how in Hayao Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke there were no actual bad guys. Just different groups trying to protect their own. I find it a much closer analogy for the real world than most films with clear-cut heroes and villains.

It's incredible to me that we can vilify our own neighbors as worse than Darth Vader, a fictitious child killer and mass murderer.

emodendroket5• 3 years ago

I read something interesting about Captain Planet where the creators talked about deliberately making the villains cartoonishly, single-mindedly evil because they were worried about kids thinking their parents were bad for being involved in extractive industry or whatever.

KingOfCoders2• 3 years ago

It was also opinionated. In the past strong opinion was contained into clearly labeled opinion columns.

But in the last 20 years, every journalist confuses journalism (informing people) with activism (changing people). Perhaps because cut&paste from the internet didn't feel fullfilling enough.

This makes reading news unbearable to me.

soperj• 3 years ago

I don't think it's changed as much as you think it has over the years.

emodendroket5• 3 years ago

Kind of a media criticism 101 point here but even in the 20th Century highpoint of mostly neutral journalism (the stuff people read in the 18th and 19th Centuries was generally tabloid or highly partisan), there's plenty of opinion and guiding of the audience simply by the selection of stories and facts to emphasize and which to bury.

mc32• 3 years ago

That's a pretty good take.

One major problem is the total lack of seriousness. The news and journalists don't just have opinions and at time agitate but they tend to not have supporting evidence. They use the lightest and flimsiest evidence and use that to build opinions and agitate. There is no truth seeking, it's as they say, propaganda. At least opinion used to have some reason behind them and they'd lay out their thinking. Now it's more, "take my word, you and I agree on other things, so believe me on this."

codampa01314• 3 years ago

But in the last 20 years, every journalist confuses journalism (informing people) with activism (changing people).

My concern with this sentiment is that is glosses over far more nefarious motivations here (which I think are more common than we like to admit).

I have met many many people in the corporate world that are more concerned about "what the rules are" as opposed to applying any sort of ethical mindset. I've seen again and again where people will take advantage of others, throw other people under the bus, and fight to take "what is theirs" (meaning what they want - not actually what makes sense) without any sort of self-reflection. If challenged they gaslight everyone around them, including themselves..

I'm willing to believe that this extends to reporters. I would not be surprised if a large number of "reporters" out there that happily go along with whatever they are told to do in the job (or to keep their job): go after eyeballs rather than report facts and (sometimes) on stuff that matters. Take a look at any sort of news network and you can clearly see that all these news anchors are playing parts in this screwed up version of reporting what's going on. It's bound to extend down to people writing the articles as well.

Lyapunov_Lover• 3 years ago

It's strange how people seem to think that Good Old Fashioned Journalism was objective and reliable. Bias is certainly not a modern invention. This bizarre nostalgia for an era that never actually existed seems to be pretty common, similar to the classic complaint that kids today are lazy and immoral.

Anton Chekhov was an activist journalist 160 years ago. This is not at all a novel phenomenon. And news editors who sought to defend the status quo would, of course, be just as biased as activists—they would amplify or suppress narratives according to their ideological allegiances.

The news industry has never been objective and pure. It has always been subjective and biased.

KingOfCoders2• 3 years ago

"It was also opinionated"

vs.

"It's strange how people seem to think that Good Old Fashioned Journalism was objective"

bad_username• 3 years ago

If a phenomenon is old it does not mean it's good.

If journalism isn't completely objective (or even if it can't be 100% objective) doesn't mean journalists should not be trying to be objective.

Code always had bugs - should we give up fixing them?

I am all for journalist activism if it's clearly marked as such. Disguising activism as news is the biggest sin that the modern media have committed and are committing.

p-e-w6• 3 years ago

The whole concept of "News" falls apart the moment you ask what its purpose is.

The American public is being informed that twelve militants have been killed in clashes in Sudan. Now what? What are they supposed to do with that information? Is there any possible benefit that can come to anyone by virtue of average Americans being told about that singular event? Did they even actually learn anything?

Propaganda isn't the main problem. Neither is bias, or "fake news", or emotionalism, or framing, or echo chambers. The main problem is that even in its purest, ideal form, (global) news doesn't actually serve any clearly recognizable purpose.

echelon2• 3 years ago

The American public is being informed that twelve militants have been killed in clashes in Sudan. Now what? What are they supposed to do with that information? Is there any possible benefit that can come to anyone by virtue of average Americans being told about that singular event? Did they even actually learn anything?

Neural weights updated:

- "There are militants in Sudan"

- "There is violence in Sudan"

- "There is political instability in Sudan"

- "It's probably unsafe to travel to Sudan"

- ...

