The media has a terrible time reporting on anything that requires scientific understanding to assess. The only real solution to this is to put folks with technical training in the media, and to give them real veto power on stories. The current mechanism where a non-technical writer reads a summary of technical results (e.g., a university press release) then asks a few technical contacts their opinion, is hugely flawed.
Ultimately, this road leads to the writing component of journalists being reduced to commodity status, so writers won't let it happen easily. And in any case, readers are selecting outlets based on their ability to tell a compelling story rather than get that facts right, so there's no market pressure.
journalists tend to pride being "good at everything, great at nothing." unfortunately it's tough to scale expertise when the domains are so specialized. i'd speculate this is expemplified by all the "ai" we keep hearing about lately which is probably just vanilla machine learning algos at work
The thing to wrap one's head about, in regard to the "pro-Russia"-slanting body of opinion (and not infrequent bursts of outright disinformation) that have become increasingly prevalent in the past few years (not so coincidently with the start of Putin's apocryphal 3rd term): These people think this stuff up largely on their own, because it suits their own (half-baked) intellectual agenda (faux anti-globalism, "the enemy of my enemy is my friend", and all that).
Yes, occasionally they'll suck up snippets of dialog, or memelets that might first have originated in sources actually supported by the Russian government (and indeed, there are more than a few bonafide trolls out there in certain media outlets; and of course, the occasional Putin-enchanted celebrity here and there; etc).
But by and large, this contact is incidental. And if people go around denying that the invasion of the Crimea was really and invasion, or that we "don't really know" what happened to MH-17, or (as one very educated acquaintance of mine said to me recently) "Have you read Putin's Syria speech? It was actually quite thoughtful"... it's probably not because they've been brainwashed by RT and Sputnik News... it's because that's the way they think things "ought to be" (and because they apparently don't to a lot of primary source reading... they're very susceptible to letting their intuition and gut feelings run amok over the basic chronology of recent events). Sources directed by the Russian government might provide a bit of an echo, and "fluff" this mentality up a bit... but I suspect not by all that much.
Or as the quote at the end of the article puts it: “To blame internal social effects on external perpetrators is very Putinistic.”
The "Whaddabout X?" response (that is, countering mention of an unpleasant topic by completely changing the subject) is one of the classic misdirection techniques that have, unfortunately, become so popular in recent years.
The "whataddabout x response" response has also become popular in recent years. It allows one side to do whatever they want, and at the same time call out those things when the other side does it.
That one side did a bad thing doesn't make that thing less bad when the other side does it, true. But somehow I care a little bit less when you call someone out on the thing you just did.
I'm an impartial observer here in the sense that I'm not american or russian (in fact, culturally I'm practically american). But when you say "bla bla Crimea" I think... yeah... Iraq... that's what countries do.
All I can say is, it's not about "calling people out".
It's about finding out (and at least attempting to come to rough agreement on) what actually happened. Did 3,000 or members of various branches of the Russian armed forces slip over the border, not-so-covertly, in late February and early March of 2014 to enforce the expulsion of Ukrainian government authorities, or did they not? Did their surrogates in Eastern Ukraine manage to take down a civilian airliner (inadvertently, but that's beside the point) -- and top it off by interfering with the investigation -- or did they not?
You know, simple, blameless, matters of objective reality like that. To which "What about Iraq?" response really aren't very helpful.
Or as Trump surrogate Scottie Nell Hughes put in the The Diane Rehm Show, on NPR, earlier today: “It’s kind of like looking at ratings or looking at a glass of half-full water. Everybody has a way of interpreting them to be the truth or not true. There’s no such thing, unfortunately, anymore as facts.”
Ok I hear you. Maybe I just lashed out too quickly. You're right that when you point out something like "some people deny that Crimea was an invasion", saying "the other side did X" adds nothing. But I guess that I find the hypocrisy so disgusting that I go out of my way to add it to conversations, even when not directly related :-/
Agreed, there's no end of hypocrisy and double standards, on all sides, all around. The only way I know to counter it is... to try not to echo it (as often as I may feel tempted to do so).
