Re: Today's Bad News Reply #500 – 2022-09-21, 16:13:33 Putin announced mobilisation. Given that in his mind he is really at war with Nato, hands up who opposes a Nato counter-mobilisation.Edit. Putin's executive order is here http://static.kremlin.ru/media/events/files/ru/QdJ0ybmN7Kocwc8eyTGosdyuylM6qXpj.pdfIt consists of ten numbered sections. The 7th section literally only says "for official use". Any guesses what the actual content there could be? Last Edit: 2022-09-22, 05:27:05 by ersi
Re: Today's Bad News Reply #501 – 2022-12-08, 18:13:47 Germany discovered that, alongside Nazi nostalgisers, they have folks called Reichsbürger who were planning a coup and had infiltrated deep enough into state structures so that the matter demanded some attention. According to wider reporting, the raid involved collaboration from Austrian and Italian authorities too.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BH-N-L7oUQk 1 Likes
Re: Today's Bad News Reply #502 – 2022-12-28, 20:25:33 Speaking of these German burgers, far-right groups used to have wild plans to get into power.Now they seem more intent on cutting power instead. Fears of Extremist Campaign After Attack on US Power StationQuoteVandalism at four power stations in the western U.S. state of Washington over the weekend added to concerns of a possible nationwide campaign by right-wing extremists to stir fears and spark civil conflict.Local police on Tuesday gave no information on who they suspected was behind the vandalism, which knocked out power on Christmas Day for about 14,000 customers in Tacoma, a port city area south of Seattle.Tacoma Public Utilities, which owned two of the facilities targeted on Sunday, said in a statement that it was alerted by federal law enforcement in early December about threats to their grid.Odd, though. The closer groups are to Putin, the more keen they are on energy warfare. 1 Likes
TLDR is RT Reply #503 – 2023-05-23, 07:40:10 In TLDR News' video Is the Russian Minority in the EU Being Persecuted?, which purports to give you both sides of the story so you can make up your own mind, the phrasing of the problems betrays the well-known colonial instincts - of both Russia and the West. Namely, according to the video, Estonia and Latvia are now banning the use of Russian language in state institutions and schools. So the video's implied answer to the title question is a resounding "Yes, when it comes to the Baltic countries!" (different from the title, all instances of alleged persecution are restricted to the Baltic countries instead of the EU).All the way up to the 1970s it was indeed normal in the West and in Soviet Union to ban languages in schools and separate children from parents in order to eradicate culture, e.g. indigenous minority children in USA, Nordic countries, and Russia, and of course those countries never thought indigenous languages should be used in official state institutions, duh. This is where TLDR is understandably coming from. They are colonial annihilists turned cosmopolitans, there's no way to fix this. However, it is factually wrong to adress the matters in Estonia and Latvia in the same terms. In reality, Estonia and Latvia have been keeping up two state-supported school systems in parallel: in the official state language and in Russian language. Debates about withdrawing the support from Russian-language schools have been ongoing for decades, several agreed deadlines have passed without action taken. The first good opportunity in my opinion to pull the rug from under Russian-speaking schools was in 1994 when Soviet/Russian army (and some portion of Russian civilians along with it) left the Baltic countries, but no, Russian schools are still in 2023 here as they were back then.Anyway, many Russians are already putting their children in Estonian-language schools ("for the future of the child"), some such schools have a good share of such Russians (and other foreign children) and nobody is banning them from using their own language among themselves the way both Western and Soviet authorities used to do up to 1970s (Soviet/Russian authorities even now). The situation in Estonia and Latvia has nothing in common with colonial practices. We are just reducing the strain on state budget that we were never supposed to have in the first place, if we were to act as per actual Western values.As to other state institutions, in both Estonia and Latvia it is admitted that municipalities can operate in another, local majority language. E.g. Narva municipal council operates in Russian. Their communication with state institutions is to occur in the official state language however. But ordinary people can find state services in several languages, such as English-speaking people in English, and therefore also Russian-speaking in Russian (otherwise it would not work to e.g. accommodate Ukrainian refugees here). Foreign-language services in state institutions have always been expanding