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Comment by joe_the_user | Hacker News Reader

The end result is confused and more easily-manipulated masses who need to trust authorities to vet all information they receive, an abusive but codependent relationship.

On the one hand, yeah, it's definitely more how the press likes a human interest story mixed with whatever is flavor of the month (the techno wow of "deep fakes").

But on the hand, the tone you take in that last sentence is really off-kilter. The press just works in a kind of hysterical fashion, moral panics (even conspiracy theories) aren't conspiracies but natural. Attributing stuff to a malicious effort to make the public more manipulable (as if that was necessary) should be dropped in favor of the natural incompetence of the press in framing issues reasonably.

Edit: "Mocking Bird" above is a phrase referencing CIA manipulation of the media. This is a bit of over the top for just some rather screechy but pretty ordinary story.

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> Attributing stuff to a malicious effort to make the public more manipulable (as if that was necessary) should be dropped in favor of the natural incompetence of the press in framing issues reasonably.

Except we've known for a long time that the mainstream press works, very intentionally, to manipulate public opinion.

The press has influence. The press has always had influence. In a society involving mass media, the press can't not-have influence.

We might talk about what form a society would have to have for the press to not have great influence - maybe "very strong education and civil institutions" or "directly democratic workers' councils" but if we're going have a modern capitalist society with multiple poles of elites and atomized consumers, the press, the corporations, the state and highest professional all will have disproportionate influence.

Which is to say, now, all the different press outlets manipulate, sometimes in distinct and opposite ways, sometimes in agreement with each other. And all the various economic and political institutions manipulate.

And the thing with this manipulation is it doesn't require crazy plan like the ggp/op insinuates. They don't need to intentionally create "deep fake" as vague threat, human psychology just naturally drifts that way, including the psychology of the reporters themselves. And manipulation for a specific purpose just requires the poor framing of ideas that can leveraged whenever you need it. So yeah, the press certainly manipulate but it doesn't generally have a "master plan" of manipulation. That wouldn't help (not that it hasn't been tried).

There's a long documented history of mass media manipulation, and it seems to be getting more aggressive.

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

> So yeah, the press certainly manipulate but it doesn't generally have a "master plan" of manipulation.

Ah, the master plan - code name 'red herring'?

Probably sometimes, intuitively it's pretty damn obvious not all the time, and based on what evidence? What a huge sweeping claim to just drop in one sentence.

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

The GP's argument doesn't make any sense to me. The reporting was good for a change. It gives named, verifiable sources who are legitimate experts on the subject and several of them, it tells us where to find the video in question [1] and gives us the basis for their opinion (e.g. no visual artifacts in the smoke or when the hand goes in front of the face).

All of this can be confirmed by a responsible news consumer and everything I can find here checks out. So this is legit investigative news and precisely the kind of thing we should encourage more of.

I am aware of Project Mockingbird [2] but I cannot see any relation between it and this report. It makes no sense whatsoever that the CIA would care about some squabble over unknown cheerleaders. It makes no sense to believe that everything is or isn't a deepfake without examining the facts. And this article, unlike so many I have seen, is an example of news done right. Given how disinformation works, this is the opposite of it. This article was written to inform, not to inflame our passions.

In short, it's the polar opposite of what I would expect from disinformation and this is the kind of good reporting that should be rewarded.

[1] It should've actually linked it, IMHO, but I won't complain because it wasn't hard to find this video @0:49 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5I1RfxehT4

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Mockingbird

A "mockingbird" also sings late into the night and mimics other birds, which can be annoying and throw the blame on others. It's a natural metaphor.

'mocking bird media' is a Qnon term like "deep state".

The etymologies disagree, but you be sure to not waste a good conspiracy theory so you can label people.

Qanon didn't invent Operation Mockingbird. The CIA did.

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