The 'fake news' thing has almost come full circle and people are beginning to watch PBS, BBC and CNN again because the obsessive morons of the 'real news' have started losing all credibility in their unsubstantiated rantings and extremist entertainment.   Last time I saw Joe Rogan he was sitting back in a chair smoking a cigar and laughing about how Trump's property values were undervalued.   Way to go, Joe.

https://fortune.com/2023/02/15/trust-in-media-low-misinform-mislead-biased-republicans-democrats-poll-gallup/

I don't trust the article I posted, because it's media.  That said, my husband just purchased Haken tickets...and that's the truth.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/dec/22/politics-difference-between-lies-bullsh*t" rel="nofollow - https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/dec/22/politics-difference-between-lies-bullsh*t

Hi,

There are many ways to know ... but one would be looking at the incorrect place to find an answer, since the spiritual ones that know don't need the internet or your opinion to know what they know and do.

The problem arises even more, when you are not centered enough to know anything, and anything is better than nothing! And this is what the media has become, a nice gimme from the memememe generation!

Apart from lies and bullsh*t, there is also the option that many things look genuinely different from different angles or with a different back story and different experiences in mind. Different people may be convinced by even contradictory "facts" because of that.

Of course manipulation and lies do happen. But in many controversies it also pays off to try our best to understand the position from which the other person is coming, and how they come to the convictions they have, even if we don't agree with them. Disagreeing with arguments still respecting the point of view the other person has is more constructive than accusing them of lying or bullsh*tting.

 

1.  I claimed that most media is propaganda.   How was my claim propaganda?  And, who benefits from my statement? 

2. I claimed, "Lies by omission are lies".  How is that propaganda?  

An example of a lie by omission- If I claim that the police mercilessly shot my brother dead, but I neglected to report that my brother had first fired shots at the police.   

3. I claimed that "truth out of context" is a lie  How is that propaganda?  Here is a lie by "truth out of context" using statistics. 

 Suppose an anti-gun group reports that a town's murder rate increased by 300% over a ten-year period.  But they neglect to tell you that only one person was murdered in the first ten years.  And that three were murdered in the next ten years.  In addition, they neglect to tell you that the town's population doubled in the intervening ten-year period.   

 Here's an article describing the art of lying by telling the truth.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20171114-the-disturbing-art-of-lying-by-telling-the-truth

4. I admitted that I don't believe the news unless it's proven beyond a shadow of a doubt.  How is that propaganda?   I merely admitted my personal way of viewing the news.  

5. I claimed as time goes by, more people distrust the media.  Do you think my statement is untrue?  If it's a lie then you must believe that as time goes by...more people trust the media.  The second law of thermodynamics suggests that everything is changing.  Therefore the percentage of people believing the media must fluctuate.  It can't stay the same, since everything changes all the time.  Therefore, either more or less people believe the media as time goes by. 

6. I claimed that an article claimed that 50% of Americans think the media deliberately misleads them.  Then I said I did not trust the article, because it was media too.   How was my statement a lie or propaganda?  

I believe all governments use media propaganda.  Russia, China, America, EU...

Progjester, if you believe the governments that you DON'T LIKE exclusively use propaganda then you were fooled by government propaganda from a government you like. 

For propaganda to be truly successful, especially long term, you also need censorship.  Propaganda and censorship are 2 sides of the same coin.  With a high mixture of fear and desperation  you can get people to do anything.

Excellent point.

^ Y e p---   and for you 'news deniers', you are absolutely hilarious!   You think people who watch "the news" actually believe it's all absolutely true ?!    HAAA HA Ha ha !!   That is hilarious !

YOU, the fake news hounds, have become the liars, the mis-leaders.   The fools.   If I were a serious hard-working young journalist or reporter and one of you jackasses decided to call me a fraud, I'd punch you in the face and go to jail for with pleasure.   But you will continue your bitter, bizarre, paranoid campaign... as if anyone cares about your agenda.   

It's sad.

MikeEnRegalia wrote: I may have been wrong on some things, but at least I’m not consistently acting like an a****le here.

EDIT:  In the face of ignorance, a****le-ishness is sometimes the best cure.

Freudian slip?

^ If you believe in Freud.

This is what's called a red herring ... 