rather than receding.About citizenship, Estonia and Latvia decided upon re-independence that automatic citizenship is given to those who can trace ancestry back to the pre-WWII countries. This was done mostly pro-actively by the state seeking out its citizens, while others need to go through a citizenship application process. This arrangement is better understood as a requirement for historical continuity instead of a requirement of ethnicity. Anyone whose ancestry can be traced back to the first independence gets the citizenship regardless of ethnicity. The dates involved are connected to independence, when we had it, when we ceased to have it, and when we regained it. So it's about history rather than ethnicity. From the Baltic point of view, non-citizen Russians are a non-citizen minority - like all other foreigners are minorities.Russians do not deserve special minority privileges the way e.g. native/indigenous minorities would, because they are not native and indigenous. And not even properly minority - they have their majority native country immediately next door.Moreover, we have security concerns that Western countries never had. Who wants to adopt so many Russians that they are about a third of your population? No hands? I wonder why. Also, the argument in the video that Russia would never attack Baltic countries is by now stupider than ever. The argument used to be that "Baltic countries are not worth it" but it has become now (in the video) "Russia is bogged down in Ukraine, so definitely it won't attack Nato countries". This is dangerously stupid. Baltic (and Polish) experts always maintained that Russia attacks completely regardless if they can afford it or whether it's worth it - and these experts have been proven correct. All other opinions have been proven wrong many times over. Russia's propaganda/information war that is now in worldwide awareness (namely, calling their neighbours fascists and Russophobes) has been going on forever in the Baltic countries and has been as false as it is right now regarding Ukraine. To use this propaganda as if this were actual information, the way TLDR does, is a fatal blow to own credibility.Of course I understand that my post will clear up nothing for anyone. I have already explained all this for decades, but colonists remain colonists.Edit: Here Deutsche Welle confronts Latvia's justice minister with the same topic and the minister needs to politely explain to Germans how stupid they are.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHL5TTw00hcWhen the same talking points are up in several Western outlets at the same time with the same Russian bent, it suggests yet another successful propaganda operation from Russia. Last Edit: 2023-05-24, 17:36:31 by ersi 1 Likes
Re: Today's Bad News Reply #504 – 2023-06-03, 23:14:25 Newt Gingrich pointed me to an alarming development[1] that bears upon the readiness of U.S. forces:QuoteThe Marine Corps is small, agile, and flexible, priding itself on being the first to fight, anywhere. Over the past four years, however, the current Commandant, General David H. Berger, has radically transformed the image and the mission of the Marine Corps. The primary focus now is upon developing missile units intended to sink Chinese warships. To fund those units, General Berger did away with 21% of the personnel in infantry battalions, 100% of the tanks, 67% of the cannon artillery batteries, 33% of the assault amphibious companies, nearly 30% of Marine aviation, and almost all assault breaching equipment. The desired number of large amphibious ships was reduced from 38 to 31. Due to these cuts, Marines are less capable to fight as a combined arms force. [emphasis added](source)Between the Osprey goof and constant efforts to "retire" the venerable "Warthog", the Marines have not been well-supplied... But this change in mission is bizarre! And dangerous...And it's mostly secret? Scary.Will Congress intervene? Before it's too late...?1 Since leaving the House of Representatives - and his Speakership- he's been a fair weather friend of conservatives — the primary evidence of which was his support of George Gascón, the Soros-backed Los Angeles District Attorney...↵
Re: TLDR is RT Reply #505 – 2023-08-11, 06:56:33 Quote from: ersi on 2023-05-23, 07:40:10When the same talking points are up in several Western outlets at the same time with the same Russian bent, it suggests yet another successful propaganda operation from Russia.I did not expect that YLE, the state-owned broadcaster of Finland, would succumb to the same Russian propaganda manipulation.