Media trust hits new low
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I am confused why this is considered a misconception? A cursory search of twitter users turns up scores of blue check bios that list themselves as both "Journalist" and "Activist[1]. Numerous articles from mainstream sources ([1], [2], [3]) talking about how the line has blurred and why that is ok or even necessary. Are people wrong for thinking that covering stories from a particular lens constitutes being "more concerned with supporting an ideology or political position"?
[1] https://twitter.com/search?q=journalist%20activist&src=typed... [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/media/whats-a-journ... [3] https://niemanreports.org/articles/where-does-journalism-end... [4] https://www.pulitzer.org/article/journalist-activist
What we have today is a nation-destroying level of a lack of cohesive vision. Having a conversation with someone typically begins with the realization that we're operating with a completely different set of facts, in addition to employing entirely incompatible frameworks with which to digest them. The only way to have any idea of what's going on is to consume opposing news sources, which then leads to further digging to sort out where the truth lies in seemingly incompatible claims. The process is exhausting, and most people don't have time for it.
What's worse is that a non-trivial amount of institutional power is so concerned with preserving their anointed vision of our future, that they are actively trying to remove access to any access of information which destabilizes their monopoly on truth. The amount of vitriol directed at podcasts in the last few years by mainstream institutions is more than a little concerning.
https://youtu.be/cu8FHZiAmzM?t=150
Witness the discussion on CNN issuing concern that Facebook and YouTube are hosting conservative news. He then goes on to suggests that ISPs and Cable providers are responsible for not allowing this media on their networks.
Not only are we dealing with a complete siloing of truth through narrative, which is sufficient problem on its own, but there is a significant part of journalist activism which is concerned with making sure that no other set of facts be accessible.
That's a concern irrespective of what cause they support or where they fall politically. Perhaps they are needed more now, I don't know. But if we're looking to increase trust in journalism specifically, we'd be better off just leaving politics out of it as much as possible. In my opinion, of course.
And choosing which stories to cover in the first place.
I wonder if they really do. Quite a few seem to be well aware of what they are doing. Obviously they will never say what they are doing since it would hurt their credibility.
There is not a single sentence of introspection as to whether the media actually can’t be trusted.
What’s the saying about convincing someone of something their job depends on them not understanding? Hm...
"Journalists, Illustrating How They Operate, Yesterday Spread a Significant Lie All Over Twitter"
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26509654
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/journalists-illustrating-ho....
Who is your favorite author that identifies as a progressive?
I'm lacking good progressive voices that I trust. Rather, I trust many of them to give me a sense of where the Democratic party in the US is heading, but not to reliably report the strengths and weaknesses of their position. Freddie Deboer might be the closest that I come, and while he's arguably very progressive, he's not typical. Any suggestions?
Edit: For non-media bloggers who touch on social issues, I'd suggest Andrew Gelman and Scott Aaronson as being good progressive voices. For media, I should have added Matt Taibbi, but he may also be in the very liberal but not-exactly-progressive camp.
None of these people will espouse things like raising the minimum wage, reducing our out of control military budget, or god forbid, universal healthcare for Americans. This is what modern progressives want and where the Democratic party is heading, eventually. No one cares about "cancel culture" or "SJWs" like you'll constantly read about with this list.
Odd, I have completely the opposite impression. I support all of these things, and I would have guessed that all 7 people I named each support at least one and often all of these. I'd put them more on the losing Sanders side of the Democratic party, which I think has more support for the things you list than the currently dominant and more centrist Biden side. By contrast, I'd say it's the NPR/CNN/NYT voice that does not particularly support the things you list, at least not to the same extent.
I could go through and try to pick out quotes to support this, but this probably wouldn't be persuasive. Instead, perhaps you could suggest some people that I should add to my reading list? I've given quite a few names that I think provide a useful contrast to the mainstream US media. Who else should I be reading to get a more complete picture? What are the trustworthy progressive sources, with "trustworthy" being defined as prioritizing things they believe are true over strategic communication?
The progressive side of the party is not dominant but clearly ascendant over the last several years, and Greenwald’s attacks on the party have become more intense the more the progressive side has become more ascendant. Greenwald may have once been a progressive, but what he has clearly since become is simply an anti-Democrat whose entire schtick is performative leftism to try to drive a wedge between progressives and the Democratic Party.