"and for you 'news deniers', you are absolutely hilarious" ok, who are these "news deniers"? What does the phrase even mean? Is that people who deny all news? I've never met such a person.

"You think people who watch "the news" actually believe it's all absolutely true?" No. Neither do I know anyone who thinks that.

"YOU, the fake news hounds, have become the liars, the mis-leaders.   The fools." Ok, prove it. In order to do so, you need to give an example. Who do you mean? Name one of these "fake news hounds" and give an example of a lie they've told, and how you determined that it actually was a lie.

"one of you jackasses decided to call me a fraud" Nobody has done so in this thread.

"to convince you that you can't tell truth from fiction or right from wrong" Who in this thread or my recent one has argued that position? Nobody. I said that it is impossible to KNOW anything, by which I mean that when it comes to news, we can't verify all of that ourselves - for all practical purposes we need to trust one or more sources. But that does not mean that we can't figure out which of the competing narratives are more consistent than others. And when it comes to "right from wrong", that's a completely separate issue which none here have said anything about, as I can recall.

EXTREMELY underrated band 

progaardvark wrote: Will you fight for the rights of cabbages? Will you fight for the rights of lima beans?? Sucked up into outer space, I was forced to eat planets. My poops are so large that they block out the sun. All the eggs have escaped and all we're left with are coloring books. It's the right thing to do if you have a feed bag. The core of the Earth is made out of hampers. Viewer discretion is advised.

Stop spreading your propaganda! Think about the children! They won't understand and turn to unthinkable self-harm. Just reading this makes me want to snort packets of jell-o!

Whoops!  I thought with a thread title like Propaganda, we were supposed to post propaganda, or at least something about poop or coloring books. My bad. Eating too many meteorological pants certainly puts things in perspective. I hope I brought my microfiber floor mop. May your snack bags be snack bags!

How dare you call my snack bags snack bags, you silly aardvark! May the ants you feast upon exhibit whirlings of psychedelic undulations that reverberate into meteorological metamorphosis! And how did you know i love to eat Poop Tarts?

^ I bet any real journalists that are left would agree.  Are there still any real journalists left in mainstream media, or did they all leave?  

The major news networks function more like reality shows than news networks!

^ You mean the real journalists would agree with my post, or yours-- ?  

Your actual point seems to be that he is accusing "real" journalists of not doing their job properly. Can you give a few examples of current "real" journalism in mainstream media? Then we could look at that and see whether we all agree that it is actually good, and why (or why not).

Yeah I got his point.  This is why text discussions can be challenging.

Real journalism in mainstream media?   That's easy, but I'm not really looking to debate who may or may not be real journalists in your eyes.   I think of Rachel Maddow (who just released Prequel about the history of Fascism in the US), I think of the reporters in Ukraine & the Middle east, I think of the hard-working people who produce Democracy Now.   

But again, what I take issue with is the assumption, in fact the complete belief, that other individuals ~ serious people, as serious as anyone else who takes things seriously, who know a hell of a lot more about what's going on in the world than you or I do---   y'know, who have been there ~ are not only fooling themselves but intentionally misleading everyone else.   It doesn't ring true and smacks of the current wave of "don't believe anything you see or hear or smell or read or taste or feel or perceive."

I would consider Matt Taibbi to be of professional quality.

^ So that's one for you.   There must be others... besides I don't think many people would want to tell Taibbi he's a misinforming phony to his face.

Ok, I'll bite - about Rachel Maddow: https://www.racket.news/p/rachel-maddows-shocking-new-low" rel="nofollow - https://www.racket.news/p/rachel-maddows-shocking-new-low

Please spare me the accusation of being pro-Trump (which I'm not) - this is about propaganda, and the whole Russiagate thing was, we know by now, pure propaganda. 

Atavachron wrote: But again, what I take issue with is the assumption, in fact the complete belief, that other individuals ~ serious people, as serious as anyone else who takes things seriously, who know a hell of a lot more about what's going on in the world than you or I do---   y'know, who have been there ~ are not only fooling themselves but intentionally misleading everyone else.   It doesn't ring true and smacks of the current wave of "don't believe anything you see or hear or smell or read or taste or feel or perceive."

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^ But if the perceptions are in variance, that just shows the perceptions of those individuals are at least sincere and correct to the best of that reporter's knowledge, not part of one or more scripts schemes or conspiracies, but which will certainly be incomplete and inadequate.   But that's just reality.

