Media Bias

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Re: Media Bias

Post by Sean Hayden » Tue Sep 01, 2020 10:40 pm

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Re: Media Bias

Post by Joe » Tue Sep 01, 2020 11:04 pm

Sean Hayden wrote:
Tue Sep 01, 2020 9:31 pm
With Fox going strong it's a bit of swallowing the camel while straining out a gnat, isn't it?
Well, the Russians have been jacking with us a little bit longer than Fox News has been around, so we may not have a clear picture of everything they're up to. Plus, Fox doesn't have quite the history of espionage they do. :coffee:
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Re: Media Bias

Post by Sean Hayden » Tue Sep 01, 2020 11:14 pm

....and, of course, through the courts your government has made it clear that where Fox is concerned, no matter the scale of the threat, they are not a legitimate target. You'll find more political will and funds to infiltrate my socialist block party, than Fox fucking "news". :tea:

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Re: Media Bias

Post by Joe » Tue Sep 01, 2020 11:27 pm

Damn that first amendment! :lay:
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Re: Media Bias

Post by Sean Hayden » Tue Sep 01, 2020 11:45 pm

Yeah right Joe, pull the other one...

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Re: Media Bias

Post by Joe » Wed Sep 02, 2020 12:15 am

Did you have an argument Sean?
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Re: Media Bias

Post by Sean Hayden » Wed Sep 02, 2020 12:45 am

For why Fox "News" ought to be treated as a greater threat than a Russian Facebook group? Or why I laughed at your claim that a lack of political will to address Fox "News" is the result of a concern for the first amendment?

I'm not sure either claim is in jeopardy of being shown wrong through evidence, but you're welcome to try.

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Re: Media Bias

Post by Brian Peacock » Wed Sep 02, 2020 1:41 am

It's hard to know what evidence actually is these days, what with so many disseminaters disseminating for money, status, ideology, or simply just to assert their own uniqueness. 25,000 people were on the streets of London this weekend to protest the #fakeScamdemic, politicians telling us we've had enough of experts while assuring us they have more than enough expertise in everything for everyone, and the news media seems pathologically obsessed with giving chancers, charlatans and arch manipulators a platform to trade in alternative facts and realities in the name of balance. Murdoch's media mouthpieces aren't the cause, they're just one of the symptoms - I'd say more but I'll only sound like an unreconstructed Marxist and Seabass will tell me off for being a class reductionist!
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Re: Media Bias

Post by Sean Hayden » Wed Sep 02, 2020 2:08 am

It's ugly. I can't believe the protesters in London. That such loons can sometimes organize so well is truly depressing!

--//--

I'd present as evidence Fox's gaslighting of the public throughout the impeachment of Trump. --to start anyway. We'd grow old and die before getting through all the evidence of the very real threat that is Fox...

For the lack of political will being the result of something other than a concern for the first amendment, we can just start with the absurdity of it being concern for our rights given all we have got up to while addressing other threats, real, and imagined...

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Re: Media Bias

Post by Joe » Wed Sep 02, 2020 3:57 am

I'd counter with the complete description of the Russian active measures campaign in the Mueller Report and report of the Senate Intelligence Committee that demonstrate the the reach and effect of the operation, backed by intelligence gathering and sworn testimony. You try to minimize it as "a Russian Facebook group," but that's not what the investigations have found. I've linked the reports in case you want to see the amount of evidence available, but here's a pretty good synopsis from Politifact to start with.
Fact check: Were Facebook ads the extent of Russian election interference?

The short answer: No.

The long answer: The redacted version of Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller's report revealed a years-long plot by the Russian government to interfere in the U.S. that investigators called "sweeping and systemic."

As to the amount of money expended on Facebook ads, the company said Russian operatives did spend less than $200,000 on advertising on the platform — but that doesn't account for the organic content the operatives created and shared.

Not only were influence specialists within Russia's Internet Research Agency purchasing normal advertisements, they were authoring their own posts, memes and other content as they posed as American users.

They also reached out to politically active Americans, posing as like-minded supporters, and helped organize rallies and other events in the real world.