Matt Yglesias is, AFAICT—and while I kinda burned out on him fairly early in his blogging career I read him heavily then and occasionally since and this doesn't seem to have changed—a center-right figure of almost exactly the sort dominant in the Democratic Party. He sometimes has fairly intense disagreements on particular points with dominant figures, but he doesn't seem to be particularly to their left.
Depending on how you define "media sources", TNP's lack of original reporting may disqualify them, but you may want to check them out anyway.
It's the only organization I've read that actually makes me think of journalism as opposed to news. They have an About page that they've very much followed [1].
Most of my friends who have checked out an article have ended up subscribing!
Are we talking about the Tim Pool who thought Trump would win in a landslide, and who pushed the "little guy vs big guy" narrative of GME (even though the big guys made billions)?
> He is very critical of most of the media as well.
He embodies the very problem of the media: they want views over anything else so they resort to click bait and fear and outrage. I mean, just read his video titles...
"Trump Supporters HAVE TAKEN OVER THE CAPITOL, Shots Fired INSIDE, Electoral Count Session ENDED"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0M8bginejxE
Which is it?
Also if you look at his videos, every single one is lying in the title. This person is a living satire of clickbait and misinformation.
If you want truth, stop buying news and use that time to study higher levels of mathematics beyond what you understand now. Honestly, just don’t buy news unless you’re in a position to profit from it.
I think "trust CEOs" is significantly less supported by Edelman's data than "reduce press freedom, emulate China," but I'm just a random internet commentator, not a high quality journalist like Felix Salmon.
I'd also note that the 3% drop also appears to be barely outside the survey's margin of error (survey population size: n=1,150).
[0] Media trust chart is on page 49 https://www.edelman.com/sites/g/files/aatuss191/files/2021-0...
Three sources of bias in polling.
No problem in politically uncontroversial polls, but cryptonite otherwise.
Sometimes things are malicious, sometimes things are ignorant, and sometimes it’s a mix. Is trying to be more specific about causes a “defence”?
In other words, an organization with dubious motivations headquartered in Europe rates non-Western countries as low in their subjective measurement.
How surprising to see that all of the Anglosphere got glowing rankings!
No offense but you are exhibiting the classic case of western arrogance and ignorance. You are in no position to actually assess from 4 random picked countries in the world (Say, Bulgaria, Chile, Israel and Malaysia) who has more "freedom of the press" and by how much). Your unique rule of thumb is that you expect rich,white,western countries on top.
The only way you could still think it's an objective ranking is if you REALLY think we're going to all these wars to free people.
You have 0 idea, guess what? me neither, that's why you know the ranking is bullshit.
I have lived in 4 of the countries mentioned above, they have wildly significant difference in rankings. My subjective take on the freedom of the press in those places?, it is very much the same.
I'm asking this in earnest. If the primary goals of a company essentially boil down to personal and shareholder enrichment then why should I not consider all large companies an existential threat to my life itself?
Some recent headlines (from "moderate" publications - this is just one interest/topic so consider all the other unhinged propaganda they are peddling): https://twitter.com/isgoodrum/status/1372203410297032716
I'm not shocked considering most are owned by people who shouldn't be let anywhere near media (Bezos, Murdoch, Bloomberg etc) so the question "who profits from the narrative" along with over-consumption of news (compared to pre-Internet) is more urgent than it used to be. They not only control the narrative but also are able to tap into Intel journos generate (before it is news).
The Anglosphere _mainstream_ media seems to me a lot more toxic than anything I consume in other languages. No of them are ranked in top-25: https://rsf.org/en/ranking with US at #45 being far behind "shithole countries".
Also with media in other countries people _know_ the media is corrupt because everything else is corrupt too. The corruption in US/Europe isn't any less present (compared to India or China). It has only moved further up (cost) so to "benefit", it takes 10s of thousands wired through shell/shelf companies rather than slipping a dirty cop some cash.
Also BBC is now controlled by ghouls:
The New BBC Chairman has Donated OVER £400,000 to the Conservatives https://bylinetimes.com/2021/01/06/new-bbc-chairman-richard-...
And it shows in this tweet, which is completely devoid of any sane and intellectually honest context.
