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Comment by hackuser | Hacker News Reader

RT, the source, is a propaganda outlet for the Russian government. (In case anyone doesn't already know that.)

HN, for the moment, is now a propaganda outlet for the Russian government.

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

I didn't know that, but their current homepage, the tone of a few articles, and Wikipedia[1] seems to confirm that news—thank you!

However, I also googled "steubenville hacker"[2] and found a number of other articles confirmed this story. Most were published in the last 10 hours so I'm confident that major publications aren't avoiding this story because it's false, but rather, they haven't picked it up yet.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RT_(TV_network) [2] https://www.google.ca/search?q=steubenville+hacker#q=steuben...

These[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] are a perfect example of why people don't trust RT. It's not that they always post such a blatant lies or falsehoods but the brand as a whole is tainted. It's operated as more of disinformation campaign/operation masquerading as alternative news. And this is just RT, plenty of other Russian outlets are worse.[6] If I find something interesting on RT I usually corroborate it elsewhere and then use that source. ZH (ZeroHedge) is another example of this. They come up in my Play Newsstand feed(which I cannot change...thanks Google) as news but I would never think of RT or ZH as trustworthy, I give them a gossip-rag level of trust. Though I would say there are trust issues with a lot of MSM outlets, RT really takes the cake and they aren't nearly as crazy as they used to be, they've learned to be far more nuanced.

[1] https://www.rt.com/news/356697-man-climbs-ecuadorian-embassy...

[2] https://www.rt.com/news/158212-academi-blackwater-ukraine-mi...

[3] https://web.archive.org/web/20140704230031/http://rt.com/new...

[4] https://www.buzzfeed.com/katherinemiller/insane-moments-from...

[5] http://www.interpretermag.com/rt-sends-in-the-clowns/

[6] https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-examples-of-contemporary...

> It's not that they always post such a blatant lies or falsehoods but the brand as a whole is tainted. It's operated as more of disinformation campaign/operation

To be clear, that is exactly how professional propaganda operates. Their goal is to deceive people; blatant lies obviously won't accomplish that, just like blatant phishing attacks will fail. If you can tell it's propaganda (without knowing otherwise about the source), it's not very well done.

AFAICT, humans greatly overestimate their ability to know propaganda when they see it. We all think that we can't be fooled so easily, and that's exactly what makes us vulnerable. We're naturally persuaded by things that don't correlate with truth - you can see that in the accomplishments of endless false political leaders, and their propagandists, throughout history.

And BBC is a propaganda outlet for UK government and CNN is an outlet for US propaganda. I fail to see your point.

> And BBC is a propaganda outlet for UK government and CNN is an outlet for US propaganda.

I disagree. Unless we say 'no news is 100% free of propaganda, therefore all are equivalent propaganda outlets', which of course is silly. It's like saying, 'no code is bug-free, therefore the quality of all code is equivalently flawed.'

The UK and U.S. governments and societies have very different attitudes toward independent news than Russia, and the results are evident. That doesn't mean I'm not skeptical and BBC and CNN don't have their flaws, but there is no equivalency.

Correct to some extent (the same can be said of Al Jazeera) but they do have a quite bit more integrity and can be trusted with many more topics with much more ease than RT. To be fair I vet news from those sources as well. But painting both CNN and BBC with the same broad stroke as RT is being disingenuous. RT is on a whole other level of fud. Don't trust the BBC/CNN/Al Jazeera on domestic affairs from within their own countries but RT can't be trusted with anything.

Well, CNN is propaganda for the left in the US, that is certainly true. CNN spins stories in ways that make them kind of true, but objectively not. They like to add drama into stories that aren't very dramatic and news that may or may not be true. Some parts of CNN are objective and some parts aren't.

I don't know why he got down-voted. We do have partisan news outlets that often act as propaganda machines for the party.

Fox for the republicans. CNN for the democrats. Fox Business News oddly enough for the libertarians.

Although, I do say that Fox is by far worse than CNN and this coming from an independent who has voted Republican before. Fox pundits are notorious for bending the truth.

CNN is not Democratic; for example, they hired Trump's former campaign manager. MSNBC is a Dem/Left/Progressive outlet.

Point taken.

I don't watch either station so I was making an accuracy assumption about the post I was replying to. I don't watch Fox either but I unfortunately have relatives that often put it on when I visit. I think they believe the brainwashing will eventually convert me from my evil liberal Libertarian ways.[1]

[1] Thinking Libertarians are liberal is amusing in itself, people don't know what to do with a party that has both liberal and conservative views

And now I prepare for the down votes.

Could you be more specific? Seems OT.

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