Uh, if they’re just going to publish total outright lies, why not just claim they eat babies or something equally horrific? Villifying the state via haircut shaming is certainly not how I’d go about it.
Could you explain why you think this?
Well yeah: it’s easier to do and gets the same results in the end.
Journalists are actually people. Let’s assume that care about what they do and want to do it with integrity (as most of us seek to act). Convincing them to constantly lie and compromise their work for political reasons seems like a lot of work, and they’d just wind up quitting and writing scandalous tell-alls anyway. So why bother to begin with? It’d just cause drama and is frankly a dead-end for your goals in any event. Just hire a bunch of hatchet job propagandists whose explicit goal is lying. Then everyone’s happy and you’ve made your life much much easier.
Of course, you miss out on “truthful articles” that fool people into believing you’re a good institution. But most people will see that you’re publishing intentional lies and have fired your good journalists anyway, so no one is going to believe you’re a reliable journalistic institution even if you cram in some incisive, hard-hitting truths. Again, it’s just a waste of time and effort; people who are smart enough to do the research will see through you in any case. So, just go straight for the propaganda.
There are plenty of people (right here in this thread) who will falsely equivocate between your propaganda and actual journalism anyway, so it’s not like you’re even sacrificing that much.
Why not just claim they eat babies or something equally horrific?
They do publish many horrific claims.
gets the same results in the end
No it doesn’t. When your outlet is obvious propaganda, fewer people believe you. RFA’s sheen of reputability was a huge factor in the haircut story’s enormous reach in western media.
Hire a bunch of hatchet job propagandists
…the sort of people who would write this disproven haircut story and dozens of other goofy unsourced claims they’ve published, yes. You can even tell them to write normal stories too just to mix it up.
Convincing journalists to lie seems like a lot of work
Not if some or all of your journalists are US intelligence — Radio Free Asia began as a CIA front operation (google it), and might still be one.
Of course I looked. An anonymous source is actually fine, especially when reporting on a regime known for torturing sources.
You’re right that fewer people believe it; but again, it is obviously propaganda when it is and it’s not a secret. So again why bother with the fig leaf when no one will believe it anyway?
And certainly you have a source for your absurd conspiracy theory that the CIA actually runs RFA, right?
Wikileaks publishes leaks. Their sources provide falsifiable documents, transcripts, photos, and footage — actual evidence we can follow up on. The Panama Papers were evidence. 2.6 terabytes of data. 11.5 million documents. Edward Snowden gave us evidence. He didn’t just say “the NSA totally spies on you dude, trust me bro.”
absurd conspiracy theory that the CIA actually runs RFA
Conspiracy theory sure, but how is it absurd? They’re state funded, the CIA acknowledges it created them, they print a lot of unsourced claims about America’s enemies, you can’t find any information about their authors, etc. Ultimately I’m not sure it matters. Unsourced disproven bullshit is unsourced disproven bullshit, CIA or not. Either way, we can point to Radio Free Asia as an example of less-than-trustworthy US state media.
If we need extraordinary evidence for the haircut story, the monumentally much more unlikely, conspiratorial, and unsupported assertion that actually the CIA controls the RFA definitely needs falsifiable documents, transcripts, photos, and footage. Actual evidence, as you say. For which, as you know, there is precisely zero.
I mean, at least the haircut story has an anonymous source. You don’t even have that.
Yeah, flying to North Korea and paying the government to get a restricted and guided tour of some barbershops doesn’t really prove anything though, does it? Except that these people are apparently perfectly fine forking over good money to the DPRK to get spoon fed literal propaganda and support their tyrannical regime at the same time.
This video is shockingly disingenuous and I have serious doubts about the credibility of its authors entirely separate from the above. There is actually a difference between prison camps and prisons; that they don’t know this doesn’t make it less true. North Korea tried to invade and subjugate South Korea. The fact that both America and North Korea have nukes does not somehow excuse North Korean attempts to acquire them and terrorize South Korea and Japan. (Yes, despite the fact America has detonated them. In what sense do past American atrocities make North Korean aggression okay?)
