In Russia, 50% of News Must Be Happy 551
Several readers sent us to the New York Times for disturbing news on Russia's vanishing press freedoms. The story tells of how one of the few remaining relatively independent radio outlets in Russia recently acquired new managers, reportedly loyal to Vladimir Putin. Quoting: "At their first meeting with journalists since taking over Russia's largest independent radio news network, the managers had startling news of their own: from now on, they said, at least 50 percent of the reports about Russia must be 'positive.' In addition, opposition leaders could not be mentioned on the air and the United States was to be portrayed as an enemy, journalists employed by the network, Russian News Service, say they were told by the new managers, who are allies of the Kremlin."
A nice thing (Score:4, Interesting)
Is this such a bad thing? (Score:5, Interesting)
Enough is enough. Let's do the Putin thing.
America is an enemy? (Score:2, Interesting)
reporting standards (Score:4, Interesting)
In Russia, editors choose according to whether they will keep their job or not.
Fortunately, in the west we have 100 cable news channels to choose from...In Russia their are 2
Martial Law in Beijing... (Score:3, Interesting)
This news from Russia makes me wonder whether USSR isn't dead, but, as Calvin and Hobbs liked to say, "transmorgrified". If so, then Americans have been deceiving themselves that they have somehow "won" the Cold War.
Re:No enemy? (Score:1, Interesting)
Revolutions, end up having little effect in the long term. The communists overthrew the totalitarian monarchy, but ended up a totalitarian "bureaucracy" waving the red flag, and now gravitating back towards the same pattern again.
At least, with free elections there is actually room for the culture to evolve I guess. And I shouldn't say evolve, since it often implies progress. Things might just as well deteriorate I think.
Let's call a spade a spade.... (Score:1, Interesting)
If there's anything that you can say about US media it's that it's sensationalistic, fearmongering, and generally devoid of any parts of the story that aren't going to create a visceral response. The job of the media is to provide an objective and balanced account of whatever the story or issue may be...and American media does a pretty crappy job of it. Don't agree? Try paying attention to other media sources around the world. It's not to say that all the others aren't using the same techniques to sell their papers or their stations but US media is to worst of the bunch. They are deliberately engineered to instill fear and panic in the population and keep them glued to the very sets that are causing their panic in the first place.
So before we start pointing fingers at Russia (and make no mistake... fingers MUST be pointed) let's maybe consider what we can do here at home to improve our media.
What I'd LOVE to see is a news analysis program. Someplace where you can actually get both sides of the story... someplace that reveals the bias in the various media sources and makes people FINALLY think critically about what's being presented to them as facts.
Re:tag: backintheussr (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Um, Didn't you just commit treason? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I might actually pay attention... (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh, come one. Just yesterday I tuned on to Fox just to catch a report about two cutest little kittens abandoned behind a dumpster and then rescued by some good people. I am not joking.
who owns the Soviet media? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:And in America... (Score:1, Interesting)
The long road to democratic fee market (Score:4, Interesting)
The biggest problem in Russia is that things like Agriculture have never bee privatized. Privatizing agriculture would seem to be a great idea to us in the west, but if Putin were to do it in Russia, it would destroy the country. Many industries have been privatized in Russia, with disastrous results. Basically the government divvied up the cooperatives and companies by distributing stock to citizens, hoping that citizens could take ownership and make a profit. What happened is that organized crime and other opportunists saw an ideal opportunity for a grab. They went around and offered citizens much less than the face value of the stock. Since the stock had no value to the average person, most people happily sold their stocks for pennies on the dollar. This has led to major problems with monopolies and even crime organizations. Remember, these people have never had any experience with a western-style economic system, let alone a democracy. They were just no match for the wits of the opportunists. Hence agriculture in Russia will not be privatized anytime soon. Can you imagine the massive land-grab?
Anyway, this is the major reason why Putin is reluctant to allow Russians to experience this great thing we call Liberty. It's not that he wants to be a dictator or stalin, but that he recognizes Russia can't transform herself all at once. I think it will take at least 2 generations myself. Along the way, Putin has drawn the ire of the western world and many critics at home.
I am not going to condone his actions. I just want to make sure we all understand the underlying situations and conditions that exist in Russia and the former republics of the Soviet Union. If they move to quickly to western-style economics and politics, chaos will ensue. Think 1930's mob rule in America, but only with 21st century technology, money, and power. It's a precarious situation, and very delicate. If Putin allows media too much power, and allowed them to print too many doom and gloom, down with the government stuff, not only will his government fall, but the entire country will fall into anarchy and mob rule. Is there another way? I'm sure there is. But let's make sure we have a full understanding before we spout off on this subject. Reacting prematurely is the very thing that leads to the fallacies that Bush used in justifying the Iraq war
Re:who owns the Soviet media? (Score:1, Interesting)
Also, expressions of "extremism" on the Web in Russia can be punished by prison. Think that's capitalism at work, too?
Re:The USA doesn't have freedom fo speech either (Score:3, Interesting)
And whoever modded this troll? You're delusional. Off-topic? Yes. Flame-bait? Certainly. But not trolling.
Anyway on subject: Although silly and pointless, the regulations do contain one decent idea! Half of all news should be positive. Now, I'm not advocating ignoring the bad news. No, that is why the idea is insane. No, I mean find some positives. Those stories we used to see about how the blind woman with the ironically blind seeing eye dog found love in a deaf man with no sense of touch? Although typically nauseating, are a wonderful, and necessary break from the rest of the world. To be honest, if you have such a bleak point of view that you think happy news doesn't matter? Why bother living?
