Can mainstream media get their propaganda straight?

[Juxtapose]

I don't think they can.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/cbs-forced-to-delete-segment-after-most-embarrassing-biden-reporting-in-history-exposed-on-air/ar-BB1oxwGy

[Avicenna]

No, they can't. Orwell predicted this in "1984". Lies are hard to keep straight, and our propagandists are nothing but liars.

@nightdrot, I know you are "establishment", but to suggest that the intelligence community and other bureaucracies dominated by leftists don't run psyops and don't use their preferred media sources for "leaks" and propaganda is fantasy.

[nightdrot]

Didn't say that they didn't. What I did say is that they are but one of a multiplicity of sources. Also, it is wildly simplistic to suggest that they are uniformly "leftist." They are not. Like many institutions, there are a variety of conflicting and varying opinions with these entities and they as much fight within themselves as they do seek to express their viewpoints.

Besides, in this era of of diverse technologies it is absurd to suggest that even if there are such bureaucracies that they do have a dominant position in our politics - or if they do, they must be extremely inept at enforcing their views.

Life - and politics - are far more complicated and complex than that.

[PreferNot2Say]

The MSM is so corrupt at this point. There's actually nothing they can do too redeem themselves. Their ratings are plummeting on a daily basis. Which means that either there aren't as many demokkkrats/communist/liberals as they claim or they don't trust their own media any longer. Which says a lot, if you have an ounce of common sense.

[nightdrot]

Actually, and I don't say this as an excuse, but we've been here before.

Recall that most of the media in 18th century America were party newssheets with a very definite perspective and bias. The idea of objective media at the time the Constitution was written was more an obligations to weigh and balance, than of the media to avoid bias.

The idea of an unbiased neutral media only came with the advent of modern technology. Mass circulation newspapers and magazines, then movies, radio and television. It is not that these entities did not have their biases, but the idea was to get the widest possible audience and therefore to keep bias to a minimum.

It is only now, ironically, with the advent of the web and social media that a more biased media has begun to take hold. The new technology allows for audience segmentation, and thus various media outlets seek to maximize only a subset of the general audience. This even more intense among larger networks which was now fight to keep a larger segment of a smaller population.

So expect things to get better before they get worse. The real problem is an America public that runs to its' phones that are guided by algorithms designed to "pre-appeal" as it were to a given segment of the general population.

Man shapes his machines and his machines shape him. This is what the nation - indeed the world - is experiencing at the moment. Do not, in that context, expect those biases to fade soon.

[Juxtapose]

The media biases don't come from natural opinions born of the public but they are pushed by the CIA and other deep state operatives.

[nightdrot]

Well, I have worked in politics for 30 years and while the bureaucracy does have its' own priorities, it is seldom so coherently expressed or unopposed within that aforementioned bureaucracy. Government by conspiracy theory is merely an excuse by the public to excuse itself for its' choices.

If here were no market for that "propaganda," as you call it, you would not see it, It would fade from view and be duly forgotten, if not mocked. Media sources would not chase it, and the public would pay it no mind.

Bottom line, the gravaman of your argument is that the public will blame anyone or anything for the bad choices it makes and for its ill informed approach to self-government. Society and government - and media for that matter - are far too complex to be explained by such simplistic ideas as some grand conspiracy theory of the CIA or what have you.

Are there agendas out there and biases? You bet. However, that there has always been and always will be and it really does not explain very much.

[DrPepper12]

Great answer!!

[nightdrot]

@DrPepper12 Thanks. Very kind of you to say.

[Juxtapose]

If you have been in government for that long then you know the people are ultimately not the ones in control but it is lifelong, unelected bureaucrats and also special interests such as Black Rock, the Koch Brothers, George Soros, the CIA, etc.

The CIA killed JFK and they stage psyops all the time to distort the view of the public. The government will even lie about foreign wars to initially gain public support.

The citizenry is definitely not in control at the moment, they are being led like sheep.

[nightdrot]

No, it is actually much more complicated than that. Indeed, even your own statement: "The citizenry is definitely not in control at the moment..." suggests that it is a process ever in flux.

It also being recalled that no less than Edmund Burke made the point that in a democracy, properly understood, the people do not decide. Rather, they decide which elites will decide. "The people" generally lacking in the knowledge and education of complex social questions to make informed decisions on the great questions of the hour. For example, how many Americans are well informed enough to make educated decisions on nuclear policy? As George Will pointed out, when the word "elite" becomes a trendy epithet, it suggests that the public has grown outraged over the very idea of excellence.

