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Comment by hedora | Hacker News Reader

Funny how most of the comments here are complaining about how this proves there is western media bias.

One of the main goals of the current Russian propaganda push in the US is to get people to lose confidence in reliable news outlets. They want us to believe that our best news outlets are equivalent to their basement troll farms that just fabricate stories day in and out.

The two are not the same.

Giving equal per story weight to misinformation spammers is equivalent to letting those spammers censor the rest of the media. Is that really what you want duck duck go and other western sites to do?

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Western media helped start a war with Irak based on fake weapons of mass destruction.

If people lost trust on Western medias, it's not because of Russians, it's because we are constantly producing propaganda as well. It's just different.

The western media is not a monolith. Fox News was the primary source running the fake WMD story, and is the only mainstream outlet running pro Russian opinion pieces.

They're also foreign owned, and promote policies that would prevent people from voting, allow counts to be ignored.

Since they're Australian, they're not even geographically "western".

Woah woah woah ... woah

Fox News, and stylized in all caps, is an American multinational conservative cable news television channel based in New York City.[2][3][4] It is owned by Fox News Media, which itself is owned by the Fox Corporation.[5]

Fox Corporation (stylized in all-caps as FOX Corporation)[5] is a publicly traded American mass media company operated and controlled by media mogul Rupert Murdoch and headquartered at 1211 Avenue of the Americas in New York City. Incorporated in Delaware, it was formed in 2019 as a result of the acquisition of 21st Century Fox by The Walt Disney Company

-- We Australians call it an American company, you can't put this one on us!

The WMD scandal was recorded live during Colin Powell at a UN conference. It was broadcast by pretty much all American news outlet.

The only difference between the US and Russia is the the US is a lot more subtle when it comes to generating propaganda.

>One of the main goals of the current Russian propaganda push in the US is to get people to lose confidence in reliable news outlets.

If western news outlets focused a little more on actually being reliable and objective maybe people wouldnt lose confidence.

I hardly think Russian propaganda is required for people to do this.

True, but "not great" is different than "maliciously bad".

Western news is a lot worse than "not great".

Out of curiosity, what are the reliable news outlets that you subscribe to?

Good question. I tend to read primary sources when possible. Propublica isn't bad. Outlets that syndicate them are often good.

Also, organizations that still have journalists on staff, and win awards such as the Pulitzer Prize are a good bet.

Edit: https://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by-year/2021

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