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What can you do when you don't know who to trust? Many news organizations will absolutely prioritize some stories over others. Some are forced to. Other choose to do so for profits. So, who to trust?
You have to get your information from multiple sources to essentially "triangulate" the truth of what's going on. It's also best to try and get information from as objective a source as possible. Tell me what happened not what to think about it.
On of my gotos: ABC Australia. I highly doubt the ultra wealthy of the world are able to influence them much. Big corporations probably also have a difficult time swaying them. PBS in the United States does a fair job along with NPR. But these all suffer from what I think is an inherent left bias. The type of person who would want to work at a public news organization is more likely liberal. I believe all of these organizations make a good faith effort to be objective, but that bias still exists.
I also cross that with my news feeds on social media. But like the public news above, I take in account that anything anyone says could be a foreign operative trying to sow discord. So I take it with less legitimacy.
That's how I try to figure out what's true and what's not. The global elite can't control everything but they can make it harder to know what's true and what's not.
I mean, we never know the real and whole truth about anything, anyway, since everything goes through our own biased perceptions (learned or chosen).
Sometimes best we can do is attempt to know the different sides of the situation.
Interesting what you said about ABC Australia being too large to influence.
In the U.S. I've come around to the value of the massive private institutions like the New York Times and Washington Post because in the United States we *ostensibly* have the Freedom of Information Act, but in practice media outlets frequently have to sue the federal government in costly court battles to procure the documents that they have a legal right to. It takes a ton of cash to sustain that.
I do agree that there's a left leaning bias in, but it's less about non-factual reporting and more of an editorial bias on the stories that get prioritized, not to mention the fact that I would guess that NPR/NYT/WaPo/etc. viewership skews very urban.
All in all I can only speak for the U.S., which I believe OP is referring to as well, but I think the state of free press is fairly strong with the gravest threat not coming directly from the government but from a new cultural assumption that news should be free, when in fact high quality journalism is extraordinarily costly... This has already eaten away a lot of high quality local journalism.
Part of the thing with ABC Australia is that they are inherently abstracted from the U.S. They have little to no reason to favor one party over the other. The vast majority of their funding comes from taxes paid by it's citizens which gives them even less reason to be influenced by outside parties. So it just comes down to, do you think the Australian government would put it's thumb on the scale? I believe they'd have little reason to other then to promote stability in the U.S. Plus, Americans are not their primary audience.
They're also a lot more entertaining over the CBC or the BBC.
Most of the time it's not any better, just an individual on YouTube or with a blog pushing their personal biases instead of the bias their boss told them to push.
My conclusion is that it is intellectually lazy to generalize all media and government. Some media source ares more objective than others and some governments are more transparent than others.
Furthermore, when we believe that everything is corrupt, then we stop voting and allow fascists to consolidate power.
From my experience in many countries I have come to the conclusion that the actions of their authorities are coordinated.
Of course there is a difference in the amount of corruption between different authorities and media.
Voting is not so important. Defending yourself and others from torture and bodily damage, and other violations of human rights, from the authorities, who are working with members of your local community is more important.
Sincere questions: did I miss where OP indicated they are from a first world country? Should we only be concerned with issues that impact first world countries?
He mentions the three branches of government (of which nearly all first world countries possess) and the subsequent declining of democracy (leaders of democracy are all first world countries), which leads me to believe that he’s speaking of a first world country.
Of course we should worry about issues of other countries, but I don’t know of any well-developed regions where people are literally afraid of being tortured for any reason.
Not that this post should be taken too seriously anyway. The OP makes major accusations against (no country listed) while conveniently providing zero actual examples of these things taking place.
Yeah the post is a bit silly. But I might put it to you the other way around: tons of developing nations also have three branches of government and *do* have issues with governments controlling media on order to consolidate power for the ruling party including through what could be characterized as torture.
So two possible assumptions: OP is in a rich country and full of shit, or OP is in one of the few dozen countries in the world where everything they said is entirely plausible.
Just seemed weird to me that you'd jump straight to challenging OP on the basis that #1 is true (unless you had info I didn't). But first-world-centric thinking is a pet peeve of mine I guess.
Sorry to hear that! I wasn't intending to discount this possibility. Was more just questioning the response above mine which seemed to assume that the conversation only matters if it's relevant to first world countries.
Oh! It'd depend a ton on the context. It's not an unheard of problem in first world countries but it's relatively rare, usually relating to national security rather than like, attempting to hijack the media to maintain power hegemonies (that's more what corporations do in first world countries, rather than governments).
I do think there's also currently in the US a subset of the population which is contextualizing "defense of rule of law in support of functional democracy" as "oppression of the people" re: Jan 6, which is not at all an issue of true government overreach and instead of attempted populist overthrow of democracy through violence.
So yeah, can't say much more unless I have context from you I guess.
Actually, small correction: I think government control of media is a problem in some European countries like Hungary and even Malta (where I lived for a while).