Facebook says the Internet Research Agency may have reached as many as 126 million people. Separately, Twitter announced that about 1.4 million people may have been in contact with IRA-controlled accounts.

The social media aspect of the interference was just one dimension. Cyberattackers also went after political victims in the United States — whose emails and other data were released publicly to embarrass them — and state elections officials and other targets. And there may have been other avenues of interference as well.

The origins of the scheme

Russian operatives lied to get into the U.S. as early as 2014 on "intelligence-gathering missions." They traveled across the country to get the lay of the land before ramping up efforts to try to interfere with American politics.

By September 2016, two months before the U.S. presidential election, the Internet Research Agency was working with an overall monthly budget that reached over $1.25 million. It employed hundreds of employees, a graphics department, a data analysis department, a search-engine optimization department, an IT department and a finance department, according to an indictment filed last year by Mueller's team.

And it hasn't stopped.

The U.S. military reportedly blocked the Internet access of the IRA during last year's midterm elections to keep it from interfering with the midterm election. U.S. Cyber Command also targeted Russian cyber operatives, according to a report by The New York Times, with direct messages letting them know that American intelligence was tracking them.

And in October, a Russian woman was accused, according to a criminal complaint filed in federal court, of conspiring to sow discord and division in the U.S political system.

That conspiracy, the complaint said, "continues to this day."
I'm not through with the Senate report, but it shows that The Trump campaign was in contact with at least three Russian spies that we know about, and was leaking internal polling data to one of them.

So how does the Fox gaslighting stack up? What's their viewership? In 2016, it looks like 4 to 5 million for the big shows like Hannity and Carlson, and they averaged a rocking 2.4 average primetime viewers. That's pretty good, but Facebook estimated the Russian ads may have reached 126 million Americans, and who knows how many Americans were reached by the Wikileaks email dumps.

So tell me again how Fox News, with an annual revenue of about $11.5 billion is a bigger threat than a major power with an annual revenue of roughly $250 billion and the 5th largest economy in Europe.

Maybe instead of hand waving like "we'd grow old and die before getting through all the evidence," you should present more actual evidence.

As for the first amendment constraining this nebulous "political will" you reference, you are beating a strawman. I never said anything about concern for our rights. Recall the context
....and, of course, through the courts your government has made it clear that where Fox is concerned, no matter the scale of the threat, they are not a legitimate target. You'll find more political will and funds to infiltrate my socialist block party, than Fox fucking "news".
All I said was "Damn that first amendment!" You're putting words in my mouth.

If your claim about the courts is true, you should be able link to the court opinion or opinions so I can judge for myself if the First Amendment was a factor in the case. Can you do that?
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Re: Media Bias

Post by Sean Hayden » Wed Sep 02, 2020 5:22 am

About 16% of US adults list Fox as their primary political news source.

--hand waiving--

Some 90% of Fox climate coverage is focused on denial.

--//--

But I said I'd start with its gaslighting of the public throughout the impeachment.

First, it was the most watched coverage. The most watched news coverage Joe.

Second, it was a misinformation campaign from the start. Whether by omitting testimony, or failing to acknowledge important facts, Fox sought to deceive its viewers with the goal of protecting Trump and the Republican party. (I'm not listing specifics because you're aware of them)

--//--
So tell me again how Fox News, with an annual revenue of about $11.5 billion is a bigger threat than a major power with an annual revenue of roughly $250 billion and the 5th largest economy in Europe.
It requires a bit of imagination. What do you make of the Republican denial of Trump's involvement with Russia? Do you suppose Russia crippled the minds of these millions of Americans, more so than their consumption of Fox for the past 20+ years?

--//--
All I said was "Damn that first amendment!" You're putting words in my mouth.

If your claim about the courts is true, you should be able link to the court opinion or opinions so I can judge for myself if the First Amendment was a factor in the case. Can you do that?
If you didn't intend to say that we don't go after Fox because of the first amendment, fine. But I don't really see how I can be faulted for thinking that's what you intended.