Re:Enforced vs. voluntary censorship (Score:2, Interesting)
The approval rating argument just doesn't carry weight...afterall it was only a few years ago that the candidate with the highest approval rating in the actual polls lost the election in the US. I've yet to see that happen in modern Russia.
As a Canadian, I occasionally see some US news - CNN, ABC/NBC/CBS evening news (I don't watch Fox), and newspaper articles from the New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, and the Chicago Sun-Times. With the exception of the latter, the coverage is uniformly critical of the Bush administration and its policies, regardless of that policy - the war, the environment, the economy, you name it. So, if there's voluntary censorship, I can't say I see it up here. And I say that as someone who thought Bush was correct to go into Afghanistan and Irag, but thinks he and his administration have made serious errors since, especially with the conduct of the Homeland Stasi^W Security. So while I don't hate the guy, I'm no Bush-loving sycophant either.
I agree with you that approval polls are useless. People will often lie to pollsters, telling them they support the most politically correct candidate, only to vote their conscience in the booth. I sincerely wish you Gore-lovers would get over it. The guy's dad was a US senator in Tennessee, Gore himself had been a senator from TN, and he was sitting vice-president in 2000, *AND HE STILL COULDN'T CARRY HIS HOME STATE*. Cripes, who was the last Democrat presidential nominee who couldn't carry his home state - Mondale? Four electoral votes from TN, and the whole Florida controversy would have been moot. But I bet Gore's pre-election approval ratings in 2000 in TN were higher than Bush's.
I'd be willing to let this sleeping dog lie, too, but my 13-year old was exposed to Gore's Moore-esque "documentary" (i.e. one that plays fast and loose with the truth) at school earlier this month. When I asked for equal time to present the opposing arguments, it was denied. Meanwhile, Kilgore-Trout cruises around the globe in his private jet, spewing out more emissions on one trip than most of us do in a year, runs a notoriously energy-hungry house (especially when compared to Bush's eco-friendly Crawford home), drives around for the most part in limousines with at least two police escorts (care to calculate the carbon footprint of that?), all of which I could stand (it's the same lifestyle that Brangelina, Bill Gates, and others live except for maybe the police escorts), *BUT* K-Trout does so while charging $100,000+ per speech to tell all the rest of us that *WE* have to change the way we live, not him. I don't care whether you are Republican or Democrat - how can you stand to listen to this opportunistic, Internet-inventing, hypocrite?
Re:And in America... (Score:1, Interesting)
Ummm, these aren't very nice countries, by any objective measure.
Go ask Human Rights Watch, or Amnesty International. Are they also victims of the American mass media?
Who modded this idiot insightful?
Re:The USA doesn't have freedom fo speech either (Score:2, Interesting)
"Yelling fire" isn't a good example anyway. You're allowed to "bear arms", but except in extreme circumstances, you aren't allowed to kill or injure people with them. This is constitutional: the laws against murder are independent of whether you did it with a gun. Similarly, you aren't allowed to kill or injure people with words, which is what happens if you yell "fire" in a crowded place.
Re:Enforced vs. voluntary censorship (Score:2, Interesting)
I imagine I'd be just as annoyed if all of a sudden Democrats started harping about how Bush "claimed he scaled Mount Everest in a single day! What a maroon!". Sure, it bears no resemblance to reality, but repeat a lie long enough...
yes, we need shock value (Score:2, Interesting)
The other people just repeat what they saw on the news or roll their eyes when the subject comes up.
If people want to confine their thinking on a subject to what they see on the news then let them see American caskets.
The war will be going on long enough as it is... only public attention beyond the headlines can get the oversight we need to keep the situation from turning into our very own little waterloo. Failing proper public attention we need shock value.
Regards.
Re:Probably a Good Idea (Score:5, Interesting)
For example how often do we hear that the murder rate in the US is the lowest since 1966?
Or that the robbery rate in the US is the lowest since 1968?
Or that the rate of vehicle theft in the US is the lowest since 1968?
Or that the rate of rape in the US is the lowest since 1977?
It must not be reported very often since most Americans seem to believe that they are living in some kind of unprecedented Mad-Max dystopia that requires their children to be on lockdown 24/7.
Stats from: http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/ucr.htm [fbi.gov]
Re:tag: backintheussr (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Enforced vs. voluntary censorship (Score:2, Interesting)
You're one of those people that has just enough knowledge to be dangerous, but not enough sense to use your brain to find out more. The saddest part of the whole "took the initiative in creating the Internet" debacle is that while such a claim, if he HAD in fact said it, is not 100% true (a major national computer network pre-dated his work), it's awfully close. Before Al Gore's work, the "Internet" was used for CompSci and pure science data transmission. Ask anyone who's not a complete geek what the Internet is, and they'll start prattling off about Web sites and eBay and that sort of junk. Without Al Gore, that Internet might not exist, and even if it did, it probably would have taken significantly (read: years) longer to come about.
What would the late 90s-early 2000s have been like then, I wonder =P. You can read more here:
http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue5_10/wiggin
I recommend reading the part about his legislation, and Vinton Cerf/Bob Kahn's letter.
Re:The USA doesn't have freedom fo speech either (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:No, you shut up, moron (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Enforced vs. voluntary censorship (Score:2, Interesting)
I would recommend to watch "the great global warming swindle" (available at your favourite bt tracker).
Regardless what your stance on the issue is, one should always listen to both sides. This documentary contains lots of interviews with (chosen) climate scientists about their views on the issue. One intersting argument they make there is that the levels of carbon dioxide usually rise *after* the warming, and not before (and maybe this is one fact GP claimed that Gore was fast and loose with?). An alternative theory for the cause of global warming pointed out in the documentary is the relation between sunspots and temperature (like for instance the Little Ice Age and the Maunder Minimum [wikipedia.org]).
Intresting.