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A Russian TV Insider Describes a Modern Propaganda Machine

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Re: A Russian TV Insider Describes a Modern Propaganda Machine

#101

Post by A_COMPUTER »

bayesianhorse wrote: post #74
A_COMPUTER wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're on to something, but they don't know the whole picture. Which is that in a world where mass media is under the control of one superpower or another, you are only going to hear painful criticism of your own government from the opposing superpower's media arm. What I find just as painful as you about your countrymen's opinion of RT, is that people in my country will criticize RT as propaganda and then comically…

I hear tons of criticism from major media against both the US and German government, from both US and German media. You don't hear the kreml being criticized in Russian media though...

Russia is objectively worse in a lot of ways, they are not identical. But there do seem to be certain significant things that are almost impossible to say in American media, such as the term empire.

Re: A Russian TV Insider Describes a Modern Propaganda Machine

#102

Post by deepyearning »

bayesianhorse wrote: post #100
deepyearning wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unwilling to engage? You seem to watch the wrong shows... I've seen tons of interviews with people advocating immigration control. Some where even quite friendly. As I said, the mainstream only allows a very narrow discourse on immigration, which Pegida don't seem to fall under. You characterize this act as a fair way to expose the incompetence of would be politicians. I disagree. It's actually highly unfair, and I…

Actually, journalists from serious media tried that. With very little success. Most participants refuse interviews, and there is a video where masked participants forcibly carry away an interviewee. In other videos journalists are hit, their cameras damaged, and all the time they are shouting hate at the journalists. The "narrow" discussion of immigration is more due to the limited options which have any reasonable c…

Do you have any links regarding what you said about the impossibility of interviewing Pegida. From googling, I found the following interviews with Pegida members by RTL, at what appeared to be a peaceful protest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bl0KPaLPL7g and by Phoenix at another apparently peaceful demonstration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dp2HKPQpfdg

>And those who try to fall somewhere in between current policy and breaking the constitution, often don't understand the topic worth a damn. If a journalist has even a modest understanding of the topic he will have the greatest difficulty of entertaining opinions and solutions which are based on factual errors.

Well that's a very subjective matter. I see a lot of junk "knowledge" touted by pro immigration groups on this topic. For example, in most European countries immigrants commit more crimes. But there is a lot of obfuscation on this topic, and it's easy to get a smart sounding person to obfuscate the fact that the conditional probability of someone committing a crime given that they are an immigrant (see [0] for an example).

[0] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-05-26/davidsonrefugee/273222...

Re: A Russian TV Insider Describes a Modern Propaganda Machine

#103

Post by lispm »

pluma wrote: post #71
lispm wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RT is pure propaganda. We have now a German program by RT. Website: http://www.rtdeutsch.com Straight from Putin's mouth...

Sometimes all you need to do to create propaganda is just show some unpopular facts in isolation. Sure, they're biased, but that doesn't mean they are always outright lying -- at least not more than American media. The idea of a unbiased news is a pipedream. I'm fully aware that German public television was intentionally created in a way that would supposedly protect it from the government's influence, but that doesn…

The propaganda of RT is pretty easy to spot almost everywhere and is systemic.

> Sometimes all you need to do to create propaganda is just show some unpopular facts in isolation

RT does quite a bit more than that.

In Russia there are less alternatives to state media.

CNN, sure, I would not trust them, too.

Re: A Russian TV Insider Describes a Modern Propaganda Machine

#104

Post by lispm »

blumkvist wrote: post #42
lispm wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RT is pure propaganda. We have now a German program by RT. Website: http://www.rtdeutsch.com Straight from Putin's mouth...

The situation is a lot worse in post-soviet countries in the EU like Bulgaria and Romania. When the regime fell the same people who ruled during that era staged everything so they remained in power. From political and official power to power through capital and corruption. A known mafia boss (Delyan Peevski) has control of over 50% of the newspapers and 80% of the distribution of all newspapers through another compan…

I doubt that Bulgaria and Romania are 'a lot worse'. The situation in Russia is quite bad.

The free press index lists Russia quite a bit behind Bulgaria or Romania...

http://rsf.org/index2014/data/index2014_en.pdf

Re: A Russian TV Insider Describes a Modern Propaganda Machine

#105

Post by lispm »

rational-future wrote: post #43
lispm wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RT is pure propaganda. We have now a German program by RT. Website: http://www.rtdeutsch.com Straight from Putin's mouth...

Sure, if they say 2+2=4 that's Putin propaganda ...

If you look for statements like that in RT's media, you are looking for zero content. Much more you can see plain lies, conspiracies, missing facts, ...

Re: A Russian TV Insider Describes a Modern Propaganda Machine

#106

Post by rational-future »

bayesianhorse wrote: post #84
rational-future wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia is a small country (as population and industry) compared to US and EU. It cant afford to reinvent the way a modern society, government, media, etc. works. The state propaganda machine is a direct copy of what the US and especially the UK governments have built.

