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Comment by andrewclunn | Hacker News Reader

This. Moving away from service chord cutters at this point was just odd. Embracing alternative media has done wonders for outlets like Russia Today (Though that's state sponsored so it might not be the best comparison).

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> Russia Today (Though that's state sponsored so it might not be the best comparison)

Al Jazeera is owned by the government of Qatar. However, I agree with you that it's not a good comparision. BBC also is state sponsored, but generally considered to be trustworthy.

RT is propaganda run by a government that has propaganda as its modus operendi; I wouldn't trust their weather reports.

> RT is propaganda run by a government that has propaganda as its modus operendi; I wouldn't trust their weather reports.

So like NBC nightly news? The US is full of what can only be described as US government propaganda, 60 minutes is a prime example. CBS and NBC are no better than RT unfortunately, they just often tell Americans what they want to hear so nobody bats an eyelid.

AJ and BBC have their biases but at least they try.

PS - I moved to the US from abroad and was genuinely shocked not by the obviously ridiculous cable news (CNN, MSNBC, Fox News) but by the "news" pretending to be unbiased while in reality being a US government mouthpiece.

No, not like NBC or anything else you mention.

One is backed by the government and runs propaganda. The other is more pro-US than you like, but can and will be very critical of government officials and practices.

I don't know a good way to prove that US media is not a government mouthpiece, but I don't think there is much evidence to support such a strong claim, whereas it is pretty easy to argue that RT is a government mouthpiece. EG:

http://www.spectator.co.uk/2014/12/the-truth-about-russia-to...

Noam Chomsky and Ed Herman have done excellent comparative research demonstrating exactly that in great detail. For example by comparing coverage of events by the U.S. and its allies to similar events by enemies, finding consistent and strong bias in the mainstream media.

They also develop a theory, more of an explanation, that this is essentially because mainstream media is funded through advertising which then naturally biases it towards the interests of the business elite. That is how we get thought control in a democratic society.

See Manufacturing Consent and Necessary Illusions for numerous cases. Wonderful books. See also Alex Carey's work on corporate propaganda, Taking the Risk Out of Democracy.

There's pretty good evidence that lots of American media outlets are government mouthpieces - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent for example

That book argues that mass media are biased because they are beholden to for-profit corporations, advertisers, and large-entity sourcing. I didn't read it, that's just in the outline that's in the link you provided.

I think Noam would prefer if they were government mouthpieces instead of corporate mouthpieces, as he's socialist.

Regardless, I don't think "Noam Chomsky wrote a book" is an argument with evidence. It's rather an appeal to authority. But if it were, the book should actually be about the argument you're making.

The book is about the argument. One example from the book is the 1984 Nicaraguan general election (Wikipedia notes this), where US media sources took the White House press secretary's words as gospel, ignoring the atrocities on the ground.

Also, thinking that socialists are willing to blindly trust government sources is pretty wrong as well. Far left and far right both share a distrust of the state.

US mass media exhibit both government bias and corporate bias. And it can be hard to distinguish them, because US government is also subject to strong corporate bias. That was very much so during the Regan and Bush years. The Democrats are more subtle, and reflect a power base that's far more covert.

Suggestion: try reading on stuff you want to critique before commenting about them instead spouting malformed ideas that you patched up from internet comments, Facebook posts and other distortion prone medium. People who do read up on stuff can clearly see you don't know what you're talking about.

Just to be clear I never said RT wasn't a government mouthpiece. I said that some US news is "as bad as" them.

I have no idea how exactly it works with CBS/NBC/60 minutes. Does the US government literally write the words? Do they just dictate what they should report on? Do they send them pre-produced bottled reports? It is unclear, but what is clear is the ultimate result: pure dripping pro-US government propaganda of the worst kind.

I don't think we are watching the same news at all. CBS and NBC regularly have reports that the government would stop if they could.

>I said that some US news is "as bad as" them.

I've seen plenty of reports on NBC or CBS criticizing Obama (or Bush before him), have you ever seen a report that was critical of Putin on RT?

How would this even work. Do they switch stories depending on who is in power?

> have you ever seen a report that was critical of Putin on RT?

Yes.

