Why are so many here saying Russian propaganda is ok?

[Igel]

34. So what's the plan?

Yes, RT is propaganda. Not that most people have much of a clue as to how Soviet and Russian propaganda actually worked. They get their knowledge of agitprop and propaganda from spy thrillers.

They miss the point that much of Soviet propaganda was real news. It was just always oriented towards producing the attitude and views that they wanted. So if you look at how protests, environmental problems, police disputes, etc., etc., are covered by RT it's lurid but it's usually not wrong. The error is that they allow the listener to overgeneralize and assume that's *all* there is because good news is missing.

Similarly, any overture that's in Russia's favor by the US is shown. Negative things are editorialized as anti-Russian. Again, they print all the news that fits.

Another category is pointing out partial news. So if there's a report saying that drop out rates for African-Americans is some percentage and that this is down 20% over the last 15 years, they'd report the high drop out rates and contextualize them by pointing to, say, Russian rates. Or the rates for the top 1% of Americans. If the rate for Asian-American high school students is good, that would be ignored. If it's bad for Cambodian-Americans, that rate would be highlighted and instead of "Asian-Americans" they'd just say "these Asian-Americans"--a small difference easily overlooked, allowing the listener to think that the stats are for all Asian-Americans.

Then there's fake news. Utterly made up. RT doesn't do that much. It usually relies on others to devise the false news. Usually American sources if it's about the US. It's the "well, I just repeated it so I'm not really responsible for the content" kind of non-thinking that we hear often from propagandists.

RT used to be fairly often posted by some DUers. Not because it was pro-Russian. But because they liked highlighting the bad side of the US. A lot of people like partial news: Venezuela, for instance, got partial coverage. Most people sort of ignored it, but some people presented only good things in Venezuela or, if something was bad, a report (often false or partial) blaming somebody else. We still see that kind of thing. "US sanction are hurting Venezuela, bad US!" when the primary culprits are low oil prices and internal policies. But there is fake news.

So let's set up a Ministry of Truth to make sure that the government view of reality is all that's reported. The first Minister of Truth will be appointed by Trump. Enjoy that scenario. But it would be no better in principle under Obama or anybody else, because in a democracy different views get presented.

Maybe we ban all foreign reporting? Buh-bye, The Guardian. Le Figaro. Moscow Times and Informator go along with Russian TV24 and RT. But how do you do that? Cut the Internet? Bar newspapers from reporting what's in them? Make sure that cable can't broadcast them?

The solution isn't that. The solution is to get people intelligent enough not to fall for propaganda.

And personally, I'm not convinced on how big a role they played. They strike me as a scapegoat, all powerful enemy that we poor (D) couldn't defend again.