It's not a conspiracy (few things are because they just don't scale well). It's more what I call "assholes with similar motives/incentives." It has a lot of the appearance of coordination without needing secret meetings in smoke-filled rooms.
That said, sometimes it actually is coordination. Just look at the JournoList scandal.
Isn't the "JournoList scandal" just "There was a Google Group that lots of journalists on the left subscribed to?"
Journalists have always talked to each other. The fact that we have an auditable mailing list of one instance of it just tells us something we already know.
"If the right forces us all to either defend Wright or tear him down, no matter what we choose, we lose the game they've put upon us. Instead, take one of them – Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares – and call them racists"
Yes, that sounds like journalists just "talking to each other."
>Isn't the "JournoList scandal" just "There was a Google Group that lots of journalists on the left subscribed to?"
No, they were coordinating messaging to get the results they wanted. That's the scandal, because they were simultaneously presenting themselves as Objective Journalists.
I don't think it's some kind of backroom secret that most media, US, Russian, or otherwise, is utter shit. It should be pretty evident from looking at its coverage of any subject of which you have a better-than-average understanding of, or from contrasting how media produced in different parts of the world looks at the same exact events. Or even from applying a little bit of critical thinking. From looking at what it gets right, what it gets wrong, and to what degree it is wrong.
Unfortunately, the alternatives to mainstream media (Q-idiots, Zero Hedge, Info Wars, random dude with an opinionated blog, some pot comedian's podcast, viral memes on facebook, etc), tend to be even worse. And for every time they may occasionally be right about something, there's another dozen times when they are laughably, pants-on-head wrong.
There's no easy solution to being informed... That you can just passively consume on your smartphone.
>Unfortunately, the alternatives to mainstream media (Q-idiots, Zero Hedge, Info Wars, random dude with an opinionated blog, some pot comedian's podcast, viral memes on facebook, etc)
The alternative to one source of dubious information is not another source of dubious information. The alternative is to have access to all sorts of information, and piece together what you think is true, using your own critical thinking skills and ability to sniff out BS.
That used to be the Internet. It is not the Internet anymore, since the Internet has, for the first time I can think of, decided that This One Particular Country is uniquely bad, for Reasons, and should therefore be unpersoned; and also has the ability to squelch any dissent because so much of the Internet has become siloed in big corporations. It's really weird, and I find it suspicious.
I would be interested in seeing perspectives of North Korean leadership and current events shared by their state media apparatuses purely for educational/entertainment value.
In general, however, truthful and accurate information is more valuable for learning about a topic. I’m not going to rely on getting that from a regime that imprisons people for sharing data and analyses that challenge the regime’s narrative. It’s inherently more untrustworthy than a society that protects free press.
When these regimes target their media for foreign audiences like you and me, it’s in their best interest to mask the origin of that content. Becoming more informed becomes harder when this context is unavailable to us.
Ranking those sources lower specifically improves the end product and results in a better informed user.
I think you're conflating "large coordinated action" with "the Internet." They look similar, but it's more that a critical mass of not-Russia is deciding to stand up to Russia because Russia's political action in this situation is some seriously beyond-the-pale early-20th-century war of conquest stuff.
There is some consolidation happening (mostly around the fact that a lot of the companies we regularly use are "Western" and most of the governments of the West have imposed sanctions on Russia that those companies have to comply with), but it's also a that the meme has taken hold that (a) Russia deserves to be opposed and (b) sanctions and cutting-off are an effective way to oppose them.
> The alternative is to have access to all sorts of information, and piece together what you think is true, using your own critical thinking skills and ability to sniff out BS.
This strategy is vulnerable to supply-chain attacks on your information sources... which is exactly what Russian information warfare carries out.
The credibility of American and European "mainstream media" is oft-maligned but rarely actually demonstrated to be suspect at a large scale in the news departments. Editorial choices of what to cover and when are the most common complaint, which is a far cry from astroturfing and falsehoods made out of whole cloth that Russian sources typically engage in.
>This strategy is vulnerable to supply-chain attacks on your information sources
There is no single strategy, there is no silver bullet. I certainly didn't intend to imply that there was. One can only make their best effort. Any strategy is going to have flaws.
>which is a far cry from astroturfing and falsehoods made out of whole cloth that Russian sources typically engage in
American mass media has historically done exactly those things. There never was a time where The News was trustworthy, unbiased, and disinterested in politics. This continues today. You can look around the Internet--at least for now--and find where people have compiled examples of mainstream American news flat-out staging a scene for the TV to give an impression that is not true, such as a long-distance zoomed in shot of a crowd that makes the few dozen protesters seem like they fill a large area.
I wouldn't downplay the editorial decisions that you mention either. That is a hugely powerful lever of control. Yanking RT or whoever from search results is exactly that, only this time it is exercised by corporate tech companies.
Finally, one can always find a reason why this thing is worse than this other thing, and one is therefore justified in doing whatever it is one wanted to do anyway. This line of argumentation rarely impresses me.
> I wouldn't downplay the editorial decisions that you mention either. That is a hugely powerful lever of control. Yanking RT or whoever from search results is exactly that, only this time it is exercised by corporate tech companies.
The costs of letting disinformation flow freely are far greater than the costs of downranking sources known for disinformation. One only need look at the antivax movement to confirm this.
> Finally, one can always find a reason why this thing is worse than this other thing, and one is therefore justified in doing whatever it is one wanted to do anyway. This line of argumentation rarely impresses me.
Good thing the responsible parties have no interest in or duty regarding impressing you, then. Whatabouters don't impress me, personally.
As I said, "one can always find a reason why this thing is worse than this other thing, and one is therefore justified in doing whatever it is one wanted to do anyway." Simply slap a "disinformation" label on it.
I hope you are similarly motivated by these airy principles when the next government employs these same tactics to do things you do not agree with, but I rather suspect you will not be.
If you compare mainstream Russian media to mainstream US media and come to the conclusion that they're equally "utter shit", then you have no idea what you're talking about.
I didn't say they are equally bad, but they are both, objectively, quite bad. They can also both be worth reading, but you need to both know the history, and think about what you are reading, why it was written, and who it was written for.
The advantage of getting information from a diverse set of random sources is that they're often pretty good at exposing the misinformation of other sources.
Mainstream sources keep talking about a particular bill and then you read, "hey, that's a misrepresentation, here's the text of the bill and it doesn't say that." They link to the text on the government website and it turns out, they're right. The bill doesn't say that.
Then the same guy starts talking about vaccines and you have to go somewhere else to see the debunk of that.
It doesn't need to be a secret. If you have a megaphone that everyone hears all the time, you will simply have more influence than people who whisper quietly.
6 companies dominate the media [1] which together make up at least 90% of all media [2]. Note that this isn't limited to just news.