Shake yer booty to the REAL Propaganda in the house!

The big narratives are not only about facts but also about ideologies, and thus deeply sticking and complicated - which doesn't mean, they're impossible to deal with, it just needs quite a bit of effort.

This is the problem: If you dig just a little bit into the mainstream media news, you find lots of contradictions. I agree that none of it is trustworthy anymore, but if that is so, how can you even approach media "literacy"? 

Of course I know which event you are refering to, and I agree - but there are probably deeper layers of understanding that are more difficult to fathom and also more problematic in terms of ideology than just the direct debunking of the mainstream message covering it.

A world without ideologies would be a world of populism, selfishness and a lot of other bad things - which doesn't mean all ideologies are good.

How can you be certain?  You can't be 100% certain. However, you can manage a certainty level above 90% in many instances. Dive deep into a logic/critical thinking/statistics/ scientific method education.  Dry test your skills against hundreds of examples of empirical data.  Observe where your skills falter.  Adapt/Adjust.

 

Make sure your critical thinking skills consistently agree with empirical data. For example: I'm a biologist and RN. Biologists know that bacterial and viral diseases tend to mutate into LESS virulent forms. In 2020/2021, the media scared people into thinking COVID-19 would mutate into something even worse. Immediately I remembered mounds of bacterial/viral mutation empirical data. I thought, " Are decades worth of disease mutation data false, or is the media lying?"  

  Constantly double-check your critical thinking skills.  Does your logic alert you to lies, faulty data, and inconsistent logic? Put alternative explanations through your critical thinking grinder.  Discard faulty explanations/hypotheses.  Often, more than one explanation passes through your critical thinking shredder, relatively unscathed.  Ask yourself, " Can both explanations be simultaneously true?"  Sure...happens all the time.  On the other hand, if the explanations are contradictory, you'll need more data to decipher the truth.  

As you refine your critical thinking skills, you will easily spot patterns that confused you in your younger daze.  Also, you'll realize instances when you do not have enough information to decode the propaganda.  You'll think, " I'm missing something."  Wait for it.  Usually, an obvious solution will reveal itself.  You just need to wait for a few more cards to be played.

 If you studied the scientific method and stats, you can make predictions and apply statistical tests to measure the correlations.  Empirical data suggests a correlation.  Cause and effect are more difficult to prove, but you can at least rise above the noise and confusion and carry on like a wayward son. 

 Don't be afraid to be wrong.  It's OK to be wrong...just don't stay wrong.  Treasure times when you're wrong.  These are the most valuable.  Why? Because you just improved your critical thinking skills by discarding faulty data for more reliable data.  

Ideologies are first and foremost a matter of values. So it's much about to clarify with oneself which values one consider to be the most important, and then try to support those ideologies which best correspond to those values. And as Cindy says, it's OK to be wrong...or it's better to be wrong than not to take any stance at all.

So the question is: Can propaganda be used to advance an ideology, if it represents values you approve of? Or put more simply: Do the ends justify the means?

Your first post, beginning with "It is almost impossible to KNOW you're right about any of the big narratives of our time. ", was about the big narratives in general, and it's only that I've responded to. 

For those of you who don't trust the "mainstream media", I have two questions:

1. What is/who are the "mainstream media" according to you?

2. What are your (more or less) trusted information sources?

 

2 - My puppy's plush love toy, Moose. It's never lied to me once.

1. If it's on TV, I do not trust it.  If a pattern emerges, such that an online publication like Huffpost parrots either CNN, CNBC, or FOX...I discard it as a source. I do not trust Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not allowed by Universities or any serious publication as a source.   If you use Wikipedia on a college paper...you'll receive an F.  I don't trust any media organization owned by Google, Yahoo, or partially owned by BlackRock and Vanguard. 

If it's not printed on paper and kept in archives, I generally don't trust it. I can maybe trust some TV channels, but not internet sites, who most likely don't keep archives. If I hear something on radio, I will have to "read" it somewhere else for me to start believing it.

1. In times of heavy war tensions, journalism tends to sleep in the extablishment's bed >> see the Cold War propaganda that all western mainstream medias relayed for decades from the 40's to the end of the 80's. It somewhat disappeared from 90 until 05.

