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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   35190 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 19, 2022

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Is there any particular reason we should trust the takes of "Swiss Policy Research"? A cursory inspection suggests that they are generic FUD-spreaders looking to appear more dignified.

I'm not actually objecting to the premise that American interests dominate western news media, but do you really need a shadowy conspiracy to explain that?

You want WaPo ? Here's WaPo writing about the same thing.

You can check out the OPCW Newseek post I linked by the journalist fired. He specifically mentioned the most aggressive person who took him to task over the story was a suspiciously inactive editor who mostly posted jokes and only edited politically sensitive stories. And an ECFR alumnus.

As to the SWPRS article, it could really be anything, from some pissed off Swiss journalist to an unusually slick presentation by Russian intelligence. What matters is that it checks out, largely. But does it matter ? It's boring, right. Who cares that a notionally democratic republic somehow, no matter which party wins, ends up with members of a specific organisation in key posts. Who cares that nothing ever really changes, policy wise. Voters just haven't expressed their preferences!

CFR membership isn't even secret. It's just an incredibly boring topic nobody cares about. Who gives a shit that most of every US cabinet in last 100 years are members of the same pretty exclusive club ? Bores and morons like Chomsky, that's who.

Journalists don't. Some dopey professors.

“America’s single most important non-governmental foreign-policy organization”, whose primary role is to “define the accepted, legitimate, orthodox parameters of discussion.” According to Cohen, “the CFR really is what the Soviets used to call the very top-level of the Nomenklatura.”

Journalists are carefully trained to avoid touchy subjects. Hence, you will never hear about CFR unless you go to e.g. Infowars.

The point is that they wouldn’t be there unless they had already demonstrated that nobody has to tell them what to write because they are going to say the right thing anyway. () They have been through the socialization system.”

Inspite of people like e.g. J.K. Galbraith saying things such as:

“Those of us who had worked for the Kennedy election were tolerated in the government for that reason and had a say, but foreign policy was still with the Council on Foreign Relations people.”

I have no problem believing f.ex. the local Finnish media is biased (ironically often slightly on the pro-Russian side until Russia went out of their way to burn every bridge they possibly could). Claiming that they're controlled by some US body is some next level conspiracy theory stuff, though.

You got 5 upvotes for a reply that seems to be based on a complete misreading of my post.

The link I posted doesn't claim Finnish media is controlled by CFR. It says CFR members are in every major US media organisation. Who are, in addition, owned by a very few business entities.

Although ,living in a small country and seeing the dismal state of Czech media, which is basically "publish your own takes on foreign policy stuff that are basically what WaPo / NYT said two days ago", there's really no need for control.

They (in this case 'Respekt', a leftist weekly reprint Fareed Zakaria's editorials quite often, and there's really nothing NYT prints they disagree with.

If you intend to make a claim about US media, you should say so instead of writing about "western news media". The latter clearly includes European medias and trying to claim they are "controlled by CIA" is outright conspiracy theory stuff.

What, you think that guy at Newsweek who was an 'editor' but with a suspiciously light workload is the only one European CFR alum out there ?

Depends how strongly you interpret "control". I don't know if it's CIA in particular, but it's pretty clear the Western media coordinates to hammer the same message.

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