RT Anchor Quits Over Ukraine Coverage, Says Credibility Destroyed
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This is pretty much "and in your country they hang Negroes" expanded to the scale of a general principle of media coverage: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes
As for the BBC coverage, this is one of my favourites: http://i.imgur.com/vkFqM3Q.png . It's as if the Russians crossed the sea to invade the mainland of poor old Ukraine. Compare to this: http://i.imgur.com/BXsojhV.png , notice the magically disappearing expanse of water mostly segregating Ukraine from Crimea.
Neither map is correct, that is the point I take from the parents comment.
Perhaps the worst part of all of this is that people still lap that shit up. Maybe it's because they think they are making a stand by being contrarians. Or maybe they just can't see that they have a second-option bias.
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I predict that people are going to reply to this post and start complaining about America. But this is not about the US; it is about RT.
First off, they did not get banned because they "vote gamed/spammed reddit" and they did not get banned from reddit, they got banned from r/news. Why did they get banned from r/news?
The reason that was first given was vote gaming and spam, after a lot of comments asking for proof, none was given. When the moderator who banned the site was asked why he banned the site, he said "simply because it's the Kremlin."
RT posted a good summary of this whole thing: http://rt.com/news/rt-reddit-ban-kremlin-261/
Interestingly enough, the moderator who banned them "Bipolarbear0" has recently been receiving a lot of criticism for many things, among them is censorship of the many subreddits he moderates. This was recently brough up by Glenn Greenwald himself for the censorship of his article on jtrig.
Now in regards to whether RT has been spreading propoganda is factually false. RT is funded by RIA Novosti which is a Kremlin owned news organization, it owns many, many news organizations, one of which is RT. RT was described by Putin himself as created to spread an alternative perspective on the news. What does that mean?
It means that unlike most western news organizations, RT would not use a western bias, but instead have a Russian bias. The reason many people liked RT is that it brought more independent and centrist views on the news with regards to world news, but many disliked that it had an obviously pro russian bias in russian news. As a result RT had on many people who US news would never bring on, the prime example is Noam Chomsky who has been censored from US mainstream media for years.
I digress, the main point is that RT was formerly a very independent news source with regards to world news, while having a russian bias with regards to russian news. The reason people like RT is that it offers a different perspective to the american mainstream media in a way that allows us to be able to draw our own conclusions instead of just "lapping up" US propoganda (which by the way was legalized in last years NDAA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Authorization...).
So maybe next time you analyze other news sources, opinions, and world views, you should account for cultural relativism. Because the only reason your comment is being upvoted is that it has a clear American bias.
I give major props to folks resigning over having their integrity compromised.
NPR and BBC are good because their viewership numbers don't matter nearly as much.
The problem is that also the west has its share of wrongdoings and the world will actually improve only when we start to give everyone's life - honestly - the same exact value.
It's not a competition: both states have deep systemic problems with regards to human rights, which is "worse" is meaningless. The vast majority of mainstream news in both has about a 10-to-1 ratio of paid propaganda (which includes distractions and noise) to substantive news, whether it's Moscow or advertisers who foot the bill.
So a privately sponsored propaganda outlet is oh-so-fundamentally-different, how?
As the parent says, Fox plays the tune of he-who-pays-for-the-piper. That this is Rupert Murdock and not a state really doesn't change the situation.
Edit: It is transparently obvious that Fox News doesn't put out anything and everything that will get their demographic excited and that instead Fox News puts out a cohesive line of what it's owners and their allies want it's listeners to think. That makes distinction between Fox output and RT output nominal.
And hey, at least an RT host had enough guts to want credibility. That actually speaks better for RT than Fox.
It has an obligation to be a media arm of one of the two parties in government. I'm not sure that's actually better than state-sponsored news, which is a designation that includes some some reasonably decent options like the BBC.
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The Communists wouldn't even have considered it a bad thing to be accused of engaging in "propaganda"; it was simply an alternate means of warfare in the class struggle.
But the parent comment's point is that Fox News's market position essentially requires bias; it is biased news that their market is seeking, in reaction to other media coverage biased the other way (true or false, that's the perception of the core market segment).
Similarly many progressives and liberals watch programs that starts with a bias more favorable to their views.
Even presenting fact can hardly be done without bias. You might see the same fact as "NSA SCOOPS UP HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF TEXT MESSAGES AROUND THE WORLD EVERY DAY" or "NSA stores 3% of SMS traffic captured on foreign networks" on different channels with different biases, and they might both be right.
Phil Donahue was fired from NBC for his anti Iraq war opinion.
She refused to go.
[0] - http://metro.co.uk/2014/03/05/russia-today-anchor-who-spoke-...
In a war zone is pretty easy to mistake a camera for a bazooka, those that cover war from the 'wrong angle' often end up dead, like the reuters reporters deaths exposed by Bradley Manning.
That said RT is great for getting PoVs not shared by the us government
Yes, they actually are. Imagine if Fox got state sponsorship, renamed itself to "America Today" and set up shop in Russia, trying to create viral pro-US content under a generic "AT" banner. Even people here in the state would go bonkers over it, and many of them would be Fox audience members.
You can say there's propagandizing going on, but to really examine the two next to one another there's no comparison.
> You think you exactly know what's happening in Ukraine and who's to blame? I wouldn't be that sure.
I think that's a broader point that doesn't stick anything to any particular news agency either. IMO if you want to say people should back up and examine the news more closely, you shouldn't do it from a shaky "all is propaganda at the same level as RT" podium.
Agreed. But we shouldn't treat all our sources as equally credible.
> You think you exactly know what's happening in Ukraine and who's to blame?
TBH, I don't know too much about it. I admit that, but on the other hand, I'm not the one selectively reporting the news. I'm not the one who is politically posturing on the air.
Related to Russia they are completely useless. They rival Fox News there pretty much.
Al Jazeera America is the same way. News not related to Middle East, especially Qatar are quite good. Otherwise, don't listen to them.