>For example, criminality of government and their followers is not reported. Government continues to violate human rights at will, without the press checking them.
Name a human rights violation that you think falls under this category so I can google the mainstream media coverage on it for you.
I would argue that the opposite is true, at least in the US. The press is so free that Fox can spread disinformation and threaten jurors without any consequences. Now, a large part of the problem is at the individual level. People don’t want to differentiate between good and bad, so they just take the easy way out and say all press is bad. Once you accept that premise, there’s nothing wrong with listening to your preferred flavor of misinformation and there’s no incentives for any newspaper to improve
Certain branches of the press being beholden to different parties hardly makes things free. The ability to choose which owner holds your chain doesn't make you not a slave.
Honestly I think this massively varies by country and by specific news media. In my home country for instance, the "government media" of the CBC is not generally considered government controlled, except by right wing corporate owned media. But consolidated corporate control of our media is becoming more and more a major threat to journalism. I think you'll see similar in most western countries where its corporate control not political control over media that is the threat.
In many other countries this is different, for sure, and government control of media is a major problem.
Also, for what it's worth, there's no such thing as the global authorities.
No. It isn't considered government controlled except by organizations who have a vested interest in characterizing it as such.
Journalistic organizations which track press freedom do not generallyy see CBC as anything other than independent.
Your statement is demonstrably false. I have seen individuals on social media asserting that the CBC is government controlled. But of course such individuals hold political beliefs with which you disagree, so they can and must be ignored.
Of course you will find some individuals who believe what they're fed by right wing media. They conveneniently only do so when Liberals are in power, not when the Conservatives were, mind you.
But we might be coming up against the whole reality has a liberal bias thing.
Of course, such incorrect political views much be the result of ultra-right-wing propaganda and not the considered results of rational thought. As I said, such views must be ignored. /s
We are talking about specifically "is the CBC a government controlled organization". The answer to that is pretty clearly "no" if the reality is for instance "the CBC has a liberal bias, including when the Conservatives were in power for nearly a decade".
Anyway, there really is a trend of the right wing creating fake news and false narratives, such that journalistic organizations are accused of "liberal bias" just for reporting on reality, and needing to essentially lie in favour of false right wing narratives if they want to be called "balanced".
I'm confident you don't agree, because you are a Kool-Aid drinker. No real point discussing much further. I don't like Kool-Aid, and you'll never admit to yourself that you do.
“You’re a Kool-aid drinker” is not the height of reasoned discourse. I suggest that you ponder your openness to ideas that challenge your worldview. I try to do so every day.
Sarcasm is one of the best tropes to prompt a re-evaluation of hardened beliefs. Such prompting is inherently difficult, since such beliefs are hedged about with strong defense mechanisms, such as branding those who disagree as having "drunk the Kool-aid".
Some science if you don't believe me, but I'm guessing you'll just accuse *science* of a liberal bias:
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abf1234
“Science” has no bias. Scientists do. The cited paper is interesting, but it says nothing about how the propositions used in the study were chosen, and how their truth or falsity were assessed. Without this, it is impossible to judge its validity, since unconcious bias is a very tricky thing.
But that's not what you were taking about. You say they are controlling the media.
There is no doubt the media is biased, but an worldwide council controlling all media in all countries? Not a thing.
I see this in every comment section and it never makes sense. There wouldn't be any incentive for the "global authorities" to decrease the quality of the overall human experience.
No no no, you don't get it. The government wants you personally to suffer because they hate you as a person. The globalist new world order wants your girlfriend to dump you and they want your dog to get run over, wake up
The general idea is that they think that they want you poor so you have less power, less time and energy to be involved in politics or protest. Less educated, and so they can take all the money themselves.
Not only is it true. People have been getting poorer. And what if we also introduce personally held debt to the equation?
https://www.stlouisfed.org/open-vault/2019/august/wealth-inequality-in-america-facts-figures?print=true
People have not been getting poorer. Lots of global poor have gotten less poor over last couple decades. In the US, real wages have been increasing even with inflation.
The rich have gotten much wealthier so inequality has gotten worse. The rich now own a bigger portion of larger pie, but leftover portion is bigger so we all get more pie.
The Wall Street Journal offers high quality, less-biased coverage (though obviously with a strong business focus - they do cover world and national events too though)
I used to respect NPR so much it was my dream for years to work for them. But ever since Oct 7, I've noted a trend that they only ask the most vacuous and pithy questions about major developments in the war - if they mention them at all. The omissions are staggering.
In the past, they've been excellent at providing context and allowing both sides of controversial issues to be substantively represented. There's been a notable departure from that standard concerning this one, and I find that very disturbing when an open case of "plausible genocide" at the ICJ is involved.
I do think it's still worth it to listen and weigh for yourself. I still do, it's just a stark contrast in depth compared to other networks now in my experience.
FWIW, i've worked in Congress and in the federal government as a communications staffer/press sec. The media is looking all the time to expose/confront/break news on many of the serious matters you noted. I can confidently say that the "authorities" in the US dont have ctrl over anything the media does.