Every single piece of news can do this.

In consuming news, lots and lots of context gets built up, regularly refreshed, and becomes subconsciously useful across a broad spectrum of tasks. I find the news useful for understanding economics, geopolitics, finance, stock trading, and much more.

You just need to make sure you consider the bias of your news sources and the relevance to the overall picture.

vogon_laureate2• 3 years ago

In addition to the above, it could also prompt people to find out more about what’s going on there, why it is happening, who are the principal forces involved, etc.

I now know far more about Ukraine and Russia than I ever did before because the news coverage led me to want to learn more.

dleeftink4• 3 years ago

I would prepend 'for-profit' to the title, but also make a distinction between the journalists's intent and affiliation when considering what news can be deemed independent or propaganda-like.

That said, even for profit journalism has gained Pulitzer level standing, and can be intrinsically motivated rather than agendistic. There is also a world of difference between direct interference on the newsroom, self-censoring and chasing a story. Beyond that, the 'colour' of the news is pretty much in the eyes of the beholder, which is why media-literacy is so important.

p-e-w6• 3 years ago

I would prepend 'for-profit' to the title

I wouldn't. "Not-for-profit news" usually means public networks, which by definition are controlled by the government or legislature to some degree, and have been propaganda factories since forever.

dleeftink4• 3 years ago

Which of the networks are you referring to specifically? Publically funded does not equate to newsroom not being able to operate independently (and is not necessarily the opposite to 'for-profit').

While completely transparent and unbiased news remains a pipedream, I think this is a matter of degree rather than kind--messages may be coloured by many factors such as education, social circles, personal or shared histories, communicative expectations, editorial style guides, intended audiences and so on.

Direct evidence of Western governments interfering in the newsroom is also hard to come by (but may have happened on occasion). However, I do agree indirect influence can be exerted through lobbying and media conglomeration. It may be more productive to vent in this direction rather than the newsrooms themselves.

vogon_laureate2• 3 years ago

Disagree. Non-profit “news” can just as well mean the owners are motivated by ideology rather than truth. My experience working in the “alternative media” ecosystem was very much this.

You start off thinking you’re “countering MSM propaganda” only to discover as you mature that you were just spouting some other kind of propaganda the whole time.

dleeftink4• 3 years ago

Yes, the dichotomy falls apart quite easily. But in the context of the crudely worded title and the observations in the article that 'all news is propaganda', we at least need to look further then blaming 'the news' itself--rather its incentive structures, and as you mentioned, affiliations and ideological goalposts.

jpcfl• 3 years ago

I always find it fun to look at the etymology of words. The word propaganda has it's roots in Latin--propagare, meaning to spread or disseminate. In Spanish, the word propaganda can be used to describe advertisements.

Journalism today seems to be less about dissecting a story and looking at it from different angles, and more about using a story to bolster some kind of narrative, often political. I'm not sure what has caused this shift, but I would imagine it has something to do with financial incentives combined with the rate at which stories can be produced and disseminated.

Not sure how we fix this and get back to popular news being more boring and less tabloid, like Reuters or Wall Street Journal (news column, not opinion). I imagine it will require education starting at an early age, teaching people how to consume media with a critical eye, and engage in discourse in a civil manner. With hope, this will create a financial incentive for journalists to publish more objective stories.

anfilt• 3 years ago

I have always consider ads propaganda. One of the main purposes of propaganda is to influence or persuade an audience. Throw in how little information is in most ads or if they do provide any information it's often biased toward the product or company making the ad. The ads goal is to influence your purchasing behavior or persuade to buy what ever it is. They often use the same techniques to achieve this influence as what most people call propaganda. In my eyes they are the same. I guess you could call most ads corporate propaganda.

bigfryo• 3 years ago

As for why the news media became a brainwashing medium instead of a platform for distributing news, I think a lot of it has to do with the power of the internet to bring in Outsider opinions into the brains of normal people.. in order to counteract this power of the internet, the media has to increase their own propaganda rate, and likewise the rest of the establishment has to do the same

Fred34• 3 years ago

There is a bit of meta-level irony in this article in that I'm the author that was trying to see if I could propagate this article here (a news site).

sacnoradhq• 3 years ago

Propaganda, manufactured consent, outragebait, and/or {dis,mis,}information depending on the outlet, writer, and story and their particular motivations.

What is missing is more publicly-funded news sources with the ethics of Walter Cronkite: to report news as information separate from political, economic, and popularity concerns. Scripps News seems interesting. ProPublica pours a great deal of time and energy into original research uncovering unpleasant and inconvenient facts the public should know.

News Is Propaganda

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