When weighing pphysch's media recommendations, consider that they apparently believe that applying Occam's Razor leads to the conclusion that "Washington media is blowing literally any scandal out of proportion in a propaganda blitz aimed at tarnishing Beijing 2022." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29344160
It is truly bizarre to me that someone who is taking a very pro-CCP stance will justify this with reference to propaganda that other nations create...it is really something. Every nation creates propaganda, every nation does not have media controlled by the state, every nation does not have massive propaganda departments that are present at all levels of society...they aren't equivalent, the only reason to draw the equivalence is because you understand that something is wrong but (for whatever reason) have to justify that to yourself by claiming everyone else is just as bad.
It is like the Communist criticism of democracy: oh, elections are all rigged by wealthy people anyway...said from a country with no elections and a one-party state. Ofc.
It is truly bizarre when people trick themselves into the paradox of "I don't trust Government 1 but I trust everything they or their crony media says about Government 2"
Something funny and illustrative about the PRC for me was getting into shortwave radio. Let me explain. Sometimes certain people will tell you that the CCP isn't so censorious, that it's all Western hyperbole and propaganda, that most other governments are equivalent. But then you spin your dial through the shortwave broadcast bands and, no exaggeration, every 6 broadcasts or so will be the CCP jamming another broadcast from Taiwan, the US, the UK or elsewhere. No other country on Earth, apart from NK and occasionally Cuba, treats its people with such contempt. And all this energy, literal and figurative, just for shortwave radio.
Just to play devil's advocate on that one, but maybe the Chinese understand the power of propaganda better than anyone and they don't want western propaganda disrupting their society?
What precisely does that entail? I could say that and then prevent you from hearing anything from the outside world, just keep you locked in a cellar. It's for your own good, I understand how the propaganda might affect your delicate mind.
My point is precisely that people in democracies are not forced to trust the govt. They don't have to trust the media, they are totally free. The only context in which your logic makes sense is one in which you believe the govt controls truth. You are living in a mental prison that you created.
Where is the "doublethink" in pointing out the paradox in distrusting your government yet trusting everything they say about a foreign government?
You do realize that "trusted" "unbiased" media outlets like the Reuters, AP, NYT, WaPo literally have State Department/Pentagon censors filtering any material that could be deemed sensitive to "national security"?
You are complaining about the State Department censoring news but imply that the CCP which literally controls all information isn't as bad? Again, you realise that the US being as bad as China doesn't make China good?
And, again, the doublethink is being unable to understand that the question of whether you have to trust government makes no sense in the US. You don't have to trust the govt, that is freedom. Indeed, the US govt is constructed on the principle of multiple sources of power so it doesn't even make sense to say that authority arises from one source, there are competing sources of power (ironically, this is what the CCP finds incomprehensible about the US). The US govt does not censor the internet, most of the news sources you cite are not "trusted", people are sceptical of the media, people are sceptical of the govt. The point I am making is that people are unable to sceptical in China because they have no choice, the question you are posing makes no sense in a US context.
Both Chinese and Americans are more or less equally propagandized, the difference is that the Americans don't know it.
In China you know that whatever is getting media traction has been de facto approved by the Party. In America you have virtually no idea which special interest group is currently lying to you through the media, and they will never be held accountable.
> Both Chinese and Americans are more or less equally propagandized
This implies that the US government has total control over all domestic news outlets, a great firewall that censors the national internet and helps to find and remove references to embarrassing government incidents, policy that requires all companies to hand over all user data to the state unencrypted without a warrant, and a social credit system that can prevent you from getting a job if you make negative comments about the government's policies.
I very much would like to see proof of these things, given that I can do internet searches for atrocities like the Tuskegee Experiment, I've never gotten in any sort of trouble for making negative comments about the government, and I can find many news sources that run extremely conspiratorial articles about the same.
...which you've provided exactly zero evidence for. Please provide concrete evidence of propaganda that's equal in magnitude to the things described above.
Otherwise, yes, it rather does imply, because there are very few things similar to the CCP's social credit system that have the same effect, and even fewer that could be deployed in the US without immediately being noticed.