2. I tend to trust like you, Le Monde Diplomatique (but not really the daily Le Monde), but also Le Canard Enchainé (even if I almost never read it, because too Franco-centric) and Charlie Hebdo.

I better correct it to:

But I'd like to point that the term "propaganda" has been used in various and much more complicated ways than you tell us in this post of yours.

What I mean can be read in this article by Wikipedia:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda  .

Wikipedia is a major source of propaganda.  If you use Wikipedia as a source on a college paper, you'll receive an F.  

Not necessary either, you've already got the main point. The rest of it, just if you're curious. 

 

People criticise Wikipedia, but there was https://www.nature.com/articles/438900a" rel="nofollow - a study performed by Nature in which Wikipedia was compared with Encyclopedia Brittanica. In this study, it was found that Wikipedia had on average about four inaccuracies per article compared to about three for Encyclopedia Brittanica. That's not a big difference considering their reputations.

 

Colleges and universities have their own propaganda. 

If your point is simply that there are unnecessarily complex definitions of the word propaganda being used on the interwebs, I don't disagree 

^ the CIA playbook uses 80% truth poisoned with 20% propaganda similar to poisoning a gallon of fresh water with a tiny bit of polluting material.

Wikipedia is a well known CIA driven source of propaganda. In fact around the late 1800s and early 1900s the world's educational systems were changed to fit the Prussian model, the birthplace of the German Nazi regime.

The robber barons around the year 1900 were fearful of uprisings of peasants and commenced to "re-educate" through manipulated systems therefore encyclopedias and text books were rewritten and educational systems were completely overhauled.

If you are lucky enough to find an old encyclopedia set from the 1800s and compare it to what would emerge in the early 1900s you would see how radically different they are. There was a clear attempt to rewrite history around that time for the goal of complete social engineering.

When the CIA and other alphabet agencies were created in the late 1940s by Project Paperclip Nazis that the US imported, these programs escalated big time which brings us into the current era.

Wikipedia is great for subjects that aren't important to the power structure but controversial subjects are completely propagandized.

An excellent point, that I'm painfully aware of.  I take at least one University course each spring/fall semester.  If it's a biology, physics, math, or chemistry class... the propaganda is minimal.   That said, propaganda is creeping into biology when it comes to biological/political issues. 

MikeEnRegalia wrote: ^ Propaganda is simply information spread with the intention of influencing people, with the implication being that it's false or bullsh*t. I think that the usage of the word in this thread has been largely compatible with this definition. If you do not, by all means elaborate.

The fact that there's propaganda for a certain claim does in no way imply that the claim is false.

In fact around the late 1800s and early 1900s the world's educational systems were changed to fit the Prussian model, the birthplace of the German Nazi regime.

By whom?

But of course, Wikipedia is not research on such a high level as colleges and universities.

It is the fault of those who who are unable take information with a critical eye as much as it is the fault of bad information.   It blames the sources instead of the reader.   Don't like Wikipedia?  Start your own goddamned website.

Complainers.   They criticize, start conflict, and then run away and hide in their little basements to let the adults figure it out... and the Complainers run the world right now.

LOL.  Love the visual of propaganda critics scurrying away and hiding in their little basements. 

^ So do I.

But I like your apparent contempt for lies and bulsh*tting. 

Yes, the world would be so much better if people stopped asking questions and simply believed their government and its affiliated news outlets 100%. Asking questions is evil, do as you're told is good. Looking back at history it is obvious that all good things come from blindly following orders! And even if things go wrong ... it's never the fault of the people at the top - it's we idiots who simply aren't able to understand them properly! 

It is a little more complicated. Propaganda usually works like this:

"We need to do X because Y" where X is a proposed goal (which is a lie), and Y is some claim that is either a lie or bullsh*t. You are certainly correct in that when we expose the Y claim as propaganda, it does not automatically follow that the goal stated in X is false.

Example: "We need to invade Irak because they have weapons of mass destruction". The fact that they did not have WMDs does not mean there was no reason to invade the country, it just means that there is much less reason to do so, and that more people would have criticised the decision to send troops there. 

bardberic wrote: Wikipedia is an absolutely atrocious source for information

 

I strongly disagree. I find Wikipedia to be quite a good source of information, much better than what might be expected from an encyclopedia that anyone can edit. I have learnt quite a lot from Wikipedia, including from a wide range of highly technical subjects. I am often impressed by what articles are in Wikipedia. For example, there is even an article on the railway station that services the suburb of Sydney where I grew up.