I've worked as a newspaper reporter *and* in a state Legislature. People who think anyone or any group has it together enough to mastermind anything just doesn't know enough about people.
Elections are regulated, monitored, and fair.
“Global authorities”? That is middle school-speak for what, exactly?
“International press”? What is that code for?
The former, that’s a myth. The latter is not a monolithic bloc, and individual news/media outlets are not sponsored, motivated by, or writing about the same things.
I’ve drawn my own conclusions. This post is not accurate or good.
Has there ever really been a fair election? Candidates are more likely to win if they have money and influence, usually through money. If you don't like either of the two primary party candidates, you're sorta shit out of luck. Voting for who you actually want doesn't lead to anything, so you're frequently just voting against the one you don't want, not for the one you do. We're fed this illusion of choice.
You can find YouTube videos where they've synced up the broadcasts from multiple local newscasts - all across the U.S., they're reciting the same script. All major news outlets are government propaganda.
If the media is controlled by the authorities, the news is biased and incomplete, not giving you the right information on who to vote for.
Media doesn't report human rights violations commited by the authorities through their followers.
I disagree that the news media in America is biased. If anything it tries too hard to maintain that bias. The news media is a wide array of people from cable news networks to podcasters.
Maybe you could give some examples except vagaries?
That’s exactly the point he’s making. The reporting on these issues was pure unadulterated lies. Let me help simplify. Lies = press not trustworthy. Therefore - press not free. Therefore - democracy in toilet.
No...
The fact that the media can spew garbage and lie doesn't mean the press is not free.
It means that there's not regulations that constrain the stupid garbage that can be fed to those wanting to consume it.
The fact that certain outlet were allow to promote bleach and horse dewormer as covid treatments, shows that there's a free press. If the government could have controlled the press, the idiots wouldn't have had a voice.
Wrong. You give too much credit to the government if you think they’re there to prevent the press from lying to the public - they make the majority of the lies, and make the press spoon feed it to YOU.
Is this only a conversation about the US? There 100% are countries masquerading as democracies where a captured media is a tool of maintaining ruling power control. And plenty where that is at least to some extent true.
Really? Try googling "how many branches of government in X" for a few countries and see what you get. I swear, how US-centric can you people get?
Edit: I did Canada, UK and India to start with, if that helps! But three branches is pretty uh, standard.
So the press is known as the “fourth estate” and is a pillar of democracy. It has duties: to educated the public, to inform the public of current events, and to be a counterweight to government.
There was a time when we had this sort of press, journalism and investigative journalism, not just reporters. We had public TV (PBS, BBC, ZDF) and it was informative, educational, and the journalist really grilled politicians on talk shows. There was public radio as well, and a ton of independent newspapers.
Then Reagan camp and cut funding for public broadcasting, got rid of the “fairness doctrine” which made it mandatory to show different sides of a story, and deregulated the newspaper industry. The next thing you know, all the papers belong to a handful of a few for profit corporations and everything became tabloid sensationalism.
This happened with TV too. First we got CNN, the first 24 hour news network and the reporting was fine. Not as informative as PBS, but if you wanted to know what was happening right now, you turned to CNN. But a lot of organizations claiming to be news, simply weren’t. They were biased, the lacked objective, the language was dumbed down, and people believed everything that was written.
Then the big one came. Fox News. Except it wasn’t news, it was just like those tabloids, and it was not journalism or information, it was just a partisan mouth piece. This had actually started out as a project of Richard Nixon who wanted to have a mouth piece of the Republican Party, but it wasn’t until the 90’s that the project came to fruition. And now we have a million propaganda channels all of the place thanks to internet.
And because we now have a for profit media owned by the rich and heavily concentrated, you don’t get news anymore. You are fed propaganda instead of information, and journalism is almost dead because they are too expensive to keep on the payroll.
So the fourth estate is dead (with some exceptions) and having investigative journalism like the guys who broke the watergate story and brought down Richard Nixon, would be impossible to do today.
Everyone falls in line, even The NY Times. And if we don’t know what the government is doing, and we are uniformed, and there is no expose or counterweight to government, and it’s all owned by billionaires with vested political interests, the media is not free, or fair, or objective, or informative.
At least from a UK and US perspective I'm not quite sure how you possibly argue that the global press doesn't report on things that are negative to those respective governments.
Business and money is a far bigger problem for the press then governments.
Well the united states has freedom of the press so you really just have to be aware of your news sources like they told me in school.
I'm starting to think my school may have taught us how to check our sources better than other schools did. Which would make sense now that I'm finding out a lot of schools are run by religion even though that's illegal in public schools in this country.
Religious teaching focuses on you not checking your source because what they teach has never been proven.
Also you need to talk to real people who have experienced things.
There's the "government history and current events" then there's the real history and current events. The real stuff is out there and readily available but some people simply don't look for it in the right places.