These people need to do much more research into what’s actually going on and has been going on in North Korea. Basically it seems like standard “well anything that America sanctions must actually be awesome” contrarianism.
Mate I don’t know if you’ve ever bothered to watch visits to NK but they’re not quite what you seem to think they are. There is a considerable amount of things that people do there, the downside being that they are all supervised.
Like, just watch some? You’re perfectly happy to swallow everything from literal propaganda outlets but you’re unwilling to actually watch first hand accounts of any visitors? You are only willing to consume things filtered through a media lens? Why?
“These people” have actually visited. You have not. You’re not even ALLOWED to visit because your government makes it illegal to. Wtf is up with that? And you’re the one that thinks you have more information than people who are not prevented from visiting and making their own minds up first hand?
The only edgelord here is the person that is vehemently calling VOA fair and unbiased while simultaneously calling the first hand accounts of actual real visitors to the country propaganda. You’re out of your mind. You’re the most propagandised person I have ever had the displeasure of talking to actually.
I think it’s hilarious you’re scolding me for not considering a badly edited 20 minute video filled with total propaganda and misinformation more canonical than, you know, actual reporting about North Korea and conditions there. Irony is truly dead.
This is just tankie apologia and badly done at that. If you can’t see that you’re blind.
Why don’t you go back to Lemmygrad? Our instance is unfederated with that so we don’t have to run into idiots like you.
North Korea tried to invade and subjugate South Korea. The fact that both America and North Korea have nukes does not somehow excuse North Korean attempts to acquire them and terrorize South Korea and Japan. (Yes, despite the fact America has detonated them. In what sense do past American atrocities make North Korean aggression okay?)
Talk about shockingly disingenuous. There was no divided Korea until the U.S. arrived, with the dividing line being drawn by two U.S. officials with no precedent to get Seoul in their occupied territory (Patriots, Traitors and Empires, p. 73). The American zone of South Korea was called a “police state” by Roger Baldwin, chief of the American Civil Liberties Union; before the Korean War, the south had 70,000 leftists in concentration camps (Korea’s Place in the Sun, p. 223); by December 1949 the anti-communist National Security Law in the occupied South had been used to arrest 188,621 people (Ibid., p. 348); the U.S. military literally trafficked Korean women for r*pe in continuation of Japanese colonial comfort stations (Patriots, Traitors and Empires, p. 33;. look up the Jeju Massacre for me as well.
“Korea is a major responsibility which we [Amerikans] as a world power have voluntarily assumed. . . . We have committed here some of our most excruciating errors… Opinion polls show that 64 out of every 100 Koreans dislike us” — Mark Gayn in New York Star, Nov. 1947
“[There is] growing resentment against all Americans in the area including passive resistance… Every day of drifting under this situation makes our position in Korea more untenable and decreases our waning popularity… The word pro-American is being added to pro-Jap, national traitor, and collaborator” — John R. Hodge (U.S. Army Officer) (Korea’s Place in the Sun)
Here’s some examples of Japanese colonial collaborators and officials promoted in the ROK:
Paek Son-yop, also from the Kwantung Army, was the first four-star general in the
south Korean army
Paek In-yop (Kwantung), commander of south Korea’s 17th Independent Regiment
Park Chung-hee (Kwantung), south Korean Army, south Korean President (1962-63)
Kim Chae-gyu (Japanese military officer), head of south Korean Central Intelligence
Agency (KCIA)
Kim Sok-won (colonel, Japanese Imperial Army), lead the 1948 6/2 parade consisting of
2,500 Japanese army veterans through Seoul (the manufactured capital of SK)
Because you are okay literally believing CIA conspiracy theories with no evidence. There’s no common ground here; I do believe you’re engaging in good faith, but you don’t seem to have any interest in what might be factual or true.
Which I guess your lack of sourcing anything should have told me awhile ago. Oh well, more fool me.
That claim includes a source.
Uh, if they’re just going to publish total outright lies, why not just claim they eat babies or something equally horrific? Villifying the state via haircut shaming is certainly not how I’d go about it.
Well yeah: it’s easier to do and gets the same results in the end.