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Re: Media Bias

Post by Joe » Wed Sep 02, 2020 7:35 pm

Sure you can. It's easy to ask clarifying questions like, "do you mean X?" and much more polite than responding with ridicule. Didn't you recently complain about that?
About 16% of US adults list Fox as their primary political news source.

--hand waiving--

Some 90% of Fox climate coverage is focused on denial.

--//--

But I said I'd start with its gaslighting of the public throughout the impeachment.

First, it was the most watched coverage. The most watched news coverage Joe.

Second, it was a misinformation campaign from the start. Whether by omitting testimony, or failing to acknowledge important facts, Fox sought to deceive its viewers with the goal of protecting Trump and the Republican party. (I'm not listing specifics because you're aware of them)

So, 16% of US adults is what? As of 2010, 76 percent of Americans were 18 or older. 16 percent of that, based on roughly 330 million Americans, is a bit over 40 million.

Not shabby, but much less than what Facebook says the Russians reached.

I don't watch TV news, so I'll take your word that Fox's coverage of the impeachment was incomplete and misleading, however the need to imagine the impact of this as being greater than the recent Russian espionage seems to open the door to speculation that would increase the Russian threat beyond what the investigators could back with evidence.

Imagine that the polling data and analysis for Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota that Mueller and the Senate identified as provided by Trump's campaign to the GRU agent Kilimnik was given to the Internet Research Agency, who used it to focus their ad and social media efforts and swing the election to Trump. Recall that all four of these states were projected to go to Clinton, and three of them went to Trump by narrow margins.

If you really want to get out the tinfoil hat, imagine that Trump was a Russian asset and the above is true. Nobody serious would imagine that, would they? Oops!
Senior ex-CIA official: Putin made Trump 'an unwitting agent' of Russia

(Reuters) - A former top CIA official attacked Donald Trump on Friday as a danger to national security, saying President Vladimir Putin had made the Republican presidential candidate an “unwitting agent” of Russia.

Putin had flattered Trump into supporting positions favorable to Russia, Michael Morell, a longtime CIA officer and former deputy director of the agency, said in an opinion piece in The New York Times.

“In the intelligence business, we would say that Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation,” Morell said, in an article in which he endorsed Trump’s rival in the Nov. 8 election, Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Morell did not provide evidence for his assertion, but he said Putin had used skills from his past as an intelligence officer to identify and exploit vulnerabilities in an individual.

“That is exactly what he did early in the primaries. Mr. Putin played upon Mr. Trump’s vulnerabilities by complimenting him. He responded just as Mr. Putin had calculated,” Morell wrote.
Maybe we should just stick to the facts. After all, a bit of imagination to some people is making shit up to others.

Now for your questions:
What do you make of the Republican denial of Trump's involvement with Russia? Do you suppose Russia crippled the minds of these millions of Americans, more so than their consumption of Fox for the past 20+ years?
I'm sure Fox has had an impact, and I don't care for it, but I have reservations about the assumptions your questions are built around. I live in a GOP stronghold, and have everyday interactions with Trump supporters. I've seen no evidence these people's minds are crippled. We just disagree. Also, I don't know if the Fox phenomenon is a cause of their beliefs, or a profitable niche for people who hold those beliefs.

That said, symptom or disease, there's a national security threat, but how do you quantify it? And what tells us it's a bigger threat than Russian espionage?

I will say this, I've provided enough evidence that the answer to your original question
With Fox going strong it's a bit of swallowing the camel while straining out a gnat, isn't it?
is no, not even close.
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Re: Media Bias

Post by Sean Hayden » Wed Sep 02, 2020 9:26 pm

You seem to be of the opinion that exposure to propaganda during an election is more dangerous than a prolonged campaign to deceive the public across a range of issues. I disagree, and I don't think it's even close. If I really wanted to be a stickler, I could try to dig down into your numbers to see how likely it is that out of the 100+ million who saw the propaganda, anyone other than Fox viewers were influenced by it.

But I don't think I need to.

Instead, let's consider something, let's look at examples of the "Russian interference".