Some more headlines and excerpts:
Biden withdraws Trump rule on schools disclosing ties to Chinese state-run Confucius Institutes - https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/news/biden-trump-rul...
[China] has spent more than $158 million on schools in the U.S. since 2006. Many colleges didn't reveal they've accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars from China despite Education Department guidance that requires reporting of foreign gifts. - https://www.politico.com/story/2019/02/27/china-college-conf...
Businesses with Chinese connections gave Australia's major parties more than $5.5 million between 2013 and 2015, making them easily the largest source of foreign-linked donations. - https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-08-21/australian-groups-str...
Apple Told Some Apple TV+ Show Developers Not To Anger China - https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/alexkantrowitz/apple-ch...
Chinese students in Australia fear reprisals at home if they speak out, inquiry hears - https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/mar/12/chine...
Perry Link, emeritus professor of East Asian Studies at Princeton University, says that [..] American scholars practice self-censorship about China and adopt the official narrative of the Chinese regime when talking about sensitive issues. “We don’t talk about ‘Taiwan independence.’ We talk about ‘the cross-Strait relations.’ We don’t talk about ‘the occupation of Tibet.’ We don’t call the June 4th Massacre ‘massacre.’ - https://www.theepochtimes.com/how-the-american-academy-misle...
Leica Camera has sought to distance itself from a promotional video depicting photographers covering the deadly Tiananmen Square crackdown three decades ago, after it landed the German company in hot water in China. - https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3006817/lei...
Mercedes-Benz apologizes to Chinese for quoting Dalai Lama - https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mercedes-benz-china-gaffe...
Uyghur students in Egypt detained, sent back to China - https://www.refworld.org/docid/5971a88ea.html
Nearly a dozen Uyghurs repatriated from Malaysia to China are sent to prison for ‘separatism.’ - https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/malaysia-12202012181...
A national fibreoptic backbone will be built for Pakistan not only for internet traffic, Dawn reports, but also for terrestrial distribution of broadcast TV, which will cooperate with Chinese media in the “dissemination of Chinese culture”. - https://indianexpress.com/article/india/china-pakistan-econo...
I guess it's easy to portray this as unhinged if you don't include any headlines with substance.
> Apple Told Some Apple TV+ Show Developers Not To Anger China
I guess asking the mainstream media, which has for decades denigrated Asians constantly, to tone it down a little is just too much to ask?
First, this clouds the arguments being made against real racism (or at least what I think most people would have agreed on what this term meant in past years), and this weakens the voices of victims of that racism. Second, this gives governments and regimes a powerful mechanism to silence any dissent, by using the cover of racism to shut down cricitism far more effectively by potentially painting anyone who criticizes them as a racist.
The first point risks the word "racist" becoming a blunt label that ultimately reduces its effectiveness. Consider that when just about anyone could be considered a "racist" for discussion or behaviour that arguably has nothing to do with racism, then the term itself really starts to lose its meaning and risks devolving into just another derogatory term again any person with thoughts/behaviours one disagrees with. The second point has the insidious effect of shutting down any honest discussion about the statements and actions of governments and regimes around the world, arguably to the detriment of the vast majority of people in the world.
To me it seems more and more like the label "racist" is being thrown around with far too wide a net. As a result, the real victims of racism get their voices drowned out, while other interests get to co-opt the term as a powerful label to use for pushing their own agendas.
Get out of your echo chamber.
Additionally, you'll have to have a lot stronger proof than that if you're going to claim that Muslim countries are ok with Muslims being genocided.
"Muslim countries are ok with Muslims being genocided."
So what I'm getting at is you can't take as evidence the way these Muslim countries present themselves to the world insofar as this particular geopolitical question is concerned because the incentives likely force them into the pro-CCP position irrespective of what the truth is. Expensive moral righteousness is only easy if you're rich.
Supposedly this is a bold new format of journalism that will win back trust and cater to our foreshortened attention spans. It regularly wins praise on this site and elsewhere, but I find it shallow.
> Media outlets can continue to report reliable facts, but that won't turn the trend around on its own.
(Emphasis mine)
What are we to make of the text before the comma? It straightforwardly implies that the media is, and has been, fully reliable. Is this a "bare fact" or is it opinion?