[1] But it did https://yle.fi/a/74-20044688The article quotes Inta Mieriņa, a professor in University of Latvia who has been researching migration and integration issues. The professor complains about Latvia's new requirements that concern people who have lived in Latvia almost all of their lives but have Russian citizenship. Thus they live in Latvia based on a residence permit. Now the residence permit would be revoked, if those people fail to pass an exam of Latvian language. Without a residence permit those people would naturally have to move away from Latvia, which in practice would probably not happen.The article discusses the security concerns that Latvia's government has with regard to those people (which I explained already in my previous post), but the professor retorts the situation would pressure those people deeper into Russia's sphere of influence and would amount to a propaganda victory for Russia à la Latvia can be labelled Russophobic etc. And then the article ends, leaving readers ponder the dread of Russia gaining a propaganda victory because Latvia is mean to Russian citizens who have thus far had residence permits without any imposed conditions but now, oh shock and horrour, there is a condition.In my view, the point about Russia's propaganda victory from alleged Russophobia has ceased or at least should have ceased to be a point since 2014 at the latest. Russia claims to be protecting Russian citizens and Russian-speaking people and fighting Russophobia in Ukraine. How can this kind of Russia gain a propaganda victory over non-extended residence permits of Russian citizens abroad? Essentially, in YLE's view, Latvia is among the countries who cannot revoke residence permits of foreign citizens. Latvia is a country that exists temporarily due to the kind generosity of Russia, and if Latvia misbehaves, starts acting as if it were an independent country, then Russia may be provoked to do bad things or, as a minimum, gains propaganda points. This has been the attitude of YLE all along, which in Estonia has been seen as an after-effect of Finlandisation. The same attitude (that whenever Russians claim Russophobia, then the target of the claim is guilty as charged) has been the normal modus operandi of all Western European broadcasters too. And this attitude is taking hostage some academics and expert commentators in the Baltics, so that they cannot think clearly anymore.To think clearly, one needs to compare Baltic, Western, and Russian citizenship and integration policies. The inevitable outcome of the comparison is that Baltic policies are the mildest and most considerate of them all, and Western and Russian policies lose out badly. It was time a very long time ago that Western mainstream media reflect this reality correctly. The fact that Western mainstream media still represents Russian bias on these topics is a continued propganda victory for Russia.1 To be "fair", YLE has been viciously anti-Baltic particularly on these topics (citizenship, migration, language) ever since the regained independence, but I would have thought they'd tone it down a bit at this stage of Russia-Ukraine war. Because, would anyone at YLE write an article complaining how Ukraine discriminates against Russians, locks up suspicious Russian-speaking people and kills Russian citizens right now? Well, Ukraine indeed does those things...↵
Re: Today's Bad News Reply #506 – 2023-12-03, 14:17:53 US coal power plants killed at least 460,000 people in past 20 years – reportQuote from: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/23/coal-power-plants-deaths-pollution“Air pollution from coal is much more harmful than we thought, and we’ve been treating it like it’s just another air pollutant,” said the lead author, Lucas Henneman, an assistant professor in the Sid and Reva Dewberry department of civil, environmental and infrastructure engineering at George Mason University. “This type of evidence is important to policymakers like EPA [the US Environmental Protection Agency] as they identify cost-effective solutions for cleaning up the country’s air, like requiring emissions controls or encouraging renewables.”Henneman led a group of researchers who used publicly available data to track air pollution – and its health effects – from the 480 US coal power plants that operated at some point between 1999 and 2020. A model was used to track the wind direction and reach of the toxins from each power station. Annual exposure levels were then connected with more than 650m Medicare health records that covered most people over age 65 in the US.The coal plants associated with most deaths were located east of the Mississippi River in industrialized states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, where power stations were historically constructed close to population hubs. But every region had at least one plant linked to 600 deaths, while 10 were associated with more than 5,000 deaths across the study period.About 85% of the total 460,000 coal plant-related deaths occurred between 1999 and 2007, an average of more than 43,000 deaths per year. The death toll declined drastically as plants closed or scrubbers – a type of sulphur filter – were installed to comply with new environmental rules. By 2020, the coal PM2.5 death toll had dropped 95%, to 1,600 people.Edit: To compare with traffic deaths from here, I calculated that there were 841,041 fatal casualties in traffic in USA over the same period, from 1999 to 2020. So on a positive note, coal deaths are not as bad as traffic deaths. However, traffic deaths are rather stable and steady, not on decline. Last Edit: 2023-12-03, 14:35:42 by ersi
