Hacker News Reader

Comment by sajithdilshan | Hacker News Reader

Don’t forget the mandatory radio broadcast fee every household has to pay even if you don’t read or watch any of those propaganda channels

View on HN

And if we are comparing USA vs Germany, taxes to gas (car fuel) which is much more expensive in the EU, because of taxes.

Is there any news source you wouldn't call propaganda?

Not really, there are certain very well researched and written articles which present the facts as they are and letting the audience to use their own judgment and form an opinion in few news outlets. But most of the time every news outlet is just pushing their own political, cultural or doomsday agenda.

The German public broadcasters, especially the Tagesschau, are the worst. Also this is a really good video that explains how crazily the public broadcasters are creating the propaganda in a subtle manner to push their own agenda rather than being neutral. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46MP_G8CKFA)

The solution to this is making sure to watch news from opposing viewpoints, not avoiding news though.

I watched the first minutes of the video, but the narration is pretty cringe, I couldn't bear it. It didn't say anything about subtle propaganda, seemed to be mostly Schadenfreude.

Check the timestamp from 4:00-5:10 and 5:50-6:30. One would actually think that those were just random people on the street and their opinion, but they were strategically placed insiders.

the key criticism seems to be that they interviewed people on the street that turned out to be either known political activists or their own employees or contractors. in other words instead of asking random people they picked people they knew.

one criticism i didn't get towards the end is that one particular politician would always give the same response to the same question. that confused me because why wouldn't she? why is that poor? doesn't make any sense to me. but that's unrelated to the criticism of the TV reporting.

Same in Denmark, and it really boils my piss. DR (Danmarks Radio) is 80% trash. If I was dictator in Denmark I would abolish it on the spot. I won't deny that DR produces things that are not trash or only mildly trash, but I have no interest in it. People who want it can fund it themselves. State financed reality TV is an abomination.

It doesn't seem to be the same then as in Germany. German public broadcast is arguably fine, when compared to private TV and radio broadcasters, many private newspapers and probably all social media platforms.

I don't know how bad it is in Denmark, but keep in mind that journalism that is not subject to profit seeking and independent on whatever billionaire owns the outlet, is not only valuable because you personally consume it, but also because it shapes the public discourse and thus indirectly may have influence on political decisions.

i agree that the private TV is no better, and the public TV has some good stuff. but what confuses me every time is that the law in germany expressly forbids the public funding of printed newspapers because it could be used as a propaganda tool but the same law does allow the funding of radio and TV and internet publications (the last is now really weird of you consider that printed newspapers are now online too)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com