> Axios has a stated mission to "help restore trust in fact-based news.
And a link onward to a piece with the title Our promises to you: Axios Bill of Rights:
https://www.axios.com/axios-bill-of-rights-f4f96067-ff4c-47d...
First, the US Constitution's Bill Of Rights is not a list of promises; rather a list of demands that the central authority limit impositions of its power upon regional authorities and free citizens. Axios tries to slip into the more respected clothing that is the work of others -- but it does not fit.
Worse follows. As prolog to the Axios "Rights" we find this:
>Why it matters: Nothing matters more than winning the war for truth.
https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-21...
What is or could be a "war for truth"? When has gaining truth ever been the aim of war? When relations have degenerated to a state of warfare, hasn't truth always suffered violence rather than been "won"?
"start of a novel"
What a condescending, paternalistic assumption.
>Reversing the decline is a monster task — and one that some journalists and news organizations have taken upon themselves.
This from a company that tried to whitewash its reputation by editing Wikipedia*. Have they "taking it upon themselves" because their hired guns failed, or do they recognize their guilt? Probably not the latter.
* https://www.huffpost.com/entry/wikipedia-paid-editing-pr-fac...
>What a condescending, paternalistic assumption.
And wasn't the design of the US government largely driven by a distrust in government?
"Paternalistic" strictly (and accurately) describes an assertion whereby society's coherence depends on benefactors in glass towers and Greek revival plantations.
Not only is their presumption false, it's insulting in a specific, elitist way. There is nothing generic about the priors embedded in this listicle to lead them to conclude that the media must bolster the poor, downtrodden CEOs to keep society's glue from dissolving. I took the high road here, they did not.
My suspicion is that a lot of the erosion and seeming 'politicization' of the media has to do with a bifurcation of domestic politics and the lack of an external enemy rather than something like accuracy or truth on behalf of journalism. With all of its faults I would honestly be surprised if there's a huge variance when it comes to 'factuality', and I'd even guess it's higher today.
Traditional manipulations would just be to prop up politicians or corporations or focus on an external enemy. While obviously not good, those don't really lead to the implosion of a country in the same way as our current environment might.
A dog's birthday party gets the same chyron and sound effects as a bombing.
All they care about these days is outrage. Why? Because it drives clicks.
Story: Group XYZ refusing vaccination, huge problems!! (And it's accurate if all you care about is the bare number.)
2 weeks later: Group XYZ taking vaccination like any other group. Absolute silence from the media (I actually searched to look for any updated stories.)
Why did Group XYZ not take vaccination? No one offered it to them - not that you'd know that from the media. The media implies that Group XYZ is horrible and must be shunned.
It's like that with story after story after story - they'll tell you every bit of horrible terrible news, and hide under "it's factual", without balancing it with the 99% situation.
Another crime: They REALLY need to stop reporting minority opinions as if they represent a group! They'll find the one guy with the exciting option, and report on that. And never even mention the 99 other guys with the ordinary opinion.
Are they informing you? Or outraging you? They need to decide.
They decided. They're outraging you.
(Somewhat more precisely, outrage vs. inform is a spectrum, not a binary, and they are moving more toward outrage and less toward inform. They still inform, but less reliably than they used to. And as a result, media trust hits a new low, because people can tell that media is informing less than it used to.)
How’d you hear about it?
However when you take these levels into account the OP does make a point about '2 weeks later' you never hear about it.
A better term would be 'selective reporting'.
A good example of 'selective reporting' is when a story splashes over the from page of a newspaper, which then allows other news outlets to report on that front page, which means the story spreads far and wide.
Some short time later, fearing a legal challenge or public backlash, the paper is forced to print a retraction (because their original reporting was wrong).
That retraction happens in one inch of print, contained in one short sentence, hidden away on page 12.
At that point the retraction is worthless and the original lie lives on.
Edit: Thinking about this a bit more, I suspect the what original OP was trying to say and what I am trying to say can be easily summarized by the phrase 'fair and balanced reporting'.
I think that type of reporting seems to be a thing of the past.
Your example sounds a lot like the "Black people hesitant to take the vaccine" thing from a few months ago, which got a bunch of recent coverage about how they're not actually hesitant, and that Republicans are higher on the hesitant list. (https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/poll-50-percent-of-unvaccina...)