Additionally I didn't say Obama was running anything, I was more thinking the DoD. They likely fund, produce, or have produced specific bottled segments.

Which isn't to say they have direct editorial control, just that propaganda is a common sight on US TVs.

Plus I can back up what I am saying, here's a program from 2002:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_military_analyst_prog...

So from 2002 to 2008 I can prove that this occurred. But since then it has definitely continued, I'm sure they renamed it, and retooled it, and involved more private entities to act as legal buffs, but it definitely still goes on to this day.

> How would this even work. Do they switch stories depending on who is in power?

I don't understand the question.

The US isn't run by an autocracy so there are competing interests in the government. It doesn't make sense to claim they are being controlled by the government, because they wouldn't agree with each other on what should be said. That said, there's definitely an implicit bias that America is right and North Korea/Iran/Russia etc are wrong but that's a nationwide problem, hardly evidence of some mass conspiracy.

You're replying to a comment that links to an article on the domestic PsyOps program run by the DoD, officially, since shortly after 9/11. The issue is not that people are patriotic. It is not even that political dissent is not tolerated in mainstream media. It is that propaganda pieces, manufactured with the expressed purpose to manipulate the electorate, are broadcast.

It's not like there is a party line on everything. You are allowed to have differing opinions on benign issues, such as cooking, celebrities, or football.

There is a saying.. We in the USA have one party, the Business Party, with two right wings.

The Democrat-Republican spectrum spans the spectrum of opinion that is fundable by the business community. There is plenty of vigorous debate within that spectrum. But money wins elections and funds advertising-dependent media, so that's how non business friendly perspectives get filtered out.

It's not a conspiracy, it's more "unnatural selection" by money in the media and political systems.

The working class press of a century ago had a much broader spectrum of opinion, for example. But it didn't rely on advertising.

If money wins elections, can you explain why Jeb Bush isn't polling first in the Republican primary process right now? Can you also explain why Bernie Sanders is within single digits of Clinton nationally, and beating her in Iowa and New Hampshire? You'd expect that the candidates who spend the most (and represent the monied establishment) would do the best, right? Is it possible that there are other forces at play (for instance, popular opinion?)

Those are not election wins. We are not even close to the peak of the election cycle where the real money gets spent. There certainly are more forces at play, but money plays the key role.

>There certainly are more forces at play, but money plays the key role.

I don't think money is close to playing the key role. If that were true it would only take a few billion to buy a presidential election.

Money is definitely necessary, but I don't think it's sufficient.

Removed old comment, replaced it with this one:

Here, read this: http://stevedutch.blogspot.com/2014/10/why-are-both-politica...

> "I've seen plenty of reports on NBC or CBS criticizing Obama (or Bush before him), have you ever seen a report that was critical of Putin on RT?"

Here you go:

http://youtu.be/ZolXrjGIBJs

And immediately after she said that RT executives issued statements saying that she was "misled by the American media" and that

“In her comment Ms. Martin also noted that she does not possess a deep knowledge of reality of the situation in Crimea."

RT then used this one piece of dissent against the normal pro Russia coverage of Crimea to parade around as example of their openness.

You'll also notice that less than a year after saying that she was off the network.

> "You'll also notice that less than a year after saying that she was off the network."

Fair point, but I wouldn't say the US networks were much better...

http://youtu.be/ozxzNjRqCiE

http://youtu.be/HrKKkGl3TnY

> Does the US government literally write the words? Do they just dictate what they should report on? Do they send them pre-produced bottled reports? It is unclear, but what is clear is the ultimate result: pure dripping pro-US government propaganda of the worst kind.

They often attack and upset the government, including leaking government secrets and sometimes getting prosecuted for it. I don't think it's at all comparable. Is Fox a mouthpiece for Obama? Was MSNBC a mouthpiece for Bush? The NY Times, to its credit, is criticized by all sides a being on the 'other' side.

When was the last time NBC, CNN, Fox, or CBS leaked government secrets?

Not directly -- but the networks depend on the government to give them all-important access to events (press conferences, interviews, etc). Report something the government doesn't like? Next time, you'll be the one that's shut out from the next White House press briefing.