Instead of engaging in amateur psychoanalyzing of your educated acquaintance because he dares praise Putin's speech, you could have also chosen to read it yourself. Here, let me help you.
Thanks, but I read it when it first went around. Like a lot of things he says, it was indeed cogent and thoughtful -- but also, at its base, fundamentally warped.
Well, considering the text itself (and leaving apart one's feelings about the person speaking it): it does contain some valid points and interesting ideas -- about leveraging the "Yalta system" and the "anti-Hitler coalition"; and about the need to get beyond "bloc thinking" -- and raises valid criticism about American-led efforts to support various insurgencies in the region (and the damage caused by going outside, rather than through the international system).
One could almost imagine some peaceful, alternate universe with the leader of genuinely democratic and non-aggressive (but still not necessarily western-oriented) Russia saying such things to the General Assembly, in so many words. But this is Vladimir Putin we're dealing with, after all, and the current historical context matters greatly.
And it all unravels pretty quickly, for example on line 3:
But I remind you that the key decisions on the principles guiding the cooperation among states, as well as on the establishment of the United Nations, were made in our country, in Yalta, at the meeting of the anti-Hitler coalition leaders.
Right there, he's basically "gaslighting"† us -- blatantly attempting to fuck with our minds by asking us to accept that Yalta is a part of his nation's territory, completely side-stepping the issue of its forceful annexation less than 2 years previously, and the rather profound insult to the international system and the concept of rule of law that action caused -- while attempting to lecture on the importance of respecting established precedent and working through the international system.
So like, right there -- a huge, steaming pile of WTF, right there on the Assembly floor. But rather than stop there, he keeps piling it higher and deeper:
Whatever actions any state might take bypassing [UN] procedure are illegitimate.
Like for example own pet insurgency movement in a certain neighboring country whose name starts with the letter U, the existence of which he also continues to attempt to deny most of the time (except when he obliquely praises it). With all the completely unnecessary and avoidable bloodshed and other human suffering that has gone with it.
As to the other main thrust of what he's saying (supporting Assad as the lesser of evils... like you know, back in the good old days of the anti-Hitler coalition): let's just say things are "a bit more complicated" than the way he presents it. And that he's side-stepping some very important things -- the atrocious human rights record of the regime he'd like us all to throw our weight behind [1]; (this is time-traveling a bit, but) the conduct of own armed forces[2] in that country since that speech (for example, their use of cluster munitions, against those some UN conventions he claims to hold so sacrosanct); and this little bit of unpleasantness [3] (NSFW).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_violations_during... -- especially the part about "According to various human rights organizations and the United Nations, human rights violations have been committed by both the government and the rebels, with the "vast majority of the abuses having been committed by the Syrian government".
Seems like we could crowdsource these lists. We could sign up for the ones we like, inserting them into our blocker plug ins and let FB know which ones we cared about.
(Then we could live in even more extremely segregated bubbles!)
Maybe if the Left really went all-in on stories like this and presented the illusion of consensus and controversy, instead of scrambling to correct each other and themselves, then maybe they'd have a better answer to the Trump phenomenon. You don't see Drudge calling out Breitbart like this.
Why should the truth get in the way of getting votes and creating a liberal Trump anyway? Why not? What else should powerful Democrats take away from this year? Push a Bill Maher or Michael Moore in 2020, on the campaign promise of forgiving the debt of all citizens or something, and putting Trump in jail as a Russian spy. Mean none of it.
I can only half-heartedly say that we can stop those already trying to make this a reality. That's the world we live in now.
22 comments
[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 300 ms ] threadUltimately, this road leads to the writing component of journalists being reduced to commodity status, so writers won't let it happen easily. And in any case, readers are selecting outlets based on their ability to tell a compelling story rather than get that facts right, so there's no market pressure.
Yes, occasionally they'll suck up snippets of dialog, or memelets that might first have originated in sources actually supported by the Russian government (and indeed, there are more than a few bonafide trolls out there in certain media outlets; and of course, the occasional Putin-enchanted celebrity here and there; etc).