Re: Today's Bad News Reply #507 – 2023-12-03, 19:52:36 Coal is significantly worse than fossil gas in emissions, but also a lot worse for people's health. 1 Likes
Re: Today's Bad News Reply #508 – 2023-12-17, 18:32:58 Austria bankers still blocking EU sanctions on RussiaQuote from: https://euobserver.com/world/157838The 12th round of Russia sanctions was to impose an EU ban on imports of Russian diamonds, tighten EU exports of high-tech goods, and blacklist mercenary firms, according to a draft.Raiffeisen Bank has 9,000 employees in Russia, where it does consumer banking, and where it made €2bn profit last year.It is "beneficial [chiefly] to the Russian elites, as it allows them to continue transferring funds abroad", after earlier EU sanctions disconnected most Russian banks from the Swift international-transfers grid, Russian financial consultant Ivan Fedyakov previously told this website."Austria has been quietly playing on Russia's team for a long time — they're a huge problem in the EU. Potentially explosive. To be watched closely," a senior EU diplomat said."It's not Austria learning from Hungary, but the other way around," the diplomat said."I never understood why everyone forgives them [the Austrians] so easily, treats them with kid gloves compared to Orbán, or other EU rogues", he added.In addition to Raiffeisen I can mention also UniCredit and HypoVerein as such banks. 1 Likes
Re: Today's Bad News Reply #509 – 2023-12-18, 16:42:23 The "kid gloves" is because Austria hasn't done domestically what Fidesz has done. Also Austria is a net contributor, unlike Hungary which is the second largest recipient, third largest per capita.But if Hungary is suspended by Article 7 now that they are no longer protected by PiS (one can hope), Austria is likely to be the rear guard, or even one that could block a suspension.
Re: Today's Bad News Reply #510 – 2023-12-19, 16:40:13 Quote from: jax on 2023-12-18, 16:42:23The "kid gloves" is because Austria hasn't done domestically what Fidesz has done. The kid gloves are also because this is more about banks and less about the government. In an approved country banks are far more powerful than the government. In an approved country, whatever banks do is deemed acceptable.
Re: Today's Bad News Reply #511 – 2024-06-22, 10:01:26 More people turning away from news, Reuters Institute report says Quote from: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj7799jv74voMore people are turning away from news, describing it as depressing, relentless and boring, a global study suggests.Almost four in 10 (39%) people worldwide said they sometimes or often actively avoid the news, compared with 29% in 2017, according to the report by Oxford University's Reuters Institute.This is worldwide. In some countries (or "markets" as per the report) there are some upswings, e.g. in USA there is more interest in news due to approaching elections. There was also a recent upswing during the pandemic, either for the urge to get informed or because there was nothing else to do.And lest you suspect that the report's concept of news is not nuanced, here is some foretaste.Quote from: https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/digital-news-report/2024[p. 10] In many countries, especially outside Europe and the United States, we find a significant further decline in the use of Facebook for news and a growing reliance on a range of alternatives including private messaging apps and video networks. Facebook news consumption is down 4 percentage points, across all countries, in the last year.[p. 11] ...even as online platforms have brought great convenience for consumers – and advertisers have flocked to them – they have also disrupted traditional publishing business models in very profound ways. Our data suggest we are now at the beginning of a technology shift which is bringing a new wave of innovation to the platform environment, presenting challenges for incumbent technology companies, the news industry, and for society.So news is not (just) TV, radio, and official broadcaster websites. News largely comes in the form of links to and quotes from them shared by people on various online platforms. Also the effect of advertising is taken into consideration.I personally do not actively avoid the news. Quite the opposite, I am in an almost constant hunt for news. However, I am actively circumventing ads and other annoyances, such as cookie popups and regional blocks, that keep getting more vicious and may be a major offputting factor for people. People may be avoiding news just to stay away from ads.
