
A Russian TV Insider Describes a Modern Propaganda Machine - gk1
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/14/world/europe/russian-tv-insider-says-putin-is-running-the-show-in-ukraine.html
======
DenisM
Public indoctrination through control of the media is easily the most pressing
problem of our days. Far more important than that of the global warming, for
example, simply because it blocks meaningful discussion on the subjects that
really matter.

While the public opinion is manipulated both in the US and in Russia, the
methods and outcomes are vastly different. For a diligent study of the US
media manipulation I highly recommend Chomsky's book "Understanding Power"
[2]. You may disagree with his opinions, but they are still worthy of
consideration because Chomsky backs up each observation with a verifiable
reference, to the point where all of the references combined make an entire
separate book of equal volume. If you don't like Chomsky's answers, you will
at least appreciate the questions he's trying to tackle.

I haven't read the headline book yet [1], but it has the potential to shed
some light on how things are done over in Russia. Between the two works, I
hope, one can gain actual knowledge of the methods of the public opinion
manipulation. The kind of knowledge to replace both the blind faith in the
media and it's twin brother - the entirely counterproductive nihilistic
disregard of all news.

[1] "Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible", Peter Pomerantsev
[http://www.amazon.com/Nothing-Is-True-Everything-
Possible/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Nothing-Is-True-Everything-
Possible/dp/1610394550)

[2] [http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Power-Indispensible-
Chom...](http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Power-Indispensible-Chomsky-Noam-
ebook/dp/B003XU7IFY)

~~~
mc32
Chomsky, unfortunately, is not the most rigorous guy when it comes to
empiricism. Look at how he interpreted the Khmer Rouge genocide
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_genocide_denial#Choms...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_genocide_denial#Chomsky)

He defended them saying that what we said about the Kh R was Western
propaganda, etc. Years later, when the truth became undeniable, he defended
his actions saying, but well, I couldn't very well know they were so bad and
since I didn't have the data, I was still right. Yet, at the time, there we
all kinds of information coming out from Kampuchea, all pointing to it being a
disaster --even the Vietnamese were utterly alarmed.

So, you really have to be careful with him.

~~~
DenisM
Single-sided "news" reports can be right in some cases and wrong in others.
Given that there is no way to verify them, they are obviously untrustworthy at
that time, even if later they turn out to be correct. When evaluating one-
sided reports absent a different perspective, your best bet is to weight in
the biases and the track record of the people reporting it. I'm not sure why
you have a problem with that line of reasoning. If anything this _is_
empiricism.

Even if he was wrong about his stance on KhR, how does that affect validity of
the book? The book cites all of its sources and makes its conclusions in broad
daylight, so it's entirely possible to have a productive discussion about the
contents and the arguments being made, without discuss the person making those
arguments.

~~~
mc32
It's not as though there were not refugees streaming out of the country
recounting the atrocities and the difficulties they faced escaping the regime.
Look, the first two years, the KCP itself thought it was illegitimate that it
had no name. They didn't even acknowledge they existed.

All you have to do is listen the population. When you have thousands of
escapees and refugees recounting the same horrible things, it's not a sinister
"propaganda plot".

I've heard the stories from actual escapees who still have nightmares from
when they trudged though unknown jungle for months not knowing if they'd see
another day, not less make it out free. Decomposing bodies, where you might
see a cow, in previous times, so in all kinds of places, you din't know who
might turn you in, hunger, dispossession, etc.

~~~
DenisM
Sadly, there is no shortage of manipulated victim testimonies either, often
used to start or perpetuate a war.

\- Nayirah testimony leading up to the 1st Iraq war [1]

\- Numerous refugees testimonies leading up to the 2nd Iraq war (WMD, torture
reports, etc)

\- Torrent of testimonies from Ukraine in recent months, e.g. [2]

\- I heard there is plenty of made-up material coming from Palestine

You can see how giving much credence to a single-sourced report is not just
un-epistemological, but also plain dangerous in that it can easily make bad
situation worse.

