Louie said:
May I ask what should then be done with that "propaganda"? Because it would be absolutely horrible if we were to censor news outlets because they favour socialism or are pro Trump or whatever. You can't label an outlet fake news because it has certain political views. In the US elections most media outlets had lots of negative Trump reports and clearly favoured Clinton - is that propaganda already? Or many outlets saying "Clinton has a 99% chance to win the election", is that fake news already? I think it's really hard to justify censorship in any way. No matter what gets censored it always helps a certain political cause. Censor socialist outlets and you help the conservatives. Censor Dead or Alive Beach Volleyball and you help the feminists. Censor anti-climate propaganda and you help the green parties. Thus, everyone will want to label something they dislike "Fake News". |
The news should report the facts, all of the facts, and nothing but the facts. If those facts support one candidate over another, then that is not propaganda. It simply means reality is biased against one candidate over another. All opinion pieces in newspapers, and cable T.V. are propaganda to some degree or another, unless the outlet gives equal time, representation, and space to both sides of an issue. For example: Let's say Fox or CNN, or NBC decides to gather up a panel to talk about global warming. Now let's say they bring in a ratio of 5 to 1 either for or against global warming. The minority (whichever it may be) gets hammered by the other five people on the talk show. That is propaganda. A better approach would be to bring in just two experts, one that agrees, and one that disagrees. In the 80's and 90's broadcasters were stuck with a fine for doing this. Republicans and a few Democrats decided to do away with those fines. That gave rise to Fox News, with its reporters that scream over any liberal guests, and cut their mikes.
Anyway I hope that answers your question of what we should do. Simply go back to fining offenders.
Any outlets saying that Clinton had a 99% chance to win the election were blatantly lying. The real odds were more like 33% for Trump and 66% for Clinton. That's what sites like 270 were reporting based on detailed analysis.
It's not about censoring left or right outlets. There should be no left or right outlets, and before 1996 all news networks were simply news. If any network decided to start making propaganda they were struck with fines. But again, after these fines were done away with Rupert Murdoch started Fox News and ran a 24/7 propaganda network. Slowly other networks joined in as a reactionary tactic, and news became more about ratings than actual news. Nine times out of ten, whenever a right winger says that mainstream media is biased, what they really mean is that reality is biased. Some things such as evolution, man made global warming, price controls, and the success of communism are not up for debate. Ninetynine percent of climate and evolutionary scientists agree, because the facts overwhelmingly line up with their assessments. It doesn't matter what religious idiots, or oil companies think. Nintetynine percent of economists agree that price controls, and communism are terrible for the economy. It doesn't matter what New Yorkers with rent control, or Bernie supporters think. The difference here is that you won't hear liberals complaining that the MSM doesn't report on the successes of extreme socialism, because they know that's crazy talk. They secretly know that their extreme positions have been rejected by reality, and understand why the MSM doesn't give their ideas the time of day.
Last edited by Cerebralbore101 - on 07 January 2018