 

 

bardberic wrote: Wikipedia indeed is a major offender of spreading propaganda and misinformation

 

Wikipedia is not an instrument of propaganda. That is just paranoia. Particular articles may be written and/or edited by people with a vested interest, but this issue is more about the particular topics than about Wikipedia as a whole. If you're finding propaganda in Wikipedia, it is likely because you are looking up topics that are prone to propaganda. That is not Wikipedia's fault, and perhaps shows that it is you who is biased.

 

 

^ Yeah because it's about taking in information from different sources and making the best judgement. Incorrect data?   Count on it.   Easily misled readers?   Oh yes.   

Quite frankly I don't believe anything.

Ok - so if I'm looking up topics that are prone to propaganda, I am biased? In that case, please explain the bias.

The problem with Wikipedia is that it is not a neutral platform. In theory anyone can edit all the information, but in reality the editing is heavily biased towards popular political narratives.

Here's a video with more details.

(preparing for lots of comments on who made the video, and hardly any comments on the points made)

 

The bias to which I refer is the bias towards topics that are prone to propaganda. There are millions of topics on Wikipedia of which the vast majority would not be prone to propaganda. To repudiate the entirety of Wikipedia on the basis of a very small proportion of it is a strongly biased viewpoint.

 

It is the nature of politics to be propagandising, and I challenge you to find any political discussion that is free of bias, either to the left or to the right. People in the wider community do tend to lean either to the left or to the right, so why should Wikipedia be any different, especially given that it is catering to those people in the wider community? In other words, you are accusing Wikipedia of a problem that is really a problem with the wider community.

 

That's not a "bias". You are essentially saying "Wikipedia does not contain a lot of propaganda in all the areas which are not prone to propaganda". I am saying "Wikipedia contains a lot of propaganda in all the areas prone to it". Those two statements are compatible. I am not saying that Wikipedia is generally unreliable, since, as you correctly point out, the vast majority of entries (numerically speaking) are not prone to propaganda. However, people are also using wikipedia to look up hot topics like the history of the state of Israel, the Ukraine war, Covid 19, and so on. It is these topics that we are discussing here. On those, I would say, Wikipedia is just as unreliable as any major news outlet, but whereas it is obvious that news outlets are biased, Wikipedia appears like a neutral source, which makes it worse IMHO.

And don't even get me started on "fact checker" websites ...

I prophesy disaster wrote:   It is the nature of politics to be propagandising, and I challenge you to find any political discussion that is free of bias, either to the left or to the right. People in the wider community do tend to lean either to the left or to the right, so why should Wikipedia be any different, especially given that it is catering to those people in the wider community? In other words, you are accusing Wikipedia of a problem that is really a problem with the wider community.

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Agreed on this (especially since I am working in a scientific research institute)

When first starting out PA, Wiki was still relatively unreliable, because in its infancy; but 20years down the line with all its corrections, it's become reliable.

Even if I totally agree that Wiki is definitely not enough for a thesis: I wouldn't even cite it as a reference, for fear of losing credibility points.

I remember some members trying to introduce a PA membership page on Wiki in 2006, and it got refused within a few hours, which proved that plenty of serious collabs (even back then) carefully overseeing its reliability.

====================

But as far as reliability of other encyclopedias - beit Britannica or Larousse (for french) -  it's very relative, because of the bias taken for writing the articles and thinking of whim will use them. The Occidental PoV will probably be minoritized as globalization keeps going.

History books have always been written by the "winners". There is a good chance that Australian, Russian, Canadian or Unitedstatian history books of the national history will dramatically change regarding their expansion/colonization of the internal borders. European history books will probably also be partially changed in the empire stages. 

For ex, most likely, within decades to come, Spain's national day will be changed as not for the discovery of the Americas  - because this means nowadays the start of a genocide (whether involuntary or sometimes plannified)

I'd be very much surprised that in 50 years' time, Britannica or Larousse are still around and their circa-millennium  or today's editions are still worthy of even reading.

New and old propagandas 

.