It's a very interesting question - how do we judge credibility of such
reports? Clearly you can't take them at face value, but there must be things
we can do. Obviously the best is a number of investigations by multiple
independent people on site, but that's not always possible. One thing that
comes to mind is interviewing all of the refugees and collating their
accounts, as it could give a lot of data - people make errors, but if they all
make the same errors it can point to manipulated accounts.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_%28testimony%29](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_%28testimony%29)

[2] [http://news.yahoo.com/russian-tv-sparks-outrage-ukraine-
chil...](http://news.yahoo.com/russian-tv-sparks-outrage-ukraine-child-
crucifixion-claim-114839196.html)

~~~
mc32
I think if you can verify that people are indeed taking perilous journeys
dragging along families and whatever possessions they can (usually the clothes
on their backs and some money), it's a good indicator of bad things happening.
In Kampuchea, it wasn't a few dozen people. There were lots of 'boat people'
in vietnam, hong kong, who escaped from the Kh R. That in no way can be
interpreted as being "ambiguous".

People don't travel through jungle, losing members along the way, for
propaganda. Like I said, these weren't a few dozen people. It was thousands.
People who ignored this can only be described as ideologues. It's kind of the
same way some people in the West didn't want to believe gulags existed.

------
DangerousPie
The headline sounds very interesting but I was actually quite disappointed by
the article itself. It doesn't offer any concrete examples or any attempt to
actually validate what this guy is saying. It also doesn't even attempt to
compare this to what the media landscape looks like in other countries.

If all that happened was that a "prominent news anchor reviewed the coming
events as if they were part of a film script, musing on how best to entertain
the audience and questioning who that week’s enemy should be" then this
doesn't sound too different from what probably happens in some US news rooms
as well.

I have no trouble believing that Russian TV is a propaganda machine and
projects like the World Press Freedom Index [1] tend to agree. But this seems
like a very weak article to make this point.

[1] [http://rsf.org/index2014/en-index2014.php](http://rsf.org/index2014/en-
index2014.php)

~~~
imissmyjuno
I find it amusing that an article that's supposed to criticize a controlled
media system is itself a thinly veiled advertisement. I guess mass media has
issues everywhere you look :)

~~~
DenisM
New York times regularly publishes book reviews. They even have that thing
they call "NYT Bestsellers" [1]. I'm not sure why that seems problematic to
you?

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/best-sellers-books/](http://www.nytimes.com/best-
sellers-books/)

~~~
gwern
As a book review, it's a near-complete failure. You hear very little about
what the book recounts about Russian propaganda, which is the main interest;
instead we get fluff about his school chess club used his Sovietness to
intimidate others. That may be a cute biographical detail fine for a book, but
is a waste of limited space in a book review.

------
ptaipale
Regarding Russia's foreign propaganda, a Russian-born person (I think he may
not wish to be named) described the situation like this:

" Many have wondered why the Russian propaganda machine is spewing out a
torrent of such preposterous claims that few people take seriously.

They know it will not be believed abroad. The purpose is not that it is
believed.

The purpose of disinformation was is to destroy trust in _all_ media. Create a
space where _nobody_ believes in _anything_.

Then, when people brag that they don't believe the Kremlin propaganda, but
also they don't believe "the other propaganda" that is published by media in
countries where there is a free press, the information war has been won.

If you think that Western media ( _for purposes of translation: let 's take
for example DW or BBC_) is as unreliable as Russia Today, you are not above
the information war. You are its casualty. "

And seeing the preposterous claims about persecution of ethnic Russians where
I live, contra reality of ethnic Russian people I know, and how some people
still keep reminding how also the Western TV channels and papers are part of a
propaganda machine... he has a strong point.

~~~
mc32
That is their greatest achievement, to gain equivalency. To a good degree this
has worked. There are lots of people who believe major European and
NorthAmerican media are no better than Russian media.

It has worked for their domestic audience, to great effect, and to a good
degree internationally.

Just look at Putin's approval ratings.