[Juxtapose]

I would frankly rather have some dudes randomly selected in a trailer park with missing teeth make decisions on nuclear policy instead of these narcissistic, sociopathic vultures who are intentionally destroying western society so they can get rich.

[nightdrot]

Epithets are not a substitute for a reasoned argument. I've read your stuff before - you can do better.

[Juxtapose]

I am dead serious. These people running things are straight up evil and if they are left unchecked our species will become extinct.

[Juxtapose]

The people in charge killed JFK, they call corporations people, they instituted civil asset forfeiture, they use the NSA to spy on us, they work with cooperations to censor us, they experimented on black people using syphilis, they used the CIA to experiment with LSD to achieve mind control, etc.

If these people could, we would ALL be mind controlled slaves or dead.

[nightdrot]

It is axiomatic - "You cannot reason an individual out of a viewpoint into which they were not reasoned to begin with." May I gently suggest that you more deeply study history, political philosophy and sociology.

[Juxtapose]

I didn't say anything wrong except perhaps JFK but that's gonna be good if Trump wins and releases those files. I can list point per point why I am right otherwise and have every reason to be distrustful of the government.

Black people being experimented on for example is a fact. Their lives were destroyed. The Japanese in the internment camps, where was their freedom? Why is the NSA spying on us? Why does civil asset forfeiture exist in a first world country such as America? What about the Twitter files exposing government collision with the old Twitter to censor people on the government's behalf? Etc etc.

[nightdrot]

Those were hardly conspiracies - they were about as secret as jet engine. Beyond that, there was - for good or ill - broad popular support for many of the things you noted. (See also Japanese internment camps.)

Again, most of these things are hardly secret and the public is free to oppose them but, for various reasons, opts not to. Not unlike a public that opposes big government, yet has the following profile:

1 in 6 who work, work for government.
1 in 7 is a Social Security recipient - and this will go up as the population ages.
1/3 of all families, this year, will receive some form of government transfer payment.

If you object to government grown too powerful - and the soaring crime rates are hardly evidence of an oppressive state - the fundamental cause for it can be discerned from the stats above.

[Juxtapose]

Funny you mentioned crime and whatnot when America has the highest incarceration rate per capita in the entire world. Nearly 1% of our population is in prison at any given time.

The government uses the media and various other forms of control to trick the public. Remember the Iraq war and how Saddam Hussein supposedly had weapons of mass destruction? That was a deliberate lie.

MK Ultra, Civil Asset Forfeiture, NSA spying, etc isn't something the average citizen can really do much about unless a lot of people get angry about it and cause inconveniences for the owner class.

George Carlin was 100% right about the situation of current government. There are owners and there's a big club, and we ain't in it.

[nightdrot]

Okay, so just for fun, where is your ideal government? What country is most in sync with your views?

[Juxtapose]

No actual country is ideal at the moment that I am aware of.

I think an ideal government would be a benevolent dictatorship by a superior intelligence until humanity reached a level of maturity to not destroy itself. Too many humans are greed driven sociopaths who ruin things for others

Direct democracy doesn't work there's too many selfish people.

Having representatives doesn't work because they get paid for or blackmailed.

Human dictatorships suck almost always be because of how bad these leaders are. Utterly selfish.

Anarchy doesn't work because the weak or isolated will be enslaved and/or killed unless the people as a whole are *actually* virtuous.

Monarchies don't work because proper knowledge and temperament to rule isn't passed down from parents to children.

The best we can do is try to bring America to the founding father's vision or get another Andrew Jackson who would clean house. I hope Donald Trump can help but there's a lot of work to do.

[nightdrot]

Well, you have a problem then. You are dealing in abstractions and mankind is not likely going to conform to your abstraction. Imperfect beings seldom do.

If I might, read Edmund Burke - his most famous being "Reflections on the Revolution in France." I also suggest, of more recent vintage, George F. Will's "Statecraft as Soulcraft." These may help you to develop standards that more neatly balance reality and abstract perfection.

Also, if I may add, you seem prone to the errors of populism. (Andrew Jackson and Donald Trump? Ewwww.) I offer my response to these two questions:

1) Why is it important to understand populism in today’s political climate? ↗

2) Is Trump a freaking populist? ↗

[aengus27]

A lot of news channels are, as your saying deep in the trenches on one side or the other. There are ways to find more neutral sources, but it seems that the one with certain angles or that can appeal to certain groups are often much larger

[Staximus]

I don't even watch tv or the news anymore unless there's a storm coming, I didn't want to hear all that propaganda

[worldscolide]

It's just fun watching everything burn

[DJB72]

Not recently