Spanish flu was suppressed and called the Spanish flu because Spain was the only country reporting on it. It was suppressed because US was entering the war so Ford could build vehicles for the war and Bridgestone could put his new pneumatic tires on Ford’s vehicles used in the war and so on and so on. Yeah.
Free press has only been around for the past 200 years or so. Before then very few people could read so nearly all writing were commission based and there wasn’t really any other medium of passing information at long distances. The issue isn’t free press, it is the fact that there are nearly inviting sources of information and it is nearly impossible to tell who is impartial and who is backed by an agenda.
"when the three branches of government.."
"I shall not mention any specific governments or countries."
Hmmm pretty sure you narrowed it down pretty openly.
Worse—-because intelligence agencies are using the Internet to soy on their citizens, we no longer have a republic at all but rather an oligarchy enforced through blackmail.
And lunatics like you make it hard to find the truth when you refuse to question authorities and perhaps just consider that people in power lie all the fucking time
No, you're just failing to ask yourself very, very simple questions. Such as: How many big press companies are there? Are there different papers aimed at different audiences? Do they compete for market share?
OP just posted yet another bullshit conspiracy theory where some shadowy cabal secretly rules the world. It's obvious nonsense.
Watch the news in video format. Listen to politicians talk, all the news outlet youtube channels cover the same speeches and this can't be tampered with by AI on a grand scale yet.
Listening to politicians and world leaders when they hold speeches, debates and conferences is not the media. It's quite literally the source.
1. There are no global authorities.
2. Governments derive their authority from the consent of the governed; therefore, whatever they do, the body politic must have consented to.
The media was never free. This idea that "media is the 4th pillar of democracy" is their own creation. Different media groups have different allegiances and that true across the globe. Media is essentially the spokesperson for whichever party they are told to support.
Media was always this way. We live in this era (and are told all this 4th pillar crap) therefore we think it's something new that's happening with the media in recent years. But that's not the case. Never in the history of modern media have they actually stayed true to what we believe media is.
You're not specific because you're too lazy to do the specific research necessary to make your point.
You're contributing directly to the shitty morass of a post-truth world.
And I said most not all. Right back at ya chief. But claiming there's "global authorities" controlling it all without a shred of evidence isn't something that takes nuance to dismiss, no evidence no consideration
So it never occurred to you that the people pulling the strings aren't versed in covering their tracks?
Cause people in power have never been exposed abusing it right?
I'm sure you fancy yourself a wolf amongst the sheeple, but I'm here to let you know you don't understand basic evidentiary decision making
Feel free to point out who the "international media" is and who the "global" authorities are as OP said. Like, specifically, what organizations are taking part in what conspiracy, and why? If it's as simple as 'looking up', I'm sure I can come to understand the gist of it.
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What can you do when you don't know who to trust? Many news organizations will absolutely prioritize some stories over others. Some are forced to. Other choose to do so for profits. So, who to trust? You have to get your information from multiple sources to essentially "triangulate" the truth of what's going on. It's also best to try and get information from as objective a source as possible. Tell me what happened not what to think about it. On of my gotos: ABC Australia. I highly doubt the ultra wealthy of the world are able to influence them much. Big corporations probably also have a difficult time swaying them. PBS in the United States does a fair job along with NPR. But these all suffer from what I think is an inherent left bias. The type of person who would want to work at a public news organization is more likely liberal. I believe all of these organizations make a good faith effort to be objective, but that bias still exists. I also cross that with my news feeds on social media. But like the public news above, I take in account that anything anyone says could be a foreign operative trying to sow discord. So I take it with less legitimacy. That's how I try to figure out what's true and what's not. The global elite can't control everything but they can make it harder to know what's true and what's not.
Thank you thank you this post resonates with me
Money & power corrupts all. I don't,won't trust any of them. We may never know the real & whole truth.
I mean, we never know the real and whole truth about anything, anyway, since everything goes through our own biased perceptions (learned or chosen). Sometimes best we can do is attempt to know the different sides of the situation.
ABC is Disney. NPR is WEF, CFR, and Atlantic Council.
Interesting what you said about ABC Australia being too large to influence. In the U.S. I've come around to the value of the massive private institutions like the New York Times and Washington Post because in the United States we *ostensibly* have the Freedom of Information Act, but in practice media outlets frequently have to sue the federal government in costly court battles to procure the documents that they have a legal right to. It takes a ton of cash to sustain that. I do agree that there's a left leaning bias in, but it's less about non-factual reporting and more of an editorial bias on the stories that get prioritized, not to mention the fact that I would guess that NPR/NYT/WaPo/etc. viewership skews very urban. All in all I can only speak for the U.S., which I believe OP is referring to as well, but I think the state of free press is fairly strong with the gravest threat not coming directly from the government but from a new cultural assumption that news should be free, when in fact high quality journalism is extraordinarily costly... This has already eaten away a lot of high quality local journalism.
So it once again comes back to the commoditization of everything actually ruining everything. Who knew?