This is a pretty common thing; "they aren't covering X, which I heard about from this article in the media..."
I finally found the government site with the data I wanted.
No, this was just media wanting to stir up trouble, and not interested in doing a "boring" follow up.
I agree. This is powerful and self reinforcing in that, as time goes on, if the primary enemy is seen as internal, transgressions will be enacted as part of the conflict, and transgressions will continue to build on both sides.
Somehow this story is now a look into whether the guilty party was a white supremacist and if this qualifies as a hate crime.
Somehow a psycho serial killer story is now not good enough ... we need to dig deep and see if this shows a larger problem will white nation supremacists committing hate crimes against asians and other groups?
This is not true.
Black-on-White and more so Black-on-Black crime is very common, and nobody ever bothers to put that in context.
If they did that, we'd see it on the news every day.
In fact - on the local news, you do see faces of 'criminals' presented, and they are very unfortunately disproportionately African American, but they don't really contextualize it, you just see a stream of faces.
It's just not true to suggest that the intersectional narrative being pushed has an 'opposite side' that operates in the same manner.
The 'opposite' to the intersectional narrative is more or less 'Race is not a factor' - or perhaps 'Race is never a factor' which isn't necessarily positive because that's not the case clearly.
In reality - the attempt to cherry pick every event of possible racial characterization into a narrative is a 'fundamental flaw' of 'one side' of the narrative today.
The challenge for people wanting to demonstrate racism - is that you need 'examples' and so they make them.
If the press ever actually did start to look at real facts of incarceration, conviction, crimes by race - it would be a very hard discussion for them, because it would be entirely out of narrative for everyone's 'side'. It would be nice to have a source of news that did that.
Doesn't mean hostile behaviour is ever ok.
There are few good journalists left and even they are succumbing to the click bait articles to drive revenue.
Now I fear we are moving more in the direction of blatant propaganda.
At least if people realize they're getting fed propaganda, why is that something to fear?
US news is not directed by government, for the most part.
It's a confluence of capitalism, opinion, ratings, populism, intellectual movements, petty fighting and opinions.
It has the feel of propaganda but for the most part it's not really that.
Possibly some treatment of COVID falls into that - during a time of crisis, the News tends to want to promote ideals of 'Public Communications' (i.e. wear a mask) instead of hard news.
There is widespread concern over populist reaction to the pausing of the AZ vaccination. Purely on a scientific basis, there is merit, but the Communications side of the Health is up in arms because they believe it will lead to people being needlessly afraid and will affect health outcomes etc..
The CBC in Canada has done a good job on that issue - i.e. trying to explain the different ways to look at that. The CBC is not exceptional in every way however.
There are so many glaring examples of statements said by talking heads that an entire panel believes to be true that the only response is to laugh and change sources.
Ex. there are plenty of prominent scientists who strictly stick to a scientific methodology in doing research, but it never stops them from performing their research with the goal hyping up their hypothesis.
As much I loathe self-aggrandizement, I wish this were true so that people weren't so generally wrong and biased.
Most people end up highly correlating to the beliefs they were brought up in.
Most people suddenly start tuning into politics and immediately think they understand issues like economics way out of their league, and understand better than people whose PhD and job it is. Of course if someone were to come tell them their initial impression of their career is more knowledgeable than them, they would laugh immensely.
In many places I see most people sharing things that are completely one-sided and often easily debunked by elementary critical thinking. HN barely registers on the wave of cruft that is the rest of people's political opinions.
It's just too bad it has to come from both sides of NYT and echo_chamber_rant.blogspot.com.
But media outlets aren't going to frame it like that, now, are they?
Google and Facebook have appeared and taken all the advertising money that Media used to get. When Media started to get Internet, after the first wave of disaster, everyone could become a youtuber or podcaster and make most of the work they did much cheaper and better(instead of sending someone to Kenya now you could have Kenyan people directly talking).
So quality reporting basically disappears and Media companies are sold to the highest bidder, usually rich people that made their fortunes from the Internet like Jeff Bezos. In socialistic countries like Spain the Government pays hundreds of millions of euros in "institutional advertising" to friend Media.