But by and large, this contact is incidental. And if people go around denying that the invasion of the Crimea was really and invasion, or that we "don't really know" what happened to MH-17, or (as one very educated acquaintance of mine said to me recently) "Have you read Putin's Syria speech? It was actually quite thoughtful"... it's probably not because they've been brainwashed by RT and Sputnik News... it's because that's the way they think things "ought to be" (and because they apparently don't to a lot of primary source reading... they're very susceptible to letting their intuition and gut feelings run amok over the basic chronology of recent events). Sources directed by the Russian government might provide a bit of an echo, and "fluff" this mentality up a bit... but I suspect not by all that much.
Or as the quote at the end of the article puts it: “To blame internal social effects on external perpetrators is very Putinistic.”
The USA invaded Iraq and Afghanistan and never had any consequences over it.
That one side did a bad thing doesn't make that thing less bad when the other side does it, true. But somehow I care a little bit less when you call someone out on the thing you just did.
I'm an impartial observer here in the sense that I'm not american or russian (in fact, culturally I'm practically american). But when you say "bla bla Crimea" I think... yeah... Iraq... that's what countries do.
It's about finding out (and at least attempting to come to rough agreement on) what actually happened. Did 3,000 or members of various branches of the Russian armed forces slip over the border, not-so-covertly, in late February and early March of 2014 to enforce the expulsion of Ukrainian government authorities, or did they not? Did their surrogates in Eastern Ukraine manage to take down a civilian airliner (inadvertently, but that's beside the point) -- and top it off by interfering with the investigation -- or did they not?
You know, simple, blameless, matters of objective reality like that. To which "What about Iraq?" response really aren't very helpful.
Or as Trump surrogate Scottie Nell Hughes put in the The Diane Rehm Show, on NPR, earlier today: “It’s kind of like looking at ratings or looking at a glass of half-full water. Everybody has a way of interpreting them to be the truth or not true. There’s no such thing, unfortunately, anymore as facts.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/09/28...
One could almost imagine some peaceful, alternate universe with the leader of genuinely democratic and non-aggressive (but still not necessarily western-oriented) Russia saying such things to the General Assembly, in so many words. But this is Vladimir Putin we're dealing with, after all, and the current historical context matters greatly.
And it all unravels pretty quickly, for example on line 3:
But I remind you that the key decisions on the principles guiding the cooperation among states, as well as on the establishment of the United Nations, were made in our country, in Yalta, at the meeting of the anti-Hitler coalition leaders.
Right there, he's basically "gaslighting"† us -- blatantly attempting to fuck with our minds by asking us to accept that Yalta is a part of his nation's territory, completely side-stepping the issue of its forceful annexation less than 2 years previously, and the rather profound insult to the international system and the concept of rule of law that action caused -- while attempting to lecture on the importance of respecting established precedent and working through the international system.
So like, right there -- a huge, steaming pile of WTF, right there on the Assembly floor. But rather than stop there, he keeps piling it higher and deeper:
Whatever actions any state might take bypassing [UN] procedure are illegitimate.
Like for example own pet insurgency movement in a certain neighboring country whose name starts with the letter U, the existence of which he also continues to attempt to deny most of the time (except when he obliquely praises it). With all the completely unnecessary and avoidable bloodshed and other human suffering that has gone with it.
(to be continued)
† https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_violations_during... -- especially the part about "According to various human rights organizations and the United Nations, human rights violations have been committed by both the government and the rebels, with the "vast majority of the abuses having been committed by the Syrian government".
[2] "Russian airstrikes have killed around 3800 civilians, about a quarter of them children" -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_military_intervention_...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghouta_chemical_attack [NSFW]
(Then we could live in even more extremely segregated bubbles!)
Why should the truth get in the way of getting votes and creating a liberal Trump anyway? Why not? What else should powerful Democrats take away from this year? Push a Bill Maher or Michael Moore in 2020, on the campaign promise of forgiving the debt of all citizens or something, and putting Trump in jail as a Russian spy. Mean none of it.
I can only half-heartedly say that we can stop those already trying to make this a reality. That's the world we live in now.