Image

Image

What is immediately obvious to me is the lack of anything particularly "Russian". That's a big giveaway that what threatens us is homegrown. Again, who is most likely to be influenced by such attempts? Who are the Russians talking to?

Now, who in the US is singing the same song?

--//--

As for crippled minds, well, I think Trump is a traitor, the evidence is clear, but we were completely unable to remove him from office through impeachment. It is my opinion that this is because the public remains unconvinced. This is were I think we'd grow old and die pointing out the evidence of how dangerous Fox "News" is: our inability to convince the public to support sane measures from climate change, to education, to foreign affairs, is only made more difficult by Fox's propaganda machine.

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Re: Media Bias

Post by Brian Peacock » Thu Sep 03, 2020 1:38 am

FOX isn't just speaking to Trump voters - it's speaks to Trump too. How many times has he repeated some deliberately scripted obfuscation straight out of the FOX NEWS machine?

At this point I don't know if there is even a way to talk to FOX viewers about it's fear-mongering, obfuscation, or mythologising, about the priming and triggering, the leveraging of its viewers attention and emotional responses - or even about more general ideas like the manufacturing of consent, or that media billionaires probably aren't looking to represent the interests and well-being of the core audience?
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Re: Media Bias

Post by Joe » Thu Sep 03, 2020 3:01 am

Well Sean, that's an interesting analysis based on two whole examples, but you might want to consider that these people were pretending to be Americans, and that hyping homegrown issues is a feature of Russian active measures, not a bug. But don't take my word for it.
Exploiting Existing Fissures P 21. Successful Russian active measures' attempt to exploit societal divisions that already exist, rather than attempt to create new ruptures.

Alexander Sharavin, the head of a military research institute and a member of the Academy of Military Sciences in Moscow, provides an illustrative example in relation to the Queen's popular appeal in the England: "If you go to Great Britain, for example, and tell them the Queen is bad, nothing will happen, there will be no revolution; because the necessary conditions are absent - there is no existing background for this operation."

As Thomas Rid noted in his 2017 testimony to the Committee, "The tried and tested way of active measures is to use an adversary's existing weaknesses against himself, to drive wedges into pre-existing cracks: the more polarized a society, the more vulnerable it is."
Speaking of Heart of Texas, would Fox News do something like this?
P.47. A May 2016, real world event that took place in Texas illustrates the IRA' s ideological flexibility, command of American politics, and willingness to exploit the country's most divisive fault lines. As publicly detailed by the Committee during a November 1, 2017 hearing, IRA influence operatives used the Facebook page, "Heart of Texas" to promote a protest in opposition to Islam, to occur in front of the Islamic Da'wah Center in Houston, Texas. "Heart of Texas," which eventually attracted over 250,000 followers, used targeted advertisements to implore its supporters to attend a "Stop Islamization of Texas" event, slated for noon, May 21, 2016. Simultaneously, IRA operatives used the IRA's "United Muslims for America" Facebook page and its connection to over 325,000 followers to promote a second event, to be held at the same time, at exactly the same Islamic Da'wah Center in Houston. Again, using purchased advertisements, the IRA influence operatives behind the "United Muslims for America" page beseeched its supporters to demonstrate in front of the Islamic Da'wah Center-this time, in order to "Save Islamic Knowledge." In neither instance was the existence of a counter-protest mentioned in the content of the purchased advertisement.

The competing events were covered live by local news agencies, and according to the Texas Tribune, interactions between the two protests escalated into confrontation and verbal attacks. The total cost for the IRA's campaign to advertise and promote the concomitant events was $200~and the entire operation was conducted from the confines of the IRA's headquarters in Saint Petersburg. Social media researcher John Kelly characterized the IRA's operational intent as "kind of like arming two sides in a civil war so you can get them to fight themselves before you go and have to worry about them."
I doubt that kind of setup would fit the Fox business model, and that's what puts the Russians in a different league. Well, that and how many of Putin's enemies end up poisoned.

As for impeachment, did you think there was even a sliver of a chance the Senate would remove Trump from office?
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