Journalists are actually people. Let’s assume that care about what they do and want to do it with integrity (as most of us seek to act). Convincing them to constantly lie and compromise their work for political reasons seems like a lot of work, and they’d just wind up quitting and writing scandalous tell-alls anyway. So why bother to begin with? It’d just cause drama and is frankly a dead-end for your goals in any event. Just hire a bunch of hatchet job propagandists whose explicit goal is lying. Then everyone’s happy and you’ve made your life much much easier.
Of course, you miss out on “truthful articles” that fool people into believing you’re a good institution. But most people will see that you’re publishing intentional lies and have fired your good journalists anyway, so no one is going to believe you’re a reliable journalistic institution even if you cram in some incisive, hard-hitting truths. Again, it’s just a waste of time and effort; people who are smart enough to do the research will see through you in any case. So, just go straight for the propaganda.
There are plenty of people (right here in this thread) who will falsely equivocate between your propaganda and actual journalism anyway, so it’s not like you’re even sacrificing that much.
Yeah, an anonymous source. Did you look at it?
They do publish many horrific claims.
No it doesn’t. When your outlet is obvious propaganda, fewer people believe you. RFA’s sheen of reputability was a huge factor in the haircut story’s enormous reach in western media.
…the sort of people who would write this disproven haircut story and dozens of other goofy unsourced claims they’ve published, yes. You can even tell them to write normal stories too just to mix it up.
Not if some or all of your journalists are US intelligence — Radio Free Asia began as a CIA front operation (google it), and might still be one.
Of course I looked. An anonymous source is actually fine, especially when reporting on a regime known for torturing sources.
You’re right that fewer people believe it; but again, it is obviously propaganda when it is and it’s not a secret. So again why bother with the fig leaf when no one will believe it anyway?
And certainly you have a source for your absurd conspiracy theory that the CIA actually runs RFA, right?
…when they provide evidence.
Wikileaks publishes leaks. Their sources provide falsifiable documents, transcripts, photos, and footage — actual evidence we can follow up on. The Panama Papers were evidence. 2.6 terabytes of data. 11.5 million documents. Edward Snowden gave us evidence. He didn’t just say “the NSA totally spies on you dude, trust me bro.”
Conspiracy theory sure, but how is it absurd? They’re state funded, the CIA acknowledges it created them, they print a lot of unsourced claims about America’s enemies, you can’t find any information about their authors, etc. Ultimately I’m not sure it matters. Unsourced disproven bullshit is unsourced disproven bullshit, CIA or not. Either way, we can point to Radio Free Asia as an example of less-than-trustworthy US state media.
If we need extraordinary evidence for the haircut story, the monumentally much more unlikely, conspiratorial, and unsupported assertion that actually the CIA controls the RFA definitely needs falsifiable documents, transcripts, photos, and footage. Actual evidence, as you say. For which, as you know, there is precisely zero.
I mean, at least the haircut story has an anonymous source. You don’t even have that.
https://youtu.be/2BO83Ig-E8E
Is people travelling there and getting first hand actual proof enough for you?
Yeah, flying to North Korea and paying the government to get a restricted and guided tour of some barbershops doesn’t really prove anything though, does it? Except that these people are apparently perfectly fine forking over good money to the DPRK to get spoon fed literal propaganda and support their tyrannical regime at the same time.
This video is shockingly disingenuous and I have serious doubts about the credibility of its authors entirely separate from the above. There is actually a difference between prison camps and prisons; that they don’t know this doesn’t make it less true. North Korea tried to invade and subjugate South Korea. The fact that both America and North Korea have nukes does not somehow excuse North Korean attempts to acquire them and terrorize South Korea and Japan. (Yes, despite the fact America has detonated them. In what sense do past American atrocities make North Korean aggression okay?)
These people need to do much more research into what’s actually going on and has been going on in North Korea. Basically it seems like standard “well anything that America sanctions must actually be awesome” contrarianism.
You’d think along the way they might pass a pedestrian with a Kim Jong Un haircut
Mate I don’t know if you’ve ever bothered to watch visits to NK but they’re not quite what you seem to think they are. There is a considerable amount of things that people do there, the downside being that they are all supervised.