~~~
bayesianhorse
I don't really believe Putin's approval ratings. In Russia there is no free
press and private companies or academic institutes can be controlled at will
by the executive branch. So if any institute or private company conducts a
poll... well...

~~~
mc32
I'm afraid I believe the role of the
Emp(eror/ress)/Tsar(ina)/Premier/President in Russia is akin to the role of a
Father-at-large. So basically, people know he's flawed, they're not innocent,
afterall, but they feel protective of him. They take him personally. So an
attack on him, by the media, by western institutions, are, indirectly an
indictment on them. I think this has foundation in how the country has always
had a strongman or strongwoman at the helm who have always projected their
power unambiguously and forcefully. It has been this way since the Khievan
Rus. People were for practical purposes enslaved serfs till 1917. And then it
arguably got worse.

~~~
cpursley
This is how my wife has explained it (she's Russian born). Regarding Putin's
popularity, it's actually true.

------
fragsworth
> a prominent news anchor reviewed the coming events as if they were part of a
> film script, musing on how best to entertain the audience and questioning
> who that week’s enemy should be.

Having avoided traditional American news sources for a long time (10+ years),
whenever I get a glimpse of it now (especially cable news sources), I always
got the sense that this is exactly how American news is produced.

~~~
rational-future
Russia is a small country (as population and industry) compared to US and EU.
It cant afford to reinvent the way a modern society, government, media, etc.
works. The state propaganda machine is a direct copy of what the US and
especially the UK governments have built.

~~~
icebraining
I find it funny how you're trying to defend RT and Russia (which is fine), but
managed to make the most damning criticism of the whole thread :)

Poor Russia, the first country to put a man in space, now reduced to copying
propaganda machines!

~~~
rational-future
I'm not trying to defend anyone. Russia is as evil as the US, it just doesn't
have enough hardware to do as much damage.

The man in space flew on a rocket initially designed in Nazi Germany.

------
moo
The U.S. has been in perpetual war for over a decade, the media is part of
that war. While advantaged, educated U.S. citizens want to make believe in a
free Western press, invented narratives like Jessica Lynch rescue, staged
Saddam Hussein statue toppling, Diane Sawyer's yellow journalism showing
bombed out Gaza calling it Israel, BBC filming actors in supposed Syrian gas
attack, embedded media to show our boys in a positive light, Brian Williams
lie to also make war personal for viewers that was shot down by soldiers over
"stolen valor", these incidents paint a different picture. How about how
journalist Helen Thomas who was set up to discredit her. 6 corporations
control 90% of media in U.S. Is that the diversity Nuland crows about.
Journalists and academics are often found to be paid agents of intelligence
services.

------
bayesianhorse
Funny story: In Germany there is currently a "movement" of people calling for
stricter immigration control (to abbreviate an endless discussion about what
they actually want), called Pegida.

During one of their demonstrations a comedy/satire show dressed up an actor as
a "Russian" journalist from "Russia Today", a news caster/online magazine
financed by the Russian state.

The Pegida participants were very willing to talk to him. They said that
western media is all corrupt and unfree, and that Russia Today is a "welcome"
and more honest alternative.

Which is so far from the truth it isn't even funny.

~~~
deepyearning
Actually this shows the opposite. The mainstream media is unwilling to engage
in discussion with someone who is anti-immigration (unless that person is is
an Israeli politician). Instead they do cheap tricks to humiliate the speaker
without addressing their actual arguments.

The mainstream media, like all people, has the accusation of "racism" hanging
over their heads so they are unable to speak freely on topics like immigration
(see [0] for a deconstruction of the concept of racism). I know that the
mainstream media in the UK, for example, publish some controversial materials
on immigration and culture. But these are always from the perspective of
"we're doing immigration wrong". All the mainstream right is allowed to say is
that immigrants need to assimilate better. And they are only really allowed to
say this about Muslims. They can't say it about Africans outside the context
of Islam. And they can't say that assimilation is impossible, or that
immigration is not worth the effort.

