You do realize practically everything every bad said about Trump was the same anonymous sourcing?
I don't like when people are inconsistent with how they apply standards.
That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus
341–350 of 656 posts
Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus
#342Earlier quoted context omitted.
Didn't read the book but I think it's more insidious than what you wrote. The journalists don't think they're writing these stories to amplify the police narrative (they think they're unbiased). They just don't have the judgement (or will?) to look beyond the initial narrative which is police-driven. In the end if a journalist can get their story out faster by leaning on a few 'trusted sources' and then move onto the…
> The journalists don't think they're writing these stories to amplify the police narrative (they think they're unbiased). They just don't have the judgement (or will?) to look beyond the initial narrative which is police-driven. No, they know what they are doing and you can tell they know what they are doing by the careful way language is used differently for similar facts when the police or other favored entities a…
> No, [journalists] know what they are doing ... Carefully calibrated, highly-selective use of (often, quite awkward) linguistic constructs does not happen unconsciously, it is a deliberate, knowing choice.
The incredible vast majority of people in the world are acting in good faith. The way you are framing this is that nearly all journalists are acting in bad faith, which makes me believe the arguments of the parent ("The journalists don't think they're writing these stories to amplify the police narrative") more so than the argument you're making here.
Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus
#343Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd like to point out that the student's advice, "of course the news is ridiculous propaganda, just ignore it and go about your life and focus on your friends and family" is the the response desired by the authoritarian Chinese government who has carefully engineered the situation in the first place. The purpose of constantly publishing obvious lies is not for people to believe them (though some always will), it's to…
There is really some wild fan-fiction on HN. If you're being serious, how do you know any of this? Based on what evidence?
I don't have particular knowledge about how things are in China, but the underlying strategy is real and employed by authoritarian regimes against their citizens and adversaries.
In the US, the right-wing media and Trump have been doing it to us, in addition to our adversaries.
In the old days, propaganda was used to make people believe specific things. But information streams aren't as easily controlled today, so instead the idea is to create confusion and distrust. It's a DDoS on reality. Sadly it can be very effective.
Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus
#344Once a Chinese grad student explained to me a difference he noted between Chinese and American citizens. He said in China no really reads or watches 24/7 major news outlets in China. They are fully aware that all of it is propaganda and just go about their life. He said Americans seem to get really emotional over content in the press and seem to really struggle with the idea of propaganda / journalism in the news. I…
I had a teacher in high school that married a Chinese woman, and when her parents came over they said "Your propaganda is so refreshing, you hardly even notice it."
It's always struck me how hamfisted the Chinese government sound in its communications.
Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus
#345Earlier quoted context omitted.
What your Chinese friend isn't saying is that all those Substack writers in the US would be disappeared into Chinese gulag's. The US has a strong freedom of speech clause baked into its core governance system...When I was fifteen I'd be subscribed to five different punk zines and would be creating mix-tapes from 10 different sources (and much of it wildly offensive and political).
[flagged]
Shouting down other people deprives them of their freedom of speech, and is rightfully prevented. Padilla was detained because he was attempting to do that: disrupt someone else from exercising speech. He could have made the exact same speech in his own space without consequences.
If you disapprove of how Padilla was treated, that's fine, just be honest about why he was detained: not for the content of his speech, but his attempt to prevent another from speaking.
Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus
#346Once a Chinese grad student explained to me a difference he noted between Chinese and American citizens. He said in China no really reads or watches 24/7 major news outlets in China. They are fully aware that all of it is propaganda and just go about their life. He said Americans seem to get really emotional over content in the press and seem to really struggle with the idea of propaganda / journalism in the news. I…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect
> Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.
> In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.
> That is the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. I'd point out it does not operate in other arenas of life. In ordinary life, if somebody consistently exaggerates or lies to you, you soon discount everything they say. In court, there is the legal doctrine of falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus, which means untruthful in one part, untruthful in all. But when it comes to the media, we believe against evidence that it is probably worth our time to read other parts of the paper. When, in fact, it almost certainly isn't. The only possible explanation for our behavior is amnesia.
Surprised this hasn't been posted within a comment yet :)
Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus
#347Once a Chinese grad student explained to me a difference he noted between Chinese and American citizens. He said in China no really reads or watches 24/7 major news outlets in China. They are fully aware that all of it is propaganda and just go about their life. He said Americans seem to get really emotional over content in the press and seem to really struggle with the idea of propaganda / journalism in the news. I…
They aren't mutually exclusive; Westerners get emotional about news, but still understand that there is a propaganda component. That doesn't mean the news isn't useful. Outlets might be selective about what they say, but the truth in reporting sort of stands in plain sight; if you read a balance of sources, you get a decent idea what's happening, surrounding a particular issue.
News organizations very rarely lie. They might be misleading in framing or selective wording, but they won't outright put something in print that is a complete lie.
Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus
#348Once a Chinese grad student explained to me a difference he noted between Chinese and American citizens. He said in China no really reads or watches 24/7 major news outlets in China. They are fully aware that all of it is propaganda and just go about their life. He said Americans seem to get really emotional over content in the press and seem to really struggle with the idea of propaganda / journalism in the news. I…
The Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012 changed restrictions on disseminating propaganda materials domestically. Passed as part of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013, it amended the 1948 Smith-Mundt Act, which had previously blocked the domestic distribution of content produced by U.S. government agencies like the State Department. This is a driving factor behind a lot of the decline in quality of news as propaganda starts to drown out legitimate reporting.
Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus
#349Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The journalists don't think they're writing these stories to amplify the police narrative (they think they're unbiased). They just don't have the judgement (or will?) to look beyond the initial narrative which is police-driven. No, they know what they are doing and you can tell they know what they are doing by the careful way language is used differently for similar facts when the police or other favored entities a…
> No, [journalists] know what they are doing ... Carefully calibrated, highly-selective use of (often, quite awkward) linguistic constructs does not happen unconsciously, it is a deliberate, knowing choice. The incredible vast majority of people in the world are acting in good faith. The way you are framing this is that nearly all journalists are acting in bad faith, which makes me believe the arguments of the parent…
> The incredible vast majority of people in the world are acting in good faith.
Maybe, maybe not. It is also true that the incredible vast majority of people in the world aren’t corporate journalists, also.
> The way you are framing this is that nearly all journalists are acting in bad faith
Nearly all American corporate media has a conscious, top-down policy starting with the owners and editorial board to favor certain institutions, which is enforced by hiring, firing, promotions, and assignments of staff. The specific beneficiaries of this vary somewhat between outlet and outlet and over time, but both American police broadly and State of Israel are common beneficiaries across most outlets.
Journalists either comply are they aren’t journalists in the corporate media covering the issues to which these biases are relevant for long. Corporate media journalists aren’t independent actors.
Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus
#350Earlier quoted context omitted.
Please cite a single example of someone being fired for quoting Charlie Kirk verbatim without any celebratory tone.
https://www.kbtx.com/2025/09/22/teacher-aide-files-federal-l... The post is reproduced in the article, in its apparent entirety. Zero celebration I can detect. Now what?
The immediate aftermath of someone's death is not the time to critique them, gently or not. Total lack of decorum and social sense. Not fit to teach young children.