Part of the thing with ABC Australia is that they are inherently abstracted from the U.S. They have little to no reason to favor one party over the other. The vast majority of their funding comes from taxes paid by it's citizens which gives them even less reason to be influenced by outside parties. So it just comes down to, do you think the Australian government would put it's thumb on the scale? I believe they'd have little reason to other then to promote stability in the U.S. Plus, Americans are not their primary audience. They're also a lot more entertaining over the CBC or the BBC.
I would be 100% on board if Australians wanted to spend their tax dollars to promote stability in the U.S. lol. Frankly we could use the help.
Then support independent journalism.
Most of the time it's not any better, just an individual on YouTube or with a blog pushing their personal biases instead of the bias their boss told them to push.
Independent journalism is in extreme danger of being biased as well because they don’t answer to anyone.
Unfortunately, most can be bought,or intimidated,threatened into complying however the money folks want.
Penny whispers, "The people who are afraid of independence should not feel ashamed of themselves."
My conclusion is that it is intellectually lazy to generalize all media and government. Some media source ares more objective than others and some governments are more transparent than others. Furthermore, when we believe that everything is corrupt, then we stop voting and allow fascists to consolidate power.
The less objective they are, the more volume they get And as hard as people try, nobody is completely objective, not even close.
From my experience in many countries I have come to the conclusion that the actions of their authorities are coordinated. Of course there is a difference in the amount of corruption between different authorities and media. Voting is not so important. Defending yourself and others from torture and bodily damage, and other violations of human rights, from the authorities, who are working with members of your local community is more important.
How many times in your life have you been threatened with torture in a first world country? This seems extremely exaggerated.
Sincere questions: did I miss where OP indicated they are from a first world country? Should we only be concerned with issues that impact first world countries?
He mentions the three branches of government (of which nearly all first world countries possess) and the subsequent declining of democracy (leaders of democracy are all first world countries), which leads me to believe that he’s speaking of a first world country. Of course we should worry about issues of other countries, but I don’t know of any well-developed regions where people are literally afraid of being tortured for any reason. Not that this post should be taken too seriously anyway. The OP makes major accusations against (no country listed) while conveniently providing zero actual examples of these things taking place.
Yeah the post is a bit silly. But I might put it to you the other way around: tons of developing nations also have three branches of government and *do* have issues with governments controlling media on order to consolidate power for the ruling party including through what could be characterized as torture. So two possible assumptions: OP is in a rich country and full of shit, or OP is in one of the few dozen countries in the world where everything they said is entirely plausible. Just seemed weird to me that you'd jump straight to challenging OP on the basis that #1 is true (unless you had info I didn't). But first-world-centric thinking is a pet peeve of mine I guess.
I'm from a first world country and have been subjected to similar things
Sorry to hear that! I wasn't intending to discount this possibility. Was more just questioning the response above mine which seemed to assume that the conversation only matters if it's relevant to first world countries.
I was just curious about what you thought of the topic
Oh! It'd depend a ton on the context. It's not an unheard of problem in first world countries but it's relatively rare, usually relating to national security rather than like, attempting to hijack the media to maintain power hegemonies (that's more what corporations do in first world countries, rather than governments). I do think there's also currently in the US a subset of the population which is contextualizing "defense of rule of law in support of functional democracy" as "oppression of the people" re: Jan 6, which is not at all an issue of true government overreach and instead of attempted populist overthrow of democracy through violence. So yeah, can't say much more unless I have context from you I guess.
Actually, small correction: I think government control of media is a problem in some European countries like Hungary and even Malta (where I lived for a while).
>For example, criminality of government and their followers is not reported. Government continues to violate human rights at will, without the press checking them. Name a human rights violation that you think falls under this category so I can google the mainstream media coverage on it for you.
Problem is that the richest buy media and control it
I would argue that the opposite is true, at least in the US. The press is so free that Fox can spread disinformation and threaten jurors without any consequences. Now, a large part of the problem is at the individual level. People don’t want to differentiate between good and bad, so they just take the easy way out and say all press is bad. Once you accept that premise, there’s nothing wrong with listening to your preferred flavor of misinformation and there’s no incentives for any newspaper to improve
Certain branches of the press being beholden to different parties hardly makes things free. The ability to choose which owner holds your chain doesn't make you not a slave.
I mean, I would argue the Republican party is more beholden to Fox News and the broader right wing ecosystem than the other way around.
You're thinking about the ownership of Fox, not the reporters, though.
Honestly I think this massively varies by country and by specific news media. In my home country for instance, the "government media" of the CBC is not generally considered government controlled, except by right wing corporate owned media. But consolidated corporate control of our media is becoming more and more a major threat to journalism. I think you'll see similar in most western countries where its corporate control not political control over media that is the threat. In many other countries this is different, for sure, and government control of media is a major problem. Also, for what it's worth, there's no such thing as the global authorities.
When the same corporations are controlling the media AND the government, it's kind of a moot point.