I don't believe that the Russian press in general is more free than the
Western press, but the person you are referring to is correct in that the
Russian press is able to say things about immigration that the Western press
can't.

[0] [http://beyondtheright.blogspot.com/2014/12/why-i-am-not-
anti...](http://beyondtheright.blogspot.com/2014/12/why-i-am-not-anti-
racist.html)

~~~
bayesianhorse
Unwilling to engage? You seem to watch the wrong shows... I've seen tons of
interviews with people advocating immigration control. Some where even quite
friendly.

There is a problem you don't seem to have noticed: The AFD Party does not only
advocate tighter immigration control, but it also wants to hold offices. So if
the news media document the utter failure of this party to even conduct their
basic business without minor and major scandals, it saves us from voting some
complete idiot into office.

And where they got into office they continue to disappoint. Some just quit the
party, others don't do any constructive work, some collaborate with the
extreme right (and then they say they didn't).

The media has an obligation to inform the public about the quality of
politicians. That the AFD mostly fields ridiculously incompetent or inadequate
candidates is not the media's fault.

~~~
deepyearning
> _Unwilling to engage? You seem to watch the wrong shows... I 've seen tons
> of interviews with people advocating immigration control. Some where even
> quite friendly._

As I said, the mainstream only allows a very narrow discourse on immigration,
which Pegida don't seem to fall under.

You characterize this act as a fair way to expose the incompetence of would be
politicians. I disagree. It's actually highly unfair, and I think any unbiased
person can see that. Why did they pretend to be from RT instead of just asking
Pegida their opinions about RT? I don't think Pegida would have given a
different answer in either case. The real reason was to make Pegida look
stupid. "Look, they can't even tell a real reporter from a fake one". Whatever
you think about Pegida's views on freedom of the press and RT, they should be
judged on their merits and not in the context of a stupid stunt.

As to what Pegida said, as I said before, I disagree but I see where they are
coming from. They have a justified view that the Western press is not free
when it comes to some issues. That they lack knowledge of RT and are
uncritical of RT, is a minor issue.

~~~
bayesianhorse
Actually, journalists from serious media tried that. With very little success.
Most participants refuse interviews, and there is a video where masked
participants forcibly carry away an interviewee. In other videos journalists
are hit, their cameras damaged, and all the time they are shouting hate at the
journalists.

The "narrow" discussion of immigration is more due to the limited options
which have any reasonable chance of getting public support. As we've seen, the
majority disagrees with Pegida. Only a fringe portion of the German public
wants to break the constitution to tighten immigration. And those who try to
fall somewhere in between current policy and breaking the constitution, often
don't understand the topic worth a damn. If a journalist has even a modest
understanding of the topic he will have the greatest difficulty of
entertaining opinions and solutions which are based on factual errors.

~~~
deepyearning
Do you have any links regarding what you said about the impossibility of
interviewing Pegida. From googling, I found the following interviews with
Pegida members by RTL, at what appeared to be a peaceful protest:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bl0KPaLPL7g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bl0KPaLPL7g)
and by Phoenix at another apparently peaceful demonstration:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dp2HKPQpfdg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dp2HKPQpfdg)

> _And those who try to fall somewhere in between current policy and breaking
> the constitution, often don 't understand the topic worth a damn. If a
> journalist has even a modest understanding of the topic he will have the
> greatest difficulty of entertaining opinions and solutions which are based
> on factual errors._

Well that's a very subjective matter. I see a lot of junk "knowledge" touted
by pro immigration groups on this topic. For example, in most European
countries immigrants commit more crimes. But there is a lot of obfuscation on
this topic, and it's easy to get a smart sounding person to obfuscate the fact
that the conditional probability of someone committing a crime given that they
are an immigrant (see [0] for an example).

[0]
[http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-05-26/davidsonrefugee/273222...](http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-05-26/davidsonrefugee/2732220)

------
Htsthbjig
Any big media is a propaganda machine, starting by the New York Times, that is
broke and easily controlled by those that sustain it.