Re: Today's Bad News Reply #512 – 2024-06-22, 11:19:59 There's more to be considered, ersi: Those links you follow, are they from people you know can be trusted? Do you bother to check (actually "fact check"?) or do you just clip whatever bit you think you can use — for whatever your purpose is? Reuters and the AP and the BBC (and Al Jazeera and RT?) of course can't be questioned!
Re: Today's Bad News Reply #513 – 2024-06-22, 13:16:58 Quote from: OakdaleFTL on 2024-06-22, 11:19:59There's more to be considered, ersi: Those links you follow, are they from people you know can be trusted? Do you bother to check (actually "fact check"?) or do you just clip whatever bit you think you can use — for whatever your purpose is? Reuters and the AP and the BBC (and Al Jazeera and RT?) of course can't be questioned!Says the guy whose way of fact-checking is to go invariably partisan: conservative outlets right (because the right wing has "right" in it); liberals wrong. The problem with journalism in your country is that you have partisan-leaning media in the first place. And in your incurable blind moronicity you believe that the rest of the world is the same way. As always, you are wrong. Other countries have laws (gasp!) that establish mainstream non-partisan media, while partisan media can exist as a subcurrent. Kind of like pornography: it exists, but you don't land on it as soon as you turn on TV or radio — you have to specifically seek it up, if you want to be fed partisan punditry or extremist conspiracies. Whereas in USA the bias for one of the two major parties is almost the only option, and the way platforms think of balance is that e.g. on Youtube you get fed some extremist idiocy immediately after listening to a clip of halfway decent political commentary. American extremist nonsense reaches me because of YT and FB, but it's not the norm on our mediascape the way it is in USA. I live outside USA, so I know both sides of the coin. But you of course deliberately prevent yourself from getting a clue of any other life experience than Oakdalean redneckery, so you will never know. You will never know by your own choice, even after decades of getting potty-trained and spoonfed through thousands of facts about life on the rest of the planet.
Re: Today's Bad News Reply #514 – 2024-06-22, 18:16:33 Quote from: ersi on 2024-06-22, 05:16:58Says the guy whose way of fact-checking is to go invariably partisan: conservative outletsI do read a variety of publications. (When I was young and still living i Cambridge, I'd at least pick up the National Review and the New Republic... Seemed sensible to me, to compare and contrast! Such remains my modus operandi: seek opposing views and test them by as many sources as I can find... And come to a conclusion.[1]As well, I use Google as well as a few other search engines... They lead me to publications, which I don't always read! (The Atlantic is almost always a waste of time!) I prefer publications that have not given me false stories or -at least- retracted them and apologized.Of course, for your mentality, having a track record of reporting facts that don't need to be retracted means that -if ersi calls it "right"- it's not reliable.There must be some governmental body (some higher authority!?) to vouch for its veracity? How can the plebes know what to believe, if their betters don't tell them!? 1 That last part is what I think you've missed: You start with your conclusion and reason backwards... (And, no, ersi, that's not the same as what you accuse me of; your accusation is false...)↵
Re: Today's Bad News Reply #515 – 2024-06-22, 18:39:39 Quote from: OakdaleFTL on 2024-06-22, 18:16:33(And, no, ersi, that's not the same as what you accuse me of; your accusation is false...)You mean that I call you a partisan hypocrite? This is not an accusation. It is a statement of plain fact. And you confirm it yet again in your latest post: National Review and New Republic good, Atlantic waste of time.You are always invariably partisan to the point of insane ridiculous cultism for the Republican Party. At every step, in every post, you are demonstrating that you are incapable of being anything else.