As a result, those who own the media(owners, advertisers and politicians) push their own agenda against the interest of the readers, because the readers are not really supporting it, specially if the Media is free or very cheap.
It is interesting that flow of information is higher and you can get better expert access than ever, but usually is not free.
You can get the best books(and videos) of the entire world very cheaply with incredible information.
But most people eat the MacDonnals of information through media that actually gives them disinformation. Remember "Weapons of mass destruction"(never proved), "Rusia Interference"(never proved), early COVID reporting and so on.
Science journalism is pretty bad for this. Every time a researcher finds any property that influences another, and says more work needs to be done, the headline reads “the cure for cancer is almost here!” or “is this the end of aging?”
Obligatory XKCD link:
That said, there is plenty of blame to be had: scientists engage in p-hacking and worse in pursuit of funding, institutional PR departments write sensational press releases, corporations pursue and promote "blockbuster" solutions despite diminishing returns, etc.
And of course there are legitimately bad actors mixed in to all of this aggressively pushing the press' both-sideism button for all it is worth (but only where there is an entrenched interest to do so), among many other tactics.
That could be because the fact checkers are biased, or it could be that one side pushes falsehoods more frequently or more strongly than the other.
How is this a "mixture"? It's a cut-and-dry literal quote that the context does not change in any way.
From my recollection, it previously had no explicitly political content (unfortunately, it has been blocked from the Wayback Machine).
I don't have any interest in what I see on the current version of snopes, which I guess must be following some money.
"What's True: In January 2018, Biden did say he had "no empathy" for the plight of younger people."
"Rating: Mixed"
Wow. What on earth were they thinking when they put this together?
Probably that words taken out of context can mean something different than when they're taken in context.
If they wanted to fact check whether "Biden said he didn't care about young people in a disparaging way", that would be fine, but it also is just a moral judgement.
The actual problem here is that Snopes doesn't apply this standard evenly. For a democrat, it "requires context", for a republican, it's just "100% true".
> If they wanted to fact check whether "Biden said he didn't care about young people in a disparaging way", that would be fine, but it also is just a moral judgement.
But the literal claim "did he utter these words" is practically meaningless. By that standard, if you once said "I don't understand people who think the movie Battlefield Earth is great, it's a waste of time." I could say "tjs8rj said 'the movie Battlefield Earth is great,'" or "tjs8rj said 'I don't understand people,'" and you'd have to fact check that as a "yes," even though I inverted your meaning. What people really care about is what's was meant.
> The actual problem here is that Snopes doesn't apply this standard evenly. For a democrat, it "requires context", for a republican, it's just "100% true".
I'm not convinced that's actually the case.
I mean, as far as I've seen, Joe Biden never said the words "no empathy" anywhere near the word "plight", so I guess the extremely literal cut-and-dry answer to the question is no.
Yet, as you say, he did pretty much say that, but there is room for context, which the article does a pretty good job of presenting. People deserve to know the context and then judge the comment for themselves.
Can I get a fact check on whether ahelwer said "all countries the US doesn't like deserve to fall"? Is it true that you once said that (in this very comment section, no less)? It is true, and it isn't true; a mixture.
Maybe I’m missing something but it seems like the exact same thing.
[1] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/bad-day-atlanta-shooting/
I don't think fact-checking exists for any other reason. People like fact-checking that confirms their beliefs.
Even if objectivity is possible in fact-checking, objectivity is not going to build your audience, nor find you clients.
Though, their apparent position relative to the Republican party seems to have changed drastically.
This was before 9/11 but that week I knew we would be going to war in Afghanistan because overnight the left-leaning pundits were speaking in solidarity with fox news talking points. This really disillusioned NPR for me, and I had been an avid listener for 10 years at that point.
I really only see superficial differences between the two sides of the media at this point.
Why do Democrats trust the media so much, relative to Republicans?
I have no hope for improvement until there is something like the Fairness Doctrine [1] put back in place.
Journalism is going through a crisis and with that crisis comes the opportunity to reinvent. I see more and more independent publishers using platforms like Substack, Ghost and more decentralised alternatives pushing for this change.
Either way, it’s a total shit bomb.
The underlying assumption here is that other areas of the world, outside of the United States, are not largely affected by US politics. Is this true? Maybe it depends on what other areas of the world they are talking about.