The news media in the US isn't a "government mouthpiece", but there is definitely East Coast government-media-academia axis which considers itself "elite" and has common goals. To have the wrong opinions is bad for your career.

What is propaganda about NBA nightly news or 60 minutes, something that isn't better explained by those shows catering to the values and preconceptions of their viewers?

Remember, there's a special name for the type of reporting journalists do when they aren't just copying & pasting government and corporate press releases in their news stories: "investigative journalism."

Anything else is just reporting publicly-available information from some official source.

Notice that that's also the first line item to get slashed when budget-cuttin' time rolls around.

Perhaps there is a happy middle which doesn't cost an arm and a leg to produce a report, and still isn't straight-up propaganda. It's called reporting publicly-available information from multiple credible sources, and not reporting single-sourced PR releases. Also known as "journalism". I heard somewhere that it was essential to the nature of a free state.

It's not so much that the news is a government mouthpiece, more that each network tends to report the news in a fashion that supports its political views: CNN, MSNBC, and the traditional alphabet networks on the left, Fox News on the right. (And, of course, these are American definitions of left and right, so feel free to map them to your nation of origin however you please.) If the network is simpatico to the party in power, they'll sound like government propagandists. If not, RT or Al-Jazeera will have nothing on how venomous they get.

To put it another way, imagine the Guardian vs. the Daily Mail, but on television instead. No one, I hope, would pick up a copy of those newspapers expecting the unbiased facts; same deal here.

> CNN, MSNBC, and the traditional alphabet networks on the left

An important point, I think: The propagandists, most prominently today the News Corp outlets such as Fox and the WSJ, want to portray the whole world as ideologically driven. It innoculates their followers against anything anyone else can say (e.g., 'it's all left-wing propaganda, don't even bother') and justifies their own propaganda.

But everyone is not ideological. MSNBC is, at least it was the little I saw of them awhile ago, maybe NPR is, but I disagree that the rest are on the left. They are mostly straight-ahead journalism without significant ideology (though of course nothing is perfect in the world, and I'm omitting the unconcious ideology of the US popular perspective that people like Chomsky observe.)

Eh, for one thing, ideology in journalism can be just as much what you choose to report on as how you report on it. You could find right-wingers who will complain at you all day about how CNN/NBC/whoever spend virtually no time reporting on things which make the current Administration look bad and lots of time reporting on things which make their opponents look bad, and it'll be hard to say they're wrong.

I doubt it's possible for the news to be truly non-ideological for this, and many other, reasons. The best one can hope for is a news organization that is a) straightforward and open about its political viewpoint and b) reports in a sober and accurate manner with a minimum of flinging partisan red meat around. There are a fair number of American news sources that are a), but b) is much harder to come by, especially on television. Given this, I can understand why some Americans flock to the BBC or Al Jazeera or whoever, even if I personally despise their editorial positions.

> "I doubt it's possible for the news to be truly non-ideological for this, and many other, reasons."

It's more straightforward than you might think, you just have to give airtime to conflicting views, and make sure discussion of news stories are conducted respectfully.

I understand what you're saying about it being possible to show bias just by what news stories you choose to cover, but inviting on dissenting voices helps tackle that issue. If you expect intelligent debate from your news sources, you'll spot it when it's absent.

BBC is not considered trustworthy in India. We listen to BBC for English language but also recognize that BBC still suffers from colonial-era mindset.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_BBC#Indophobi...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_BBC#Anti-Hind...

"Writing for the 2008 edition of the peer-reviewed Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Alasdair Pinkerton analyses the coverage of India by the BBC since India's independence from British rule in 1947 until 2008. Pinkerton observes a tumultuous history involving allegations of anti-India bias in the BBC's reportage, particularly during the cold war, and concludes that the BBC's coverage of South Asian geopolitics and economics shows a pervasive and hostile anti-India bias due to the BBC's alleged imperialist and neo-colonialist stance.[118]"

BBC is not considered trustworthy by lots of people in the West, too. They're very left-biased, and very poor at presenting opposing viewpoints.

Do you have anything to back this up? To me, they are biased to the establishment/center right, which seems borne out by at least one study:

http://www.newstatesman.com/broadcast/2013/08/hard-evidence-...