Re: Today's Bad News Reply #516 – 2024-06-23, 08:16:36 Quote from: OakdaleFTL on 2024-06-22, 18:16:33There must be some governmental body (some higher authority!?) to vouch for its veracity? How can the plebes know what to believe, if their betters don't tell them!? Says the guy who calls it "compare and contrast" while cultishly staying within his partisan monolingual bubble. I'll tell you what compare and contrast is where I live.First, by news we mean coverage of newsworthy events, instead of partisan spin. In USA you only have partisan spin, e.g. Fox News is strictly pro-Repub and anti-Dem, MSNBC and CNN are Democrat-leaning. In Europe, we have government-sponsored mainstream news. The difference is that governments come and go. Ruling parties come and go. There is a proper plurality of parties, i.e. there are more than two parties and usually at least two parties need to form a coalition in order to be able to form a government. So the government-sponsored mainstream news in Europe does not pander to a particular party the way major news corporations do in USA. While different government configurations come and go, the mainstream news outlet remains stable.Second, since partisan spin is systemically eliminated (or at least decidedly mitigated), we have reliable and professional news in Europe. This means that the journalists are professionals, not party hacks or activists for some extremist cause the way e.g. in Fox News you have to be an election-denier (at least publicly, perhaps privately they care less) in order to be able to work there. Whereas in Europe you just do reporting about important events regardless of partisan implications. And in Europe they label things more or less apropriately. We don't dream up events and imagine scandals the way they do in Fox News, who still is not sure who the current president is: Trump is called "former president" while Joe Biden is called "Biden" or "White House", never president.[1]Note that I said reliable and professional news instead of worrying about "veracity" that you brought up. You brought up "veracity" for one of two reasons: Either you think that news must be high truth (or by projection you think I must believe it) or, more charitably, you do not know what the word means and you use it just for the sound of it. News is just a depiction of newsworthy events. There is no higher truth in them nor is there any need for higher truth in the news.It is perfectly adequate for news to be reliably professional, as opposed to partisan hackery. Non-partisan (also as opposed to bi-partisan) professionalism is important in most government offices such as for example in the tax authority. Tax officials review people's tax statements. The officials are supposed to do it the same way regardless which party is in the government right now or who is in the majority in the parliament. It should not be that when a different party wins elections and forms the government, then tax officials stop reviewing tax statements or start doing it based on some newly-discovered "constitutional" and "patriotic" principles or that all tax officials get fired and the new ruling party hires its own. I get it that in Trump cult the idea is: When Trump gets into the White House, fire all tax officials, hire your own cronies to replace them, and start taxing only those who did not vote for Trump. This is not how state offices work in Europe, and this is not how government-sponsored corporations, such as the state news corporation, work either. I know it does not matter that I am typing this and spelling basic babystep things out for you. You lost the plot a very long time ago and have been unable to pick it up for over a decade now.Now, finally, for "veracity". In times of crises it indeed matters whether something happened as claimed or is being suppressed despite of it having happened. Any government can actually overreach this way into its state-sponsored mainstream news corporation and treat it like a government arm. At such a point, it becomes important to cross-check with the news of other countries. You in your monolingual unicultural bubble cannot wrap your monocellular brain around the multicultural pluricentrism of the European continent. As an American, you have the absolute right and total freedom to remain in your delusions. The free speech in American constitution guarantees people the liberty from any and all informative content and from the effort of exercising their own thought. Your free speech is the freedom to babble mindlessly. Whereas in Europe the reality is that, for example when I lived in Soviet Union, limited to supposedly the most brainwashed propagandistic state-controlled censored information, I actually learned about the Chernobyl explosion from Swedish and Finnish news several days before it reached Soviet news. Now, that's what I call cross-checking. You can deride state-sponsored mainstream news all you want, but when they