"State propaganda machine" presupposes state control of all media outlets. Which is true for Russia, but is not true in any western country. If you don't believe me, just google what different TV channels or online magazines said about obama care. Some praised it to the high heavens, others made it out to be the antichrist. If Obama really controlled all "his" media, that should have gone a lot better...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_in_the_United_States

Re: A Russian TV Insider Describes a Modern Propaganda Machine

#107

Post by markvdb »

blumkvist wrote: post #42
lispm wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RT is pure propaganda. We have now a German program by RT. Website: http://www.rtdeutsch.com Straight from Putin's mouth...

The situation is a lot worse in post-soviet countries in the EU like Bulgaria and Romania. When the regime fell the same people who ruled during that era staged everything so they remained in power. From political and official power to power through capital and corruption. A known mafia boss (Delyan Peevski) has control of over 50% of the newspapers and 80% of the distribution of all newspapers through another compan…

According to Reporters Without Vorders, the press situation seems to be significantly better in the Baltics [1]. There was a bit more of a real change of parties in power over there I guess.

Estonia in particular seems to be doing the best, better than Ireland, Belgium, Luxemburg and Swiztzerland.

But if the RSF metrics are to believed, all the Baltics seem to perform significantly better than countries like Spain, the UK, France, the US or Italy...

[1] http://index.rsf.org

Re: A Russian TV Insider Describes a Modern Propaganda Machine

#108

Post by bayesianhorse »

rational-future wrote: post #106
bayesianhorse wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"State propaganda machine" presupposes state control of all media outlets. Which is true for Russia, but is not true in any western country. If you don't believe me, just google what different TV channels or online magazines said about obama care. Some praised it to the high heavens, others made it out to be the antichrist. If Obama really controlled all "his" media, that should have gone a lot better...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_in_the_United_States

And where does it say that the US government has complete control over all media? At least in the last few decades? Any public actor will try to shape the narrative about him and his actions. But this is completely different than excluding any contradicting information.

The propaganda "machines" in Nazi-Germany, soviet union, and today in Russia or North Korea differ in one important point from western media reporting: The government's narrative is the only narrative.

Re: A Russian TV Insider Describes a Modern Propaganda Machine

#109

Post by ptaipale »

moo wrote: post #65
mc32 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chomsky, unfortunately, is not the most rigorous guy when it comes to empiricism. Look at how he interpreted the Khmer Rouge genocide http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_genocide_denial#Choms... He defended them saying that what we said about the Kh R was Western propaganda, etc. Years later, when the truth became undeniable, he defended his actions saying, but well, I couldn't very well know they were so bad and…

I posted this before: Clearly the Cambodian and Indochina people went through an awful period. Pol Pot did extreme things as a leader but the alternative of leaving Lon Nol in power who had people starving was not good either. Whether communism or Islamic fundamentalism, anti-colonialism wars are not fun to live through. Here is a perspective I picked up from the Internet. "A Finnish inquiry commission concludes that…

I'm Finnish and I'm curious about this "Finnish Inquiry Commision" into Cambodia. I haven't heard of such a (government) commission or investigation, and I'm pretty sure that if one ever existed, I'd have heard about it.

I tried to google for it, but found nothing very tangible. Incidentally, many of the references to such a supposed Finnish government commission are made by sites (for instance globalresearch.ca) that are currently also repeating Kremlin view about Ukraine.

Re: A Russian TV Insider Describes a Modern Propaganda Machine

#110

Post by ptaipale »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #83
bayesianhorse wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really believe Putin's approval ratings. In Russia there is no free press and private companies or academic institutes can be controlled at will by the executive branch. So if any institute or private company conducts a poll... well...

Believe it. Every Russian I know in real life (in Canada no less) loves Putin. And why wouldn't they? Remember that Bill Clinton, for all his failures, is probably still the most loved US President. Why? Because things were good while he was in charge. Look at this Russian economic data: https://www.quandl.com/c/russia/russia-economy-data For better or worse, for all Putin's perceived downsides, Russia is better off…

I'm in Finland, Others are horrified by seeing the chasm between Russian propaganda and actual reality - for instance regarding the supposed persecution of Russians here, taking away children from families, etc - and also the chasm between their own views and views of their families who are living in Russia under full coverage of government-induced media bombardment about Kiev Nazis etc.

And yet another group - quite large in fact - is careful to not say anything at all, if possible.

There's one interesting thing, though: the Russian vocabulary has been amended with the term Nazism. In the past, Russian language and any Soviet/Russian source would always speak of fascism (фашизм) and never Nazism (нацизм). This was apparently because Nazi is short for National Socialist, and that was a little bit too close to International Socialist, which was officially good. But now they actually say "Nazi". That is new.

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