The US of A invaded Iraq and Afghanistan because somewhat a modern propaganda
machine convinced Americans that because 21 guys coming from a friendly
dictatorship nation decided to kill themselves in planes, they needed to
invade another different country with probably the biggest oil reserves today.

Of course the modern propaganda machine tried very hard to convince people
that controlling the oil was not the important part. That more than 5000
Americans and a million Iraqis died and more than a trillion dollars was spent
because of "freedom".

Remember "war on terror" propaganda?

Remember weapons of mass destruction invention?

Remember Osama Bin Laden that appeared and disappeared as was needed and then
died when needed(and nobody independent saw the body before being buried in
secret in the Ocean).

~~~
mahranch
> Remember "war on terror" propaganda?

Sure do. It was largely spun by a single entity which wasn't state-owned (Fox
News). And it was criticized by other agencies for doing so (MSNBC, CNN, Hell
the Dailyshow made it their mission).

Let's see RussiaToday's competitors (do they have any?) criticize RussiaToday
for defending the Ukraine situation. The entire organization would probably
end up in a ditch somewhere, having died in a fatal plane crash.

Sorry, but as much as you want to equate the two, they are not remotely the
same. To hold the belief that they are means the person lacks critical
thought.

------
Mikeb85
This whole article is rubbish by the way. This guy grew up in London, and here
the article describes his TV experience:

> FOR a time, at least, Mr. Pomerantsev, now 37, seems also to have been at
> home in the raucous world of middlebrow Russian television, making films
> about gold-digging women (hunting men known as “Forbeses” — as in the Forbes
> list of the wealthy), ruthless gangsters and sinister cults.

From the sounds of it, he never even worked on news programs, just producing
TV shows and movies. And this is someone the NY Times considers an 'expert' to
'uncover' the Russian propaganda machine?

While you want to talk propaganda, how about maybe bringing up the fact that
this guy is a Brit. He lives in London, and his family moved away from the
Soviet Union before it broke up. How about you talk about the fact he wrote a
book, is obviously trying to drum up sales by virtue of the fact he's writing
about propaganda while he was himself personally involved in low-brow TV
shows.

Yet this makes it to the NY Times and front page of HN by virtue of? It's like
getting a producer of real housewives of whatever to talk about US coverage of
the Iraq war...

tl;dr - this guy produced shows about:

> making films about gold-digging women (hunting men known as “Forbeses” — as
> in the Forbes list of the wealthy), ruthless gangsters and sinister cults.

What does he know about propaganda... And HN is eating this up, talking about
Russian propaganda like this article had something to say.

------
henriquemaia
Strongly related:

Adam Curtis' short documentary shown during Charlie Brooker's 2014 Wipe
program –
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcy8uLjRHPM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcy8uLjRHPM)

~~~
cnp
This right here should be voted right to the top.

------
thatsjustcrazy
Gee willickers, I sure am glad nothing like that happens here in the good old
US of A.

~~~
bayesianhorse
No, actually it doesn't... This stuff may be going on inside Fox News, and I
doubt that. But that would be a single TV channel. In Russia they coordinate
among all TV channels and there is no dissenting voice.

The superiority of western media over what is available from Russia or similar
countries is not in the honesty and quality of any single media outfit, but in
the plurality of media voices.

In the west, there are so many channels, shows, magazines and online sites,
financed by completely different means, often pulling in different political
directions, that most attempts at disinformation are discovered sooner rather
than later.

~~~
Mikeb85
[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent)

We in the west are far more brainwashed than we think...

~~~
bayesianhorse
If you know you are brainwashed, you obviously know the "truth". So how come
you know the truth but believe the truth isn't told? You see my point?

~~~
Mikeb85
> If you know you are brainwashed, you obviously know the "truth".

We never really know the truth. I can tell you what I ate this morning, and I
can tell you that the sky is blue (maybe blue-greyish today).

The point is that too many people believe what they see on CNN, and assume
it's the absolute truth. People base their world view upon curated news
without questioning anything.

