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PaperclipPerfector  2yr ago (text post)   37634 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 10, 2023

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Is the BBC state sponsored media? N. S. Lyons says yes

And while the BBC claims it can operate with nearly three-quarters of its funding coming from the government (whoops, I mean "the public”) and still remain independent in its coverage, this is clearly nonsense. Any organization that relies overwhelming on a patron for its continued financial existence will do what that patron wants. Obviously. And thanks to leaked emails and WhatsApp messages we can peruse a real time record of how the government leveraged this deference during the pandemic, with, for example, an “IMPORTANT ADVISORY” email sent from senior BBC editors to reporters informing them that Downing Street was “asking” if they could please avoid using the word “lockdown” to describe shutting people in up in their homes – and thus only “curbs” and “restrictions” appeared in BBC headlines the next day. This has hardly been limited to pandemic exceptions. As one BBC inside source told The Guardian: “Particularly on the website, our headlines have been determined by calls from Downing Street on a very regular basis.”

Edit: Paging @SSCReader per this earlier discussion

I largely agree, although I still think there’s some value in holding these people to the same standards that they hold their counterparts in Bad Countries like Russia and Iran to. If you were to make this argument as a defense of Russia Today, saying, “The fact that they’re funded by the Russian government is irrelevant; the viewpoint advocated by RT is due to the kinds of people who work for RT, and the people who listen to it,” there is no chance in hell that the NPR audience would consider that defense remotely credible.

So, if they want to believe that “state-affiliated media” is a valid and useful category, then pointing out the obvious parallels is a useful way to humiliate and undermine them. I’m not necessarily saying this is the best approach - I think that maintaining intellectual coherence and actually having good arguments is probably more important than “owning the libs”, although my confidence in that view is fraying - but I do think it’s probably the best thing that Elon Musk can do, because these people are actively trying to destroy him, leveraging every bit of sophistry and media manipulation that they can muster; for that reason, Musk’s only relevant goal right now is to humiliate them, rob them of their power to control the narrative, and demoralize their audience in any way possible.

But NPR's quality is leagues above russian and iranian state media. And the latter are regularly censored on matters of minor corruption in ways the former is rigorously guarded against. There really is a kind of "state-run media" that the soviets had, and that Russia today has, that the US doesn't have today. Trying to pave over that distinction as an 'own' makes your concerns, even when otherwise correct, look silly and easily dismissible.

Musk’s only relevant goal right now is to humiliate them, rob them of their power to control the narrative, and demoralize their audience in any way possible

... It's just musk doing yet another epic musk thing, like "legacy verified. may or may not be notable". Robbing power? NPR continues to post exactly what they did a month ago, the same people as last month trust it or don't trust it, etc. Nobody's been demoralized.

(I didn't expect NPR to ragequit twitter though, that was dumb)

But NPR's quality is leagues above Russian and Iranian state media.

Do you really believe that?

... yes? Does not-being-progressive mean I must never put a progressive institution and a positive word in the same sentence? Must I be like the sibling comment who thinks the $recent_left_wing_issue is the WORST THING TO EVER HAPPEN IN HISTORY?

NPR has problems - boring and often misleading 'general news' reporting, biased towards democrats, 'obnoxiously woke', whatever else. But we're comparing it to this. Or Russia Today. I'd drink soy milk over sewer water.

I really do think NPR is uniquely bad here. It’s truly mind-numbing to listen to, whereas something like CNN isn’t.

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