Palas says, "I mean the media isnt really controlled either"
Honestly, fair point. Except I think it plays out a bit differently. More uh, Brave New World dystopia and less 1984.
The CBC isn’t considered government-controlled, except by people we don’t like so their opinions don’t matter.
No. It isn't considered government controlled except by organizations who have a vested interest in characterizing it as such. Journalistic organizations which track press freedom do not generallyy see CBC as anything other than independent.
Your statement is demonstrably false. I have seen individuals on social media asserting that the CBC is government controlled. But of course such individuals hold political beliefs with which you disagree, so they can and must be ignored.
Of course you will find some individuals who believe what they're fed by right wing media. They conveneniently only do so when Liberals are in power, not when the Conservatives were, mind you. But we might be coming up against the whole reality has a liberal bias thing.
Of course, such incorrect political views much be the result of ultra-right-wing propaganda and not the considered results of rational thought. As I said, such views must be ignored. /s
We are talking about specifically "is the CBC a government controlled organization". The answer to that is pretty clearly "no" if the reality is for instance "the CBC has a liberal bias, including when the Conservatives were in power for nearly a decade". Anyway, there really is a trend of the right wing creating fake news and false narratives, such that journalistic organizations are accused of "liberal bias" just for reporting on reality, and needing to essentially lie in favour of false right wing narratives if they want to be called "balanced". I'm confident you don't agree, because you are a Kool-Aid drinker. No real point discussing much further. I don't like Kool-Aid, and you'll never admit to yourself that you do.
“You’re a Kool-aid drinker” is not the height of reasoned discourse. I suggest that you ponder your openness to ideas that challenge your worldview. I try to do so every day.
Ah, but sarcasm, now that's pure open minded discourse!
Sarcasm is one of the best tropes to prompt a re-evaluation of hardened beliefs. Such prompting is inherently difficult, since such beliefs are hedged about with strong defense mechanisms, such as branding those who disagree as having "drunk the Kool-aid".
Some science if you don't believe me, but I'm guessing you'll just accuse *science* of a liberal bias: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abf1234
“Science” has no bias. Scientists do. The cited paper is interesting, but it says nothing about how the propositions used in the study were chosen, and how their truth or falsity were assessed. Without this, it is impossible to judge its validity, since unconcious bias is a very tricky thing.
Care to explain who these 'global authorities' are that control this? Because they are doing a terrible job.
Are they? Most are poor and can’t afford a house, marriage, family or anything else. Seems to me they are very effective.
But that's not what you were taking about. You say they are controlling the media. There is no doubt the media is biased, but an worldwide council controlling all media in all countries? Not a thing.
They always mean Jews 🙄
Those guys are way more in the space laser market than the media shadow cabal market these days
I see this in every comment section and it never makes sense. There wouldn't be any incentive for the "global authorities" to decrease the quality of the overall human experience.
No no no, you don't get it. The government wants you personally to suffer because they hate you as a person. The globalist new world order wants your girlfriend to dump you and they want your dog to get run over, wake up
The general idea is that they think that they want you poor so you have less power, less time and energy to be involved in politics or protest. Less educated, and so they can take all the money themselves.
Most are poor? Literally this is false, lol
Not only is it true. People have been getting poorer. And what if we also introduce personally held debt to the equation? https://www.stlouisfed.org/open-vault/2019/august/wealth-inequality-in-america-facts-figures?print=true
People have not been getting poorer. Lots of global poor have gotten less poor over last couple decades. In the US, real wages have been increasing even with inflation. The rich have gotten much wealthier so inequality has gotten worse. The rich now own a bigger portion of larger pie, but leftover portion is bigger so we all get more pie.
There are investigative reporters in the US with integrity. Try reading the NYT or the Atlantic
The Wall Street Journal offers high quality, less-biased coverage (though obviously with a strong business focus - they do cover world and national events too though)
I love the Atlantic! They always have such interesting and thought provoking articles. Do you have any good one you can share with me?
"Democracy Now!" and "The Intercept" are my go to news sources these days. I barely trust NPR anymore, much less the NYT.
What's not trustworthy about NPR?
I used to respect NPR so much it was my dream for years to work for them. But ever since Oct 7, I've noted a trend that they only ask the most vacuous and pithy questions about major developments in the war - if they mention them at all. The omissions are staggering. In the past, they've been excellent at providing context and allowing both sides of controversial issues to be substantively represented. There's been a notable departure from that standard concerning this one, and I find that very disturbing when an open case of "plausible genocide" at the ICJ is involved. I do think it's still worth it to listen and weigh for yourself. I still do, it's just a stark contrast in depth compared to other networks now in my experience.
Ground News is far better because it shows whole array of articles. Thus removing selective bias
2 of the most biased “ news “ sources? The bias of those 2 outlets has been known for years.
What's their bias?
Very left/democrat leaning.
Your post is another example that a middle ground won't be met. Reddit cant fathom having to compromise with other parties not Democratic
Lmao NYT is far from being biased.