... and most of the left wing considers BBC right-biased.

The BBC is not seen as a trustworthy news source by all in the UK either, but its biases are harder to spot than some other outlets. Generally speaking, you only get a clear picture of their news manipulation when you're on the opposing side of the messages they put out.

To give a recent example, there was a story a week or two ago where they held back on an interview with a politician they knew was going to resign until just before a parliamentary debate, which appears to have been a move to undermine the leader of this politician's party, which they've been making efforts to discredit.

http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showthread.php?p=81049649

Although there is no such thing as complete objectivity in news reporting, the BBC news department tends to try to give all political parties an equally hard time, with the possible exception of extreme right parties like UKIP, who they are a little harder on.

You can question BBC on Impartiality & Diversity of Opinion http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/editorialguidelines/edguide/...

Thats odd, I distinctly remember a huge liking and trust for the BBC (especially radio) among the older Indian folk - middle class and above.

I think it's more accurate to say that the BBC is disliked by the newer Hindu nationalist types for not pandering to their world view.

I think it's more accurate to say that the BBC is disliked by lots of people are aren't culturally Marxist.

BBC is fine for left-leaning Anglosphere types, but it's not very broad in terms of the views covered.

When you use the word cultural marxist you're outing yourself as a right-extremist conspiracy theorist:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_School#Cultural_Marx...

That's actually not the meaning I was using. It's pretty obvious that BBC is not centrist in content.

"culturally Marxist" sounds like a right-wing way of saying "not Marxist." It makes about as much sense as being "culturally vegetarian."

"Cultural Marxism" is a shibboleth used in far-right white nationalist circles to mean "not racist". It's typically paired with claims that "cultural Marxism" is a "Jewish plot" to cause "white genocide".

If you see anyone use it unironically, run away.

Sorry, but you're not going to be able to tag somebody like me with the alt-right label. I'm none of those things. The point is that the BBC isn't only disliked by Indian nationalists. That's what I was responding to.

And actually, that's not what Marxism is or means at all: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism

Regardless of their propaganda or slant, these outlets are useful specifically because they are not part of the US media cycle "play list". US audiences are in a filter bubble. Also some of the domestic outlets are too busy reposting Vines to cover enough stories in between sports and weather.

Once encountering a story on those alternate sources, you can read with some critical thinking maybe, and then look for other sources to corroborate.

You're trading one filter bubble for another. Unless you want to see how the population of another country experience propaganda, I don't see how it could be useful. You could do critical thinking on any source, not just alternates.

Well I mean I can't say anything to Russia Today but Al Jazeera for instance is often the only english language network with reporters on the ground in a lot of middle east situations.

This. It can be hard to get a non-US spin on middle eastern events, which is I regularly look to AJ and BBC. The value is in getting a different perspective, not completely unbiased reporting. Associated Press feeds can also be somewhat helpful: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/APNewsFeeds

Yep. There's whole different point of views to be seen. People are saying propaganda like it means only the caricaturization of propaganda(i.e.: overt), and, corollarily, like what is not overt is not propaganda or like it's "but ours is nicer/good". It's not like this, propaganda is everywhere. To me, anything that's not the pure facts plus context is the same as propaganda/ideology, there's only reality or propaganda/ideology, it's what I'm saying. If you want to approximate reality of stuff getting the different perspectives is absolutely mandatory. I guess that's too much work for most people, though.

I agree, getting multiple perspectives on an issue can be extremely time-consuming and challenging. This site shares three different perspectives on current events in one place: http://pxw.news/whos-to-blame-for-the-iran-saudi-dispute/

Thats really interesting, thanks! I'll be following this one :)

Yes, and even when you are publishing pure facts, which is a good goal for journalists, there is still some editorial in which of many facts you choose to publish.

Right, but if you take the union of sources you see more new stories total.

In order to do critical thinking on a subject, you first need to know that it exists. Alternate sources can be helpful with being alerted to stuff.

Although with Russia Today, it takes a pretty large effort to filter out the information from between the propaganda. Al Jazeera on the other hand has a fairly high signal-to-noise ratio.

Being able to approach things from many perspectives (even if those perspectives are highly biased, because there does not exist an unbiased perspective in human-gathered news) is very important.