Like, just watch some? You’re perfectly happy to swallow everything from literal propaganda outlets but you’re unwilling to actually watch first hand accounts of any visitors? You are only willing to consume things filtered through a media lens? Why?
“These people” have actually visited. You have not. You’re not even ALLOWED to visit because your government makes it illegal to. Wtf is up with that? And you’re the one that thinks you have more information than people who are not prevented from visiting and making their own minds up first hand?
The only edgelord here is the person that is vehemently calling VOA fair and unbiased while simultaneously calling the first hand accounts of actual real visitors to the country propaganda. You’re out of your mind. You’re the most propagandised person I have ever had the displeasure of talking to actually.
I think it’s hilarious you’re scolding me for not considering a badly edited 20 minute video filled with total propaganda and misinformation more canonical than, you know, actual reporting about North Korea and conditions there. Irony is truly dead.
This is just tankie apologia and badly done at that. If you can’t see that you’re blind.
Why don’t you go back to Lemmygrad? Our instance is unfederated with that so we don’t have to run into idiots like you.
Talk about shockingly disingenuous. There was no divided Korea until the U.S. arrived, with the dividing line being drawn by two U.S. officials with no precedent to get Seoul in their occupied territory (Patriots, Traitors and Empires, p. 73). The American zone of South Korea was called a “police state” by Roger Baldwin, chief of the American Civil Liberties Union; before the Korean War, the south had 70,000 leftists in concentration camps (Korea’s Place in the Sun, p. 223); by December 1949 the anti-communist National Security Law in the occupied South had been used to arrest 188,621 people (Ibid., p. 348); the U.S. military literally trafficked Korean women for r*pe in continuation of Japanese colonial comfort stations (Patriots, Traitors and Empires, p. 33;. look up the Jeju Massacre for me as well.
“Korea is a major responsibility which we [Amerikans] as a world power have voluntarily assumed. . . . We have committed here some of our most excruciating errors… Opinion polls show that 64 out of every 100 Koreans dislike us” — Mark Gayn in New York Star, Nov. 1947
“[There is] growing resentment against all Americans in the area including passive resistance… Every day of drifting under this situation makes our position in Korea more untenable and decreases our waning popularity… The word pro-American is being added to pro-Jap, national traitor, and collaborator” — John R. Hodge (U.S. Army Officer) (Korea’s Place in the Sun)
Here’s some examples of Japanese colonial collaborators and officials promoted in the ROK:
The KPA invaded (as far as one can invade oneself) an illegitimate stronghold of U.S. brutality where the people were oppressed and attempted to do away with the division of their nation, not “subjugate [the south]” a goal which had already been accomplished. As far as aggression goes, do you not know about the SK-US(-Japanese) joint military mobilizations along the DMZ, which provoke weapons demonstrations for the purpose of deterrence (of which the nuclear weaponry of the DPRK is only referred to in the context of deterrence in state media). To quote David E. Sanger, a member of the U.S. state adjacent Council on Foreign Relations: “The fear is not that [the DPRK] would launch a pre-emptive attack on the West Coast; that would be suicidal, and if the North’s 33-year-old leader has demonstrated anything in his five years in office, he is all about survival. But if [the DPRK] has the potential ability to strike back, it will shape every decision Mr. Trump and his successors make.” Do you not know about the incessant threats of nuclear annihilation by the U.S., not to mention of course the fact that they killed millions of Koreans in the Korean War (FLW), showing this is not an empty threat? I hope you’re just ignorant, cause seriously get a grip.
any evidence at all
than a disproven story?
actually, yes I do. someone told me. /s
This wound up being kinda sad honestly. I’m not sure how you can live in such an intellectually dishonest world. But, you do you.
intellectually dishonest how? I acknowledged it was speculation and gave my reasons.
Because you are okay literally believing CIA conspiracy theories with no evidence. There’s no common ground here; I do believe you’re engaging in good faith, but you don’t seem to have any interest in what might be factual or true.
Which I guess your lack of sourcing anything should have told me awhile ago. Oh well, more fool me.