Wait, do you really think residents of a city 80 km away, one that they used to commute to for groceries and stuff, get their news from Tik Tok?
How out of touch are you?
For God's sake, they can practically see Kharkiv out of their window!
How out of touch are you?
For God's sake, they can practically see Kharkiv out of their window!
Heck, in many places around the world people get most local news from social media apps.
In one of these incidents the news article seemed like it might be a coverup to me so I looked up user forums in case someone leaked the real information.
In my original post I was referring to an explosion _inside_ Belgorod: https://www.reuters.com/world/ukraine-strikes-fuel-depot-rus... which may or may not be directly linked to the war; Ukraine has denied responsibility.
Imagine an alternate universe where Canada and USA went to war. Do you really think that people in Seattle would have to depend on German social media apps to figure out what goes on in Vancouver while it's being bombed? Seriously?
The US operated censorship during WW2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Censorship ; who knows what would operate during the war with Canada?
I'm not sure whether you're ignorant of the near-total state control of media in Russia and Belarus, but how do you expect them to get accurate news?
Because that thought's beyond ridiculous.
Picking a random story from the BBC front page, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-61002096 , what do you think is inaccurate about it? Do you think the MD has not resigned? That there have not been queues? That they have mistaken the names of people involved? That Manchester does not in fact exist and is a liberal conspiracy?
(The main problem with political news is disproportionate coverage, double standards of scandal, and the selection of who gets quoted - as well as a vast area of "op-ed" which is not technically news but is on the same websites.
As well as reporting on "future" or "possible" events, which by definition are difficult to be accurate about)
I intentionally didn't call "descriptions of what happened" as "facts", because that would sidetrack the discussion on how to determine what's true or not etc. Just force media to clearly separate "here's what our reporters saw" from "here's what they think it means"
But that requires an active desire to go find the truth. Such people already know the truth of the war.
But plenty of Russian citizens are just following the state propaganda right now, and are consuming zero information outside of it. If such people saw the reality of the war while casually scrolling through Tik Tok, that might make it harder for such people to deny what's going on.
Trump tried and failed to ban TikTok is exactly the difference being discussed.
Famously debunked the justifications for the Iraq war at the time they were being spread.
https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/18/sergei-lavrov-...
The Russians view Fox News as a balanced news source.
Walter Kronkite, perhaps the most famous TV anchor in US history was publicly against the Vietnam war https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Cronkite
Iraq war is where "embed" journalism became the only acceptable source where journalists were killed by US.
Fox News is the most widely watched news network in the US.
Tucker Carlson has the highest rated show on that network and has taken an anti-Ukraine stance.
The insanity that they are spewing is just a tool to create the illusion of a debate.
Russia has banned foreign media, in addition to restricting local media to publishing the government view.
Since I'm British, and you'd probably consider the US and UK equivalent for this purpose, here's a major British newspaper article arguing against NATO action in Libya: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/mar/23/nothin...
(Given https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guardian_US, it probably counts for the US anyway.)
Yes the US has problems. But Russia is just on another level considering that being a free and independent media source is literally illegal there.
Even forgetting the Pentagon Papers already mentioned, papers have published the abuses in Guantanamo and the Iraq War Logs. Plenty of articles have documented killings of civilians by US drones. And plenty of editorial boards have written articles calling on the US to end whatever current war it's fighting.
Sure, big media probably kowtows more to the government than we'd like, but they absolutely are free criticize the wartime actions of the government.
It doesn't. At all. Why?
Because it's the same dumb people, regardless of source.
It doesn't matter if they believe TikTok or any other mass media. At all.