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Well our media only laundered two or three disastrous wars in the last years, invented and still maintain a few extremely damaging myths and isms while covering up other stories of immense significance... They're a paragon of excellence!
Let's compare to Russia Today, Hanania's chosen example of bad alternative media. What Russia Today does is slant its reporting, which is basically factual but they pick facts or perspectives in such a way as to make the West look bad and Russia look good. For example, their top story right now is 'US Navy SEAL killed in Ukraine' which is true in that it literally happened but it presents the West in a bad light.
When I go look through the sources that describe RT as disinformation, they use the same language as Scott and Hanania: misleading or incomplete information as well as just lies.
https://web.archive.org/web/20210423124457/https://dl1.cuni.cz/pluginfile.php/773054/mod_resource/content/0/hellman2017.pdf
Another article, listing various incidences of RT lying, came up with this. It is another one of Scott's 'oh we were just reporting what govt officials said so we're not really lying': https://russian.rt.com/article/130966
I trace another example back to Ofcom describing RT as 'not impartial' which is pretty obvious. Most people know that RT takes a pro-Russian perspective, it's in the name: https://www.ofcom.org.uk/about-ofcom/latest/media/media-releases/2019/ofcom-fines-rt
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0020/131159/Issue-369-Broadcast-and-On-Demand-Bulletin.pdf
They got fined for not being 'duly impartial', for not presenting alternate points of view. Great, now we're just back to Scott's definition of not quite lying but misleading using the truth. In the opinion of Ofcom, RT did not provide 'an appropriately wide range of significant views must be included and given due weight in each programme or in clearly linked and timely programs' on the Skripal case, where they imply that it's a badly executed British provocation to make Russia look bad.
Can anyone here think of substantial issues where the media does not provide 'alternate points of view' and give 'due weight'? A lot of weight is riding on 'appropriately wide' and 'significant'. In China there might well be a similar 'appropriately wide' range between the left-faction and right-factions of the CCP. You might have a wide-ranging and flourishing debate on how Xi Xinping thought can be best implemented to achieve National Rejuvenation. That's 'appropriately wide' under a certain definition.
Is there a qualitative difference between the established media and RT? RT is certainly more outspoken about its slant and choice of narratives, they're more obvious in how they pick out stories that favor what they want to say. They probably do lie from time to time, there was one link that said they were going on about microchips in worker's arms make them more pliant. Unfortunately, that video is dead. Our media also outright lies from time to time to further its narratives: https://theintercept.com/2019/01/20/beyond-buzzfeed-the-10-worst-most-embarrassing-u-s-media-failures-on-the-trumprussia-story/ (unlike literally every website I saw that listed RT's 'lies' without providing actual refutations, the Intercept actually bothered to provide screenshots of allegations and refutations/corrections. Though to their credit they mostly did manage to provide corrections.)
But is that sufficient? Does a few corrections to some demonstrably false Russiagate stories put them ahead of RT, which I haven't seen providing corrections?
When you make comparisons between Ofcom's judgement and mistakes of MSM, you've got to remember the strict rules about news reporting on television in the UK, which require no overt partisan lean, in general, and the appropriate airing of all major viewpoints, which of course newspapers and American television media are not subject to. Looking at Ofcom's requirements, it's fairly obvious that RT came up way, way short.
Absolutely, I agree that RT does not hold to those standards. But those standards could be used to class almost every media outlet as disinformation, depending on one's interpretation of the rules in question. Thus it's somewhat unreasonable for Hanania to say 'the NYT and so on do a great job compared to RT which is much worse'.
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