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Comment by hajile | Hacker News Reader

I've watched US propaganda from WW2, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, etc. I don't trust the US government or their news agencies anymore than any other propaganda. They'll pick the facts that support their side and mix in lies without a second thought.

There are three truths in war: My side, their side, and the truth.

If they feel compelled to do something, poison the well by marking sites as suspected Russian propaganda. Otherwise, let me read what I want and make up my own mind.

If I wanted my search engine to play politics, I'd just use Google.

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Any links to this? I would love to watch some old videos from that time.

Not videos, but these two articles played a formative role in my worldview (related to Iraq):

WaPo: "Irrefutable" : https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2003/02/06/i...

NYTimes: "Irrefutable and Undeniable" : https://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/06/opinion/irrefutable-and-u...

I find it extremely interesting to occasionally reread those knowing what we know now. And nothing has changed, except for now there is significant push to try to censor anything beyond such irrefutable sources.

Interesting, seems like the Russian „Firehose of Falsehoods“ model seemed to work pretty well on a sizeable demographic of even HN to make them distrust anything:

https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html

I‘m not saying I‘m blindly following either sides‘ narrative, but to me there is a clear trustworthyness hierarchy between the narrative of a society where I can still freely read, discuss and criticize these obvious pieces of misinformation (while they stay on the record!) and a society that changes its own narrative every other day and where just mentioning the word „war“ can lock me up in jail for 15 years by now.

>to me there is a clear trustworthyness hierarchy between the narrative of a society where I can still freely read, discuss and criticize these obvious pieces of misinformation

This no longer describes US society. We are better than Russia, but fall short of this description. Google actively delists information, including publications and statements from the US government and private citizens.

This extends beyond "misinformation" to categorical topics which citizens are not allowed to learn about

A society that changes its narrative every otver day sounds like America. And it is becoming less free by the day, though less by government coercion and more due to private actors falling in line behind ideology and the idea that neutrality is not just overrated, but wrong and immoral.

That the punishment is not prison but people going after your job (and often succeeding at it, and people thinking such thibgs are ok) doesn't mean the society is free.

Contrast a society where the government executes you for being gay, where it throws you in prison and a society where everyone looks at you funny and your family disowns you. The degree of coercion differs in all, but are gay people fully free in any?

It's worth noting that both of those examples were from the opinion section. Those aren't intended or required to be objective truth. And even then, they're just commenting on what Congress's position was at the time.

>It's worth noting that both of those examples were from the opinion section.

I mean that's a common refute. It wasn't news, it says opinion. Would you defend Fox News with that same argument? Also, opinion is just as curated as the news. You don't seen any editorials by David Duke on the NYT.

I finally got around to reading it.

What an absolute shock. Even though I have the benefit of hindsight and know how the story ends, it is still incredible to read the article and feel the confidence emanating from the journalist. The whole thing has an air of well-researched credibility - the professionalism you would expect from an authoritative source.

Yet it is dead wrong about the facts.

It really makes you wonder what else we hear that is blatantly false but do not question it.

It's harder to find news from that time (that time being pre-internet) that isn't based in approved propaganda than news that is.

The best thing to read about it would be Walter Lippmann in general, but starting with Public Opinion.

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