There's "biased" ... and then there's "deliberate lies told to enlist the people who believe them into sacrificing themselves to harm others."
this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2023
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politics
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Bias and obvious bias
Part of the issue and the assymetry we see in US partisan politics? There is not a balanced media diet for those on the right.
If my grandpa watches 7 hours of Fox News a week, only reads the headlines on the Sunday paper, and then spends another 3 hours a week reading the OAN website...
How does that compare to me? If I watch effectively 0 TV news but daily read WaPo, NYT, the Atlantic, Slate, and then aggregators like Fark and Lemmy?
I forget where, but somebody analyzed all the news on the right wing sources and they are all telling exactly the same story, whereas the more mainstream or even left wing outlets are all telling more unique stories through their editorial choices.
Right wing media is a different, insular beast.
Right wing media is fascist now. Centrist/ liberal media is corporate funded to support capitalism. Left wing/ socialist media is scant and constantly derided. Until there is a sufficient voice from average working people, media manipulation will continue to be a problem. Consider the major newspapers and major news networks coverage of climate change and labor organizing/worker’s rights. Until recently, most news downplayed the climate crisis and still barely covers the problems of actual working people. Choosing instead to focus on party politics and “the economy/ Wall Street.” We must demand more and better coverage of topics that affect the average person and disadvantaged communities. If you can’t trust your government and the media of society, you end up with this.
Another key differentiator is that right wing media (generally) is free and left wing media (generally) is paywalled.
There are exceptions, but man, when I hit a WaPo article taglined "Democracy Dies in Darkness..." (paywall), I want to send them an angry note telling them they are part of the problem.
Ever see this nutter site? beforeitsnews.com? Great example and I can't help but wonder how much of that bullshit is "informing" Facebook, Twitter and YouTube posts.
What a terrible "article" that is. Pathetic.
Subject to bias? Yes. Propaganda?
Propaganda is biased + an agenda.
If someone writes a 20 page screed on why X is bad and Y is superior, that may be an inflection of bias, it's not propaganda unless there's a larger agenda at play.
It would be like saying all violence is terrorism. No, not quite. Terrorism is violence + an agenda.
the term terrorism, itself, is loaded language.
Capitalism perpetuates itself through propaganda. Corporations own media companies for profit to serve capitalism. Media personalities and writers display bias unconsciously for their corporations under capitalism. Therefore, all media is propaganda. They don’t even know they are doing it.
In media throughout capitalist countries, such as the United States, "socialist views are excluded from American public discourse" and capitalism is portrayed as an economic system that is simply "equated by definition with political democracy, freedom, and patriotism," writes media studies scholar Donald Lazare.[14] Capitalist propaganda is "reinforced by the mantra that there is no alternative, [which] ensures that any questions concerning (alternative) economic realities are considered as secondary, incidental, indulgent, and ultimately redundant."[15] As scholar Jason Lee describes, "the propaganda of capitalism has worked so well that most people, of the left and the right, find it inconceivable that any other system should exist, and this is the aim of the ideology."