It must be a constant source of humiliation for journalists that have to pretend to swallow something obviously absurd, so that they can appear to be impartial. As we’ve seen since 2018 that does not result in good public policy unless your idea of good public policy comes from a Monty Python sketch.
Happy July 4th, American imperialists!
If you use the same trick over and over, it becomes routine and eventually the people you’re trying to trick begin to play against your game, instead of falling for it.
Reporting “truth” is a trickier problem than we might think. [stderr] Our interpretations are subtly, or unsubtly, adjusted by the reporters’ selection of words.
Warning: War, Death, Sam Harris
Here’s the part that horrifies me: when I hear “wedding party hit by air-strike” I assume that it’s notable because it’s a wedding party, and that what we’re seeing is just probability in action.
This is a useful chart, if you find yourself discussing migrant arrests.
In The Year of The Pig one of the striking moments, which I focused on, [stderr] is when several of the people promoting the US’ involvement in Vietnam used the same construction for their arguments; it was clear that they were tapped into a common source – presumably what are now called “talking points memos” produced by government agencies in order to get out a consistent “message” to the public.
The Soviets briefly were ahead of the US in the “space race” and took maximum propaganda mileage from it.
In the Year of The Pig [wc] was one of the first feature-length documentaries attempting to reveal the foolishness and corruption of the Vietnam War.
A recent FOIA released an archive of NSA motivational posters.