I agree, but getting multiple perspectives on an issue can be extremely time-consuming and challenging. This site shares three different perspectives on current events in one place: http://pxw.news/whos-to-blame-for-the-iran-saudi-dispute/

Ever heard of "there's always three sides to every story"?

Apart from what the others replied(those networks will show stuff that isn't 'interesting' for some demographic), having the 'your' and 'mine' sides of the story is pretty much necessary to approximate the 'true' side.

> BBC also is state sponsored, but generally considered to be trustworthy.

Brit here: The BBC is state-funded, but it's output is not state-driven. The news team (IMHO) generally takes an editorial view that is to the left of the current Tory government. For once I think the BBC is to the right of the current Labour opposition, whose new leadership is the furthest left it has been for a generation. And perhaps worryingly non-electable to people who are mildly left-of-centre.

My current approach to getting the UK news is to interpolate between the Guardian (pro-Labour, but less so of its current leadership) and the Telegraph (Torygraph).

> The BBC is state-funded, but it's output is not state-driven.

It's amazing how many people don't understand this fact. You'll see people on reddit compare the BBC to RussiaToday or Xinhua. The latter two are literally government run agencies that specifically exist to push their country's narrative of world events out to the rest of the world. The BBC is government owned but not government ran, there's a massive difference.

> "worryingly non-electable"

I find it baffling that people still believe this rhetoric, especially after Corbyn winning the Labour leadership election by a huge margin. The whole 'unelectable' thing certainly gets repeated enough in the media, but I'd hoped more people would've seen through the concerted effort to attack him by now.

Yes. The BBC isn't pro-govt but it isn't neutral either. IMO

The Al Jazeera that we get in the UK is apparently run by a lot of ex-BBC people, and uses a lot of the BBC house style, which means and news report will instantly look respectable to a big British market segment. Not that I've ever met anyone in the UK who's ever watched it, of course.

This is the best run-down of the BBC house style I've seen:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHun58mz3vI

The BBC is not very objective in its coverage of Israel. http://bbcwatch.org is very critical of the BBC in this respect.

Al Jazeera seems to have a problem with Jews in general ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Jazeera_controversies_and... says so ). They also don't like the Shia - not without editorial bias so to speak.

Same with the Australian ABC. Pretty much only rusted on supporters of the Liberal and National parties are the only ones who don't support it, and even they watch it over the commerical networks.

That said, I really want to see what Netflix can do with the news cycle.

Although it's becoming less meaningful statistic due to a host of reasons the audience figures for free-to-air (FTA) TV have almost always had the ABC trailing the smallest commercial network. A 2009 graph[0] shows how it's historically been although digging into more recent numbers their position is slightly better with the new digital channels.[1] Although we are in the holiday season and the commercial channels seem to perform better in other portions of the year.

[0] https://www.screenaustralia.gov.au/research/statistics/archf...

[1] (~467k pdf) http://oztam.com.au//documents/2015/OzTAM-20151227-C1MetFTAS...

> I really want to see what Netflix can do with the news cycle.

I don't see this as a good fit for Netflix as I'm not quite sure what they would bring to the news cycle table that isn't already being done. Commercial free broadcasts? Infrastructure? Most quality, public media stations already upload full, commercial free shows to their Youtube channels (and often with quick turn-around from the original broadcast date.) You just simply need to subscribe to their channel (something that I can't do in Netflix).

_______ is propaganda run by a government that has propaganda as its modus operendi (INSERT TOP NEWS NETWORK HERE)

> considered to be trustworthy

By who, please, people who don't watch the BBC? The BBC has been in opposition to the UK government once in living memory, back in 2003, and it's still being talked about.

none of the news channels is trustworthy. the difference is in degree of bias. BBC is very biased.

If Western media could not stop the WMD lie, what are they good for? You can find BBC fabrication in faked Madaya media images [1], or see bad stage acting used in BBC Panorama 'Saving Syria's Children.' [2]

[1] https://thewallwillfall.wordpress.com/2016/01/11/madaya-bbc-...

[2] https://bbcpanoramasavingsyriaschildren.wordpress.com/

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