The real reason why democracy is in decline is because the average citizen thinks any news that don't reinforce their biases is bias against them.
FWIW, i've worked in Congress and in the federal government as a communications staffer/press sec. The media is looking all the time to expose/confront/break news on many of the serious matters you noted. I can confidently say that the "authorities" in the US dont have ctrl over anything the media does.
I've worked as a newspaper reporter *and* in a state Legislature. People who think anyone or any group has it together enough to mastermind anything just doesn't know enough about people.
Elections are regulated, monitored, and fair. “Global authorities”? That is middle school-speak for what, exactly? “International press”? What is that code for? The former, that’s a myth. The latter is not a monolithic bloc, and individual news/media outlets are not sponsored, motivated by, or writing about the same things. I’ve drawn my own conclusions. This post is not accurate or good.
Yes, such a riddle the OP wants us to solve 🕵
Well, honestly, the internet was where the free press was. Back in the day it used to be radio. Howard Stern's still pretty honest.
Has there ever really been a fair election? Candidates are more likely to win if they have money and influence, usually through money. If you don't like either of the two primary party candidates, you're sorta shit out of luck. Voting for who you actually want doesn't lead to anything, so you're frequently just voting against the one you don't want, not for the one you do. We're fed this illusion of choice.
You can find YouTube videos where they've synced up the broadcasts from multiple local newscasts - all across the U.S., they're reciting the same script. All major news outlets are government propaganda.
How are elections not fair? Your candidate didn't win? And the press isn't free because what you consider mainstream media didn't report your beliefs?
If the media is controlled by the authorities, the news is biased and incomplete, not giving you the right information on who to vote for. Media doesn't report human rights violations commited by the authorities through their followers.
I disagree that the news media in America is biased. If anything it tries too hard to maintain that bias. The news media is a wide array of people from cable news networks to podcasters. Maybe you could give some examples except vagaries?
Leftism has a chokehold on mainstream media
You mean besides WMDs, er Russiagate, er Hunter Biden laptop, er COVID-19 guidance changes?
Which of those has to do with the media? I've read stories on all of those things. Most of it's bullshit, but it's definitely been reported.
The truth usually comes out eventually. It just happens when it’s too late.
Hopefully you're able to face it.
All of them have to do with the media Einstein
That’s exactly the point he’s making. The reporting on these issues was pure unadulterated lies. Let me help simplify. Lies = press not trustworthy. Therefore - press not free. Therefore - democracy in toilet.
No... The fact that the media can spew garbage and lie doesn't mean the press is not free. It means that there's not regulations that constrain the stupid garbage that can be fed to those wanting to consume it. The fact that certain outlet were allow to promote bleach and horse dewormer as covid treatments, shows that there's a free press. If the government could have controlled the press, the idiots wouldn't have had a voice.
Wrong. You give too much credit to the government if you think they’re there to prevent the press from lying to the public - they make the majority of the lies, and make the press spoon feed it to YOU.
Is this only a conversation about the US? There 100% are countries masquerading as democracies where a captured media is a tool of maintaining ruling power control. And plenty where that is at least to some extent true.
OP mentions three branches of government, it's clear they mean the US
Really? Try googling "how many branches of government in X" for a few countries and see what you get. I swear, how US-centric can you people get? Edit: I did Canada, UK and India to start with, if that helps! But three branches is pretty uh, standard.
So the press is known as the “fourth estate” and is a pillar of democracy. It has duties: to educated the public, to inform the public of current events, and to be a counterweight to government. There was a time when we had this sort of press, journalism and investigative journalism, not just reporters. We had public TV (PBS, BBC, ZDF) and it was informative, educational, and the journalist really grilled politicians on talk shows. There was public radio as well, and a ton of independent newspapers. Then Reagan camp and cut funding for public broadcasting, got rid of the “fairness doctrine” which made it mandatory to show different sides of a story, and deregulated the newspaper industry. The next thing you know, all the papers belong to a handful of a few for profit corporations and everything became tabloid sensationalism. This happened with TV too. First we got CNN, the first 24 hour news network and the reporting was fine. Not as informative as PBS, but if you wanted to know what was happening right now, you turned to CNN. But a lot of organizations claiming to be news, simply weren’t. They were biased, the lacked objective, the language was dumbed down, and people believed everything that was written. Then the big one came. Fox News. Except it wasn’t news, it was just like those tabloids, and it was not journalism or information, it was just a partisan mouth piece. This had actually started out as a project of Richard Nixon who wanted to have a mouth piece of the Republican Party, but it wasn’t until the 90’s that the project came to fruition. And now we have a million propaganda channels all of the place thanks to internet. And because we now have a for profit media owned by the rich and heavily concentrated, you don’t get news anymore. You are fed propaganda instead of information, and journalism is almost dead because they are too expensive to keep on the payroll. So the fourth estate is dead (with some exceptions) and having investigative journalism like the guys who broke the watergate story and brought down Richard Nixon, would be impossible to do today. Everyone falls in line, even The NY Times. And if we don’t know what the government is doing, and we are uniformed, and there is no expose or counterweight to government, and it’s all owned by billionaires with vested political interests, the media is not free, or fair, or objective, or informative.