operate adequately in several countries, and we follow the news in several countries in several languages that do not co-ordinate with each other, then we get cross-checked reporting and we get a richer picture for better analysis. Such cross-checking has served me well through the collapse of USSR, hyperinflation and monetary reform, the boom and bust of the internet bubble, accession to NATO and the EU, annexation of Crimea and now Ukraine war. Whereas you with your partisan peabrain think that occasional reading of a liberal pundit makes you well-informed and savvy. Pundits are NOT journalists! In USA an average person does not know what news is and what journalists are! And you are well below average.1 Why don't you call such disrespect for the office of the president anti-American? Right, because the current president is a Democrat. You do not care about the constitution, rule of law or proper functioning of the government. You care about towing the line of the Republican Party cultish ideology.↵
Re: Today's Bad News Reply #517 – 2024-06-26, 08:06:56 Quote from: ersi on 2024-06-23, 00:16:36In Europe, we have government-sponsored mainstream news.Simple question: Have you even any memory of such sources ever retracting and apologizing for a "story" that they got wrong? (To help you out, let me add: Omniscience doesn't prevail without obeisance.. )
Re: Today's Bad News Reply #518 – 2024-06-26, 13:15:59 Several issues here. First, New York Times does corrections and retractions. Do you trust it? No, you don't. So, when you ask about retractions, you are not really asking about retractions, are you? Again the most charitable interpretation of your comment is that you probably do not know what retractions are. Or maybe just take your time, wait another year if necessary, and try to figure out what it is you really meant to ask. But you are so hopelessly deluded that you have successfully deluded yourself into thinking that there is something about the world that you know. You don't.Second, I just explained the entire framework of how journalism works in continental Europe. Had you understood the framework, you would understand that you are posing the wrong question. Corrections and apologies are a routine matter, issued regularly by all journalistic outlets. Retractions can be a thing when a piece is dreamed up, non-factual. Retractions in a government-sponsored news corporation are similar to academic retractions, and the motives for it are similar. The motive for the retraction is to keep up the credibility of the institution. The motive for the dreamed-up piece can be for the particular author to prop up himself personally. Such authors exist in commercial news outlets. Tabloids can have star paparazzis. But government-sponsored news corporations do not do star journalists. They only have star weather ladies, if even that. Thus, given this framework, the only kind of retraction possible for a government-sponsored news corporation is for a bent opinion piece,[1] when they discover that they platformed someone whom they should not have. Such an opinion author can be a politician writing slander that may seem unscandalous at the moment, or a scientist who is promoting a scientific fraud that has not been discovered at the time of publishing. Otherwise government-sponsored news corporations have closely controlled editorial policies, because trustworthiness is the top and only priority. They do not care about financial profit, because they are tax-funded, not ad-funded. They do not care about being the first to "break a story". And they even do not care about promoting any particular party as I explained earlier.The closest that a government-sponsored news corporation can come to journalistic deception is to cover up or minimise a scandal involving their own government (and governments are normally multi-party, as explained). But this scandal may be picked up by the neighbouring country. In fact, this happens every now and then on the continent. E.g. the Baltic countries were often accused by Western government-sponsored mainstream outlets of oppressing the Russian minority. So on the one side it was seen as a scandal that Baltic countries oppress their minority, whereas the other side of the story is that there are different definitions of minority, namely (a) citizens mainly speaking Russian instead of the official state language and (b) non-citizens. The latter can get all state welfare benefits and they can participate in local elections, but they can also be deported. In the West non-citizens can also be deported simply if their visa or residence permit runs out (and they are not categorised as refugees), so it is unfair to criticise Baltic countries when their policy with such people (namely non-citizens, in which case saying "minority" is a deceptive conflation) is literally the same as in the West. As to the types with citizenship, Estonia and Latvia still keep up a whole system