

The NSA, Germany, and journalism - phreeza
http://buzzmachine.com/2013/08/20/the-nsa-germany-and-journalism/

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mikegagnon
I am surprised the author did not discuss Herman and Chomsky's propaganda
model:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model)

I believe it accurately predicts mass media's biases in this situation.

The propaganda model says that propaganda is an emergent phenomenon in
democratic societies. Similar to how macro ant-colony behavior emerges when
individual ants follow simple pheremonal rules --- propaganda emerges when
journalists, managers, PR agents, government officials, etc. each optimize for
their local objective functions.

The relationships between all the agents in the system are complex, but
ultimately, according to the propaganda model, mass media's incentives align
with business and government incentives.

~~~
einhverfr
>The propaganda model says that propaganda is an emergent phenomenon in
democratic societies.

This looks like almost exactly what Hilaire Belloc proposed in his 1918 book
"The Free Press."

~~~
mikegagnon
I just read a review for "The Free Press."
[http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/18/opinion/18tue4.html](http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/18/opinion/18tue4.html)

To me it seems like they share some commonalities, but also have significant
differences.

Belloc's main thesis seems to be that the Mass Media is "the true governing
power in the political machinery of the State, superior to the officials in
the State, nominating ministers and dismissing them, imposing policies, and,
in general, usurping sovereignty — all this secretly and without
responsibility."

I believe Manufacturing Consent somewhat agrees with that thesis, but
Manufacturing Consent goes further by explaining how business interests align
with mass media and government, and how it results in propaganda.

I haven't read "The Free Press" so perhaps there are greater similarities than
what I could glean from the short NYT book review. After all, both "The Free
Press" and the Propaganda Model predict that NYT aren't incentivized to give a
fair review of "The Free Press."

------
sveme
A micro statistic (in the languages I can somewhat understand):

On which rank is any NSA/Prism?Snowden story currently on the websites, where
rank is either "most read" or "most commented"?

sueddeutsche.de: no. 1

lemonde.fr: no. 3

spiegel.de: no.2

nytimes.com

-most emailed: outside of top20 -most blogged: no. 1 -most viewed: outside of top20

washingtonpost.com: outside top5

foxnews.com: outside top5

usatoday.com: outside top5

latimes.com: outside top10

www.telegraph.co.uk

-most viewed: no. 1 -most shared: no. 10 -most commented: outside top10

Dagens Nyheter: no. 6

Berlingske: outside top5

NZZ.ch

-most read: no. 1 -most commented: outside top10 -most recommended: no. 8

Sydney Morning Herald: outside top5

\------------------------------

Not really a scientific endeavour, but might provide some additional data
points. I should probably do that more systematically when the next story
hits. Maybe someone that knows some Eastern European, Asian or South American
newspapers could add their data points, then we might be able to identify some
trends. It indeed looks like the anglosaxons are more interested in other
stuff.

(edit: changed some formatting)

------
terhechte
I can confirm this, even my 65 year old mom, who can barely use her iPad to
Facebook started talking about this and was worried. And among the people aged
Gen-Y, this is a huge and important topic.

Understandably, my worldview is totally skewed: I consume HN, Guardian, and
German media.. In my little world, literally every site I visit and person I
know talks about NSA/Prism/UK. It is weird feeling, then, visiting other media

~~~
hyperventilator
Do you not beleive the Germans are in on it?

~~~
sgift
Do you mean the German government is in on the NSA spying? Certainly, they are
in. The BND(1) is currently trying to state that it didn't know anything about
the NSA practices _and_ delivered data to the NSA at the same time. So, they
are either incompetent or lie to us. Take your pick. And the government is
stating every day that everything is known by now, the NSA didn't do anything
wrong and we should stop asking so much questions.

(1) The Bundesnachrichtendienst is the German foreign intelligence agency. A
mix of NSA/CIA.

------
Systemic33
I can't help to feel quite disappointed about the lack of integrity in modern
media. It used to be the tool with which governments were torn down with, and
ruthlessly skinning the politics to the bone.

Nowadays, it's more of a indirectly controlled propaganda machine, only with
an interest in bottom-line profit, and pleasing the people above you.

The HBO tv-series 'The Newsroom' seems incredibly accurate, and relevant to
the lacking quality of the media. To the point where i'd wish Will McAvoy was
real.

~~~
hyperventilator
There is no need for conspiracy, if media companies thought they could sell
more advertisements you can be goddamn sure they would. They'll print anything
to sell papers. The demographic really interested in the details of this are
probably not who they are selling ads to.

~~~
Systemic33
It really isn't a conspiracy anymore. It's more like a statement of fact.
Media in the traditional sense, just pure and simple, isn't what it used to be
in more than one way. Maybe it's the people tweeting the news instead of
articles that change governements now (not that i'd want that, but meant as in
the expression).

I'm pretty certain the watergate scandal would never have ended the way it
did, if it happened in 2013. It would just be dusted under the rug, and a
retroactive law passed through to legalize the offense.

~~~
hyperventilator
This story os everywhere BBC, NYT etc. Pretending there is a media blackout
undermines credibility.

~~~
iaskwhy
BBC has been very silent about all this compared to some other UK media.

~~~
hyperventilator
As long as you define very silent as running stories every other day.

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petera
The article forgets to mention it is close to the Bundestagswahl (see
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_federal_election,_2013](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_federal_election,_2013)),
on September 22nd. Some major news outlets confront the german government open
in a very aggressive way, especially when it comes to intelligence agencies,
and how the chancellor tries to play the problems down.

The freedom of press which is part if the german grundrecht (see
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Law_for_the_Federal_Repub...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Law_for_the_Federal_Republic_of_Germany))
would be violated in very harsh way, if something like the guardian story
would happen in germany. It adds fuel to the whole discussion how the uk and
us treat their citizens and their allies.

Just for the record, the german government disapproves the usage of windows 8
for government usage, and has approved bitcoin as an currency-derivative.

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spdy
And the moment you enter the world of main stream media. This topic vanish
into thin air and does not exist at all.

As many respectable people said so far all western countries are in a post
democratic state.

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petera
A different, very cynic approach would be that germany had a history of
involving journalism into politics and the uk and the us trying to have it
exactly that way nowadays.

Germany achieved it once with Gleichschaltung (see
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleichschaltung](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleichschaltung))
and the us seem to achieve similar results with it's 9/11 nationalism and
advertising.

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nwzpaperman
Edward Bernays wasn't paid for nothing!

Contemporary society is a mess because we institutionalized the legitimacy of
a voice in the form of for-profit journalists. Has anyone considered how long
the journalist career has existed in its recent history form?

Before Guttenberg did we have for-profit journalists? I will indulge semantics
here, but I suspect no one will argue that organized society existed for a
long time before we delegitimized the primary sources of information--the
person a journalist investigates--to legitimize professional secondary and
tertiary sources of information(aka journalists).

In other words, complaining about the evolution of public information
dissemination is utterly fruitless as it isn't actionable. I've made the bet
that most career journalists are already marginalized and that the common
person is and will continue to marginalize the career journalist and the
institutions that legitimize them.

Primary sources disseminating public information if the future.

You are the journalist now!

~~~
petera
s/journalist/editor/g

~~~
nwzpaperman
The individual certainly takes on more of those responsibilities today, but
the community has a lot of input on the process that they didn't have before.