Here's a great interview by Larry King on his Ora TV network (re-broadcast
online by RT):
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wv2f6ZZmx4A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wv2f6ZZmx4A)

In it, Stephen Cohen (the guest) makes the point that there's little debate in
the western media these days. Either you agree, or you agree more. No one
questions anything anymore.

Russians will tell you everything is a lie not because everything in Russia IS
a lie (some things are, some aren't - much like over here), but because it's
part of Russian culture, their outlook on the world, to be cynical and
critical of everything.

One poster brought up that RT is trying to discredit everything, but that's
not really correct. Russians question everything, it's a part of slavic
culture, hell my 92 year old Ukrainian grandfather who's been here his whole
life shares that outlook.

We in the west though have been transformed into gullible sheep, who question
nothing we're told because we are comfortable working our 9-5 (more like 7-6)
job to pay off our credit cards and debt, while watching shitty TV shows and
never finding the motivation to ever learn about anything...

~~~
bayesianhorse
I think watching shitty TV shows is slightly better than drinking ungodly
amounts of wodka...

------
detcader
Meanwhile the NYT hosts a tiny AP story on the new Reporters Without Borders
report, under the "Europe" section [1]. Russia is rated much lower than the
US, but we are not free from embarrassment. See Glenn Greenwald's commentary
[2].

[1]
[http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2015/02/12/world/europe/ap-e...](http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2015/02/12/world/europe/ap-
eu-europe-press-freedom.html)

[2] [https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/02/12/u-s-
drops-49th...](https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/02/12/u-s-drops-49th-
world-press-freedom-rankings-second-lowest-ever/)

------
Red_Tarsius
> “What they are basically trying to undermine is the idea of a reality-based
> conversation,” Mr. Pomerantsev said, “and to use the idea of a plurality of
> truths to feed disinformation, which in the end looks to trash the
> information space.”

~~~
lawl
War is Peace

Freedom is Slavery

Ignorance is Strength

~~~
kingmanaz
"Diversity is our strength". Fits right in.

[https://www.peaceproject.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/...](https://www.peaceproject.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/product_full/LS99-Diversity-
is-our-Strength-Large-Bumper-Sticker.jpg)

------
everyone
Hey everyone check out this documentary film!!

[https://vimeo.com/67739294](https://vimeo.com/67739294)

Experienced investigative journalist John Pilger looks at and questions (among
other things) the British medias role as a dumb mouthpiece for the government
leading up to and during the invasion of Iraq.

EDIT: link has been fixed

~~~
smutticus
Your link is, while great, completely unrelated.

~~~
everyone
lol!! I am cracking up!! How did that happen!?? Considering the grim dystopian
subject matter here this is hilarious!

Will fix it now!

~~~
everyone
This is what I accidentally posted btw
[https://vimeo.com/6773929](https://vimeo.com/6773929)

------
moo
We have engineered GMO food so why not engineered news media? Free speech is
really a mechanism to protect advertisers. As I feel myself as a sort of
penned livestock that gets to choose between competing capitalists, all I can
say is I'm off Western news media as it gives me diarrhea, but if you can
consume it then more power to you.

~~~
pluma
Just like GMO is merely a continuation of the manual engineering
("cultivation") that has been going on since the earliest days of human
societies, biased media is nothing new at all, sadly.

Although the Luddites would have you think it's a novel problem, news never
where unbiased in the first place. Sure, good journalistic self-control can go
a long way in preserving the original information, but that information in
itself is biased already.

There's another analogy about processed food and processed information here,
but it's still a matter of where you can source what you can consume. Buying
local means you'll have to abstain from foreign material, which I don't think
is an option for many when it comes to news.

------
sam88
Nytimes is a very crude propaganda machine, I hope one day a decent person
would expose them.

------
Tarang
Its like a news source version of the Byzantine General's problem.

When it comes to Ukraine there's so much doubtfulness in the accuracy of
everything because both sides are so contradictory. I don't think it is that
simple to just trust one side's story

------
guard-of-terra
Did I just read 10 pages random guy bio? With one-liner about a question from
the title.

