this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2023
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Sure, which is why I try to get multiple sources.
The problem with countries like China (and probably Russia) is that their governments can directly interfere with news reporting. That's possible to an extent in western countries, but it's a lot less likely to happen without journalists making a big fuss because of our cultural and legal freedoms of the press.
I'm hesitant to believe anything when I have a single source, and I'm more hesitant if multiple sources are from the friendly countries where the governments have direct control over the media.
I agree with your thoughts on reading multiple sources, but in regards to your trust for Western over other countries see the Propaganda Model, specifically on sourcing, ownership, and anti-communism/fear
I'll have to check it out. I'm a fan of Noam Chomksy (esp. in linguistics), I just don't agree with a lot of his political conclusions.
Manufacturing Consent is a seminal work and consists of actual "case studies" where they contrast the coverage of similar news events occurring in communists countries at the time vs countries/groups allied with the US. It's pretty eye opening.
It's still applicable today, maybe even moreso with the increasing rate of media consolidation.
Doesn't the US have a track record of literally assassinating journalists who dig into things they aren't supposed to?
Doesn't the US also have a track record of hunting down whistleblowers around the world? Of extrajudicial surveillance and illegal international surveillance and mass surveillance?
Not sure the Western world has a great role model there.
Yes, the US is far from perfect, which it why is a good idea to get news from a variety of sources. I try to read about the Ukraine war from other perspectives, for example.
But those instances are:
So in general, journalists have much more freedom to criticize their government here in the US vs Russia or China, and to me that has value. It's not perfect and you can certainly get a lot of misinformation through strong biases here (i.e. many people assume their country is in the right), but it's way better in pretty much any western country than a country with a much more authoritarian government.
You can argue pretty much the exact same three points about government intervention in journalism everywhere.
Not really selling your point.
Your argument just seems like classic bothsidesism. Yes, western media isn't perfect, but western news media is far more free than Russian or Chinese media. So I'm gonna have a lot more skepticism about Russian and Chinese media than I do with US or European media.
In this case, I'd prefer something outside both regions. So maybe Indian news? Or my go-to, Al Jazeera.
So our standard is... "we're killing journalists and stifling perspectives, but not as much as the other guys?"
Great. I guess Western news media is driven by profits instead of government objectives, which makes things so much better.
No, our standard is, "we're killing journalists (very rarely) and stifling perspectives (rarely), and that's not okay, but at least that's just not expected like it is with the other guys."
That's under the assumption that perspectives are only rarely stifled...
Which I'd love to think is true, but really is a question of whether you consider "publishable but no one will read it" to be a stifled perspective or not.
What it really comes down to is how often journalistic suppression actually happens. I like to look at the extreme examples, such as the Edward Snowdon case. There was certainly some interference there, but that's surely nothing compared to what would happen if something similar happened in China or Russia.
The bigger issue that we have, imo, is that major media companies self-censor because they want to drive a narrative. But there's still high quantity journalism going on, you just need to look outside of the major news networks.
But if your high quality journalism only reaches 1% of the population while the other 99% of the population considers it fake news, what's the point? It'll have no political impact anyway, which defeats the purpose of journalistic integrity because good journalism isn't getting attention or shifting public perception.
You don't need to convince 99% of people, you only need to convince about 10% or so. Something like 80% of voters will vote a straight ticket in the US and ~10% confirmed they would split their vote.
The majority are going to go for the biased media of their choice that tends to support their side. That's just basic tribalism, and it's alive and well in the US and probably the rest of the world.
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Here's a media bias chart. As it turn out, I tend to get my news from Reason (I consider myself Libertarian, so it's my biased news of choice), BBC, The Guardian, and The New York Times, and occasionally a few others on that list. I rarely read/watch anything from the left or the right, though occasionally I'll read an article or two from The Daily Mail or Huffpost. I also like my local independent journalism (seems to be left leaning; I'm in a very conservative area, so I think it balances out).
There's a lot of variety and scrutiny in the US, and I'm sure the same is true in other western countries. Yes, sometimes governments interfere when there's a big news piece they don't like, but the truth eventually comes out. I can't say the same is true for Chinese or Russian news because those governments have so much control over their media vs western countries.
Anybody who wasn't born yesterday realizes that western governments constantly interfere in news reporting as well. What's worse is that all the news is owned by a handful of oligarchs, and entire books have been written on how western media manipulates public opinion. Here are a couple you should read: