ANDREW KORYBKO—The article, “Protesters clash in Hong Kong as cycle of violence intensifies,” paints a sympathetic picture of the rioters who have tried to wreak havoc across the municipality over the past two months while ignoring the commendable restraint and patience of the law enforcement representatives tasked with keeping the peace.
A reader—Subhuti 2— takes NewsGuard on, taking them at their word. He puts some important questions to them. But no answers are forthcoming.
CAITLIN JOHNSTONE—Reporters might not always be consciously aware of all the pro-establishment guidelines they’re expected to follow in order to advance their careers, but they know how the reporters who’ve ascended to the top of the media ladder conduct themselves, and they see how the journalists who win the accolades behave. With the help of editors and peers you quickly learn where all the third rails and sacred cows are, and when to shut your mouth about the elephant in the room. And for those rare times that all these filtration devices fail to adequately filter out dissident ideas, you see the example that gets made of those few who slip between the cracks, like CNN contributor Marc Lamont Hill for his defense of Palestinian human rights or Phil Donahue for his opposition to the Iraq invasion.
ROBERT BRIDGE—The social media monsters argue that since they do not create original content, but rather mindlessly provide the clean slate, as it were, for third-party developers to post their own thoughts, opinions, news and of course wild-eyed ‘conspiracy theories,’ they cannot be bound by the same rules and regulations as the mainstream media, which must bear ultimate responsibility for its increasingly damaged goods.
We often ask ourselves why Russia (and China for that matter) are so lousy at mounting global propaganda campaigns. Granted, the Western empire has more than a century of practice, and over generations has created the most gianormous machinery of mass communications and cultural influence ever seen in history. Not to mention that with a machine spawned by developed capitalism, it was born with the propaganda talent to seduce and deceive sociopathically, it’s in their genes, so to speak, something other nations are not so adept at, at least not with the advanced production values that Hollywood and a huge p.r. industry are able to inject into such exercises. Yet soft power is an art that those who oppose imperialism must try to muster.