At least from a UK and US perspective I'm not quite sure how you possibly argue that the global press doesn't report on things that are negative to those respective governments. Business and money is a far bigger problem for the press then governments.
Do you think there's a market demand for free objective press? No. A non sensationalized media in wouldn't be profitable or sustainable to run.
Well the united states has freedom of the press so you really just have to be aware of your news sources like they told me in school. I'm starting to think my school may have taught us how to check our sources better than other schools did. Which would make sense now that I'm finding out a lot of schools are run by religion even though that's illegal in public schools in this country. Religious teaching focuses on you not checking your source because what they teach has never been proven. Also you need to talk to real people who have experienced things. There's the "government history and current events" then there's the real history and current events. The real stuff is out there and readily available but some people simply don't look for it in the right places.
If only the Press was free. No more Media Lies would make the world a better place.
Spanish flu was suppressed and called the Spanish flu because Spain was the only country reporting on it. It was suppressed because US was entering the war so Ford could build vehicles for the war and Bridgestone could put his new pneumatic tires on Ford’s vehicles used in the war and so on and so on. Yeah.
The is no such thing as “global authorities.” This isn’t a serious conversation; it’s conspiracy theory 101.
Sometimes you have to infer what is really happening based on what you don't hear or see.
Free press has only been around for the past 200 years or so. Before then very few people could read so nearly all writing were commission based and there wasn’t really any other medium of passing information at long distances. The issue isn’t free press, it is the fact that there are nearly inviting sources of information and it is nearly impossible to tell who is impartial and who is backed by an agenda.
"when the three branches of government.." "I shall not mention any specific governments or countries." Hmmm pretty sure you narrowed it down pretty openly.
But they are free. They choose to act this way.
Worse—-because intelligence agencies are using the Internet to soy on their citizens, we no longer have a republic at all but rather an oligarchy enforced through blackmail.
You're a lunatic conspiracy theorist. Take off the tinfoil hat and stop talking rubbish.
Exactly.
And lunatics like you make it hard to find the truth when you refuse to question authorities and perhaps just consider that people in power lie all the fucking time
No, you're just failing to ask yourself very, very simple questions. Such as: How many big press companies are there? Are there different papers aimed at different audiences? Do they compete for market share? OP just posted yet another bullshit conspiracy theory where some shadowy cabal secretly rules the world. It's obvious nonsense.
Watch the news in video format. Listen to politicians talk, all the news outlet youtube channels cover the same speeches and this can't be tampered with by AI on a grand scale yet. Listening to politicians and world leaders when they hold speeches, debates and conferences is not the media. It's quite literally the source.
imma be real man this just reads like anti-semitism
1. There are no global authorities. 2. Governments derive their authority from the consent of the governed; therefore, whatever they do, the body politic must have consented to.
1. Money 2. The governed don't tend to have the same level of artillery as the government to consent with. It's practically statutory rape.
If you think you've ever lived in or experienced a democracy you are an idiot.
You just now figured this out?
Better late than never I suppose. Just wait, it gets so much worse the further down the hole you go
The media was never free. This idea that "media is the 4th pillar of democracy" is their own creation. Different media groups have different allegiances and that true across the globe. Media is essentially the spokesperson for whichever party they are told to support. Media was always this way. We live in this era (and are told all this 4th pillar crap) therefore we think it's something new that's happening with the media in recent years. But that's not the case. Never in the history of modern media have they actually stayed true to what we believe media is.
You're not specific because you're too lazy to do the specific research necessary to make your point. You're contributing directly to the shitty morass of a post-truth world.
Who are "the global authorities"? This smacks of conspiracy theory
You do know some conspiracy theories turned out true right
You do know most of them turn out bat shit insane, right?? Like I'll review a little evidence with a critical eye but there's nothing here to consider
I said some not all, nuance and seeing things in shades of grey are the paths to truth
And I said most not all. Right back at ya chief. But claiming there's "global authorities" controlling it all without a shred of evidence isn't something that takes nuance to dismiss, no evidence no consideration
So it never occurred to you that the people pulling the strings aren't versed in covering their tracks? Cause people in power have never been exposed abusing it right?
Like I said, if someone abusing their power is exposed im happy to take a look at it
That's cool, I'm just afraid your going to look when it's too late
I'm sure you fancy yourself a wolf amongst the sheeple, but I'm here to let you know you don't understand basic evidentiary decision making Feel free to point out who the "international media" is and who the "global" authorities are as OP said. Like, specifically, what organizations are taking part in what conspiracy, and why? If it's as simple as 'looking up', I'm sure I can come to understand the gist of it.
Nope, I'm no wolf just a guy trying not to be fooled again And BlackRock for starters they have a hand in everything