of Russian-language schools for Russians, which is something that the Western countries do not do to their language minorities, so to accuse Baltic countries of discrimination on this point when Baltic policies are actually cosmically more generous can be properly seen as vicious Russian propaganda. To find out such nuances of an issue and to discover the effects of Russian (or American) propaganda in our mainstream news requires quite wide cross-checking. I am qualified for this, because I know all the languages and I have routinely been doing such cross-checking all my life. Whereas you are qualified for nothing.Anyway, these are some of the reasons why the question Have you even any memory of such sources ever retracting and apologizing for a "story" that they got wrong? is the wrong question. The "wrong" that you have in mind is systemically eliminated, it can hardly even enter the picture. And the other wrongs that they can do are counterbalanced by cross-checking internationally, which is something way over your head. As to our commercial news, yes, they have to embarrassingly retract their profit-driven fakes the same way as in USA. But government-sponsored news corporations are not profit-driven, which is something you cannot comprehend.1 And I think that this is the crux of your problem: Opinion pieces is what you have in mind. You do not have the slightest idea of news and journalism. You only think in terms of opinion pieces, political commentary and talk shows, which are not news, not even for a second. In continental Europe, opinion pieces and political commentary is sharply and visibly separated from the news section, so much so that you cannot even imagine, whereas to Europeans the distinction is so obvious as to be self-evident. And no mainstream outlet, government-sponsored or commercial, deviates from this line. It is a required mark of professionalism to keep this distinction.↵
Re: Today's Bad News Reply #519 – 2024-06-27, 10:24:45 And from where do you get your news about America/
Re: Today's Bad News Reply #520 – 2024-06-27, 13:30:56 If you read and understood what I just described and explained, then you know the mindset how I approach the news about USA. But the problem is that you did not understand what I just described and explained. You know nothing. More specifically, you do not know what news is. Every time you mention what you "follow" it is partisan talk shows, editorials and journals of opinion. Punditry is not news. This is something you are not getting. You use the word "news" but the only thing you know is punditry. I know news and journalism very well. This is how it is easy for me to detect that you do not know what news is. When you ask And from where do you get your news about America? you do not know what you are asking and you will not understand the answer, just as you have clearly not understood anything explained to you thus far.So, to move forward, name a news source in USA. Demonstrate that you know what news is as opposed to punditry. National Review, New Republic, Atlantic, Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Walter Williams, and SCOTUS do not have any news in them, but these are the ones you have cited thus far. 100% fail.
Re: Today's Bad News Reply #521 – 2024-06-28, 02:37:33 Quote from: ersi on 2024-06-27, 05:30:56If you read and understood what I just described and explainedIf your explanation was cogent and coherent (and honest) the rest of you swerve wouldn't matter...So: :blank; !But I understand: Petty functionaries in government are to be trusted unquestionably...because....?
Re: Today's Bad News Reply #522 – 2024-06-28, 04:36:43 So we both clearly know where you stand: Zero news sources from you. Quote from: OakdaleFTL on 2024-06-28, 02:37:33But I understand: Petty functionaries in government are to be trusted unquestionably...because....?Journalists are not petty functionaries in government. Either you completely forgot the topic or, as expected, you truly don't understand journalism and never will. Thankfully, because if you understood it, we might have to have some actual discussion about it.
Re: Today's Bad News Reply #523 – 2024-06-28, 10:17:35 Quote from: ersi on 2024-06-27, 20:36:43Journalists are not petty functionaries in government.If they work for state-run media, they are independent? ersi, you don't do debates, let alone conversations. You do lectures — for which -i'm sure- we're all grateful and assuredly edified. Thank you for your heroic efforts to bring us out of our self-interested ignorance!
Re: Today's Bad News Reply #524 – 2024-06-28, 10:31:51 Quote from: OakdaleFTL on 2024-06-28, 10:17:35If they work for state-run media, they are independent? The answer is in my few posts above. Read it again with comprehension. And when you make posts, try to limit yourself to words whose meaning you know and to concepts that are applicable to the topic.
Topic: Today's Bad News (Read 134534 times)
