Sociale media platforms maken een gemakkelijke verspreiding van desinformatie mogelijk. Uit enquêtes na de verkiezingen in 2016 blijkt dat veel mensen die valse informatie op sociale media tot zich namen, dachten dat deze feitelijk waren. De specifieke redenen waarom desinformatie zich zo gemakkelijk via sociale media verspreidt, blijven onbekend. Een onderzoek van Twitter uit 2018 stelde vast dat valse informatie zich, vergeleken met nauwkeurige informatie, aanzienlijk sneller, verder, dieper en breder verspreidde. Op dezelfde manier bleek uit een onderzoek van Facebook dat er vaker op verkeerde informatie werd geklikt dan op feitelijke informatie.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misinformation
Deze bewering is hilarisch en smeekt om een toelichting: 'De specifieke redenen waarom desinformatie zich zo gemakkelijk via sociale media verspreidt, blijven onbekend.'
Allereerst deze kanttekening: wie bepaalt wat 'desinformatie' is en wat 'feitelijke informatie'? Ik vraag dit ondermeer omdat The New York Times als toonaangevende westerse 'kwaliteitskrant' de regering Bush junior rechtvaardigde om een uiteindelijk desastreuze oorlog tegen Irak te beginnen vanwege het 'feit' dat het regime van Saddam Hoessein 'weapons of mass destruction' bezat die in drie kwartier Europese hoofdsteden konden verwoesten. Naderhand schreef een kritische Amerikaanse journalist James C. Moore hierover:
27 mei 2004 | Wanneer de volledige geschiedenis van de oorlog in Irak is geschreven, zal één van de meest schandalige hoofdstukken gaan over de manier waarop Amerikaanse journalisten, vooral die van de New York Times, zich zo gemakkelijk lieten manipuleren door zowel dubieuze bronnen als onbetrouwbare functionarissen van het Witte Huis om verhalen vertellen die de natie misleidden over de massavernietigingswapens van Saddam Hoessein. De Times erkende uiteindelijk zijn ernstige fouten in een buitengewone en lange redactioneel bekentenis die woensdag werd gepubliceerd. De redactie schreef:
'Wij hebben gevallen van berichtgeving gevonden die niet zo strikt waren als het had moeten zijn... In sommige gevallen was de informatie die toen controversieel was en nu twijfelachtig lijkt, onvoldoende gekwalificeerd of onbetwist gelaten. Terugkijkend zouden we willen dat wij agressiever waren geweest in het opnieuw onderzoeken van de beweringen toen er nieuw bewijsmateriaal naar voren kwam – of niet naar boven kwam... Wij beschouwen het verhaal van de Irakese wapens en van het patroon van desinformatie als een onafgemaakte zaak. En wij zijn absoluut van plan om door te gaan met agressieve berichtgeving, gericht op het rechtzetten van de feiten.'
https://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/26/world/from-the-editors-the-times-and-iraq.html
In hun uitgebreid gedocumenteerde wetenschappelijke studie Manufacturing Consent. The political economy of the Mass Media (1988) concludeerden de Amerikaanse geleerden Edward S. Herman en Noam Chomsky over de berichtgeving van de westerse commerciële media het volgende:
In contrast to the standard conception of the media as cantankerous, obstinate, and ubiquitous in their search for truth and their independence of authority, we have spelled out and applied a propaganda model that indeed sees the media as serving a 'societal purpose,' but not that of enabling the public to assert meaningful control over the political process by providing them with the information needed for the intelligent discharge of political responsibilities. On the contrary, a propaganda model suggests that the 'societal purpose' of the media is to inculcate and defend the economic, social, and political agenda of privileged groups that dominate the domestic society and the state. The media serve this purpose in many ways: through selection of topics, distribution of concerns, framing of issues, filtering of information, emphasis and tone, and by keeping debate within the bounds of acceptable premises...
As we have stressed throughout this book, the U.S. media do not function in the manner of the propaganda system of a totalitarian state. Rather, they permit -- indeed, encourage -- spirited debate, criticism, and dissent, as long as these remain faithfully within the system of presuppositions and principles that constitute an elite consensus, a system so powerful as to be internalized largely without awareness. No one instructed the media to focus on Cambodia and ignore East Timor. They gravitated naturally to the Khmer Rouge and discussed them freely -- just as they naturally suppressed information on Indonesian atrocities in East Timor and U.S. responsibility for the agression and massacres. In the process, the media provided neither facts nor analyses that would have enabled the public to understand the issues or the bases of government policies toward Cambodia and Timor, and they thereby assured that the public could not exert any meaningful influence on the decisions that were made. This is quite typical of the actual 'societal purpose' of the media on matters that are of significance for established power; not 'enabling the public to assert meaningful control over the political process,' but rather averting any such danger. In these cases, as in numerous others, the public was managed and mobilized from above, by means of the media's highly selective messages and evasions. As noted by media analyst W. Lance Bennett: 'the public is exposed to powerful persuasive messages from above and is unable to communicate meaningfully through the media in response to the messages... Leaders have usurped enormous amounts of political power and reduced popular control over the political system by using the media to generate support, compliance, and just plain confusion among the public.'
En:
Given the imperatives of corporate organization and the workings of the various filters, conformity to the needs and interests of privileged sectors is essential to succes. In the media, as in other major institutions, those who do not display the requistite values and perspectives will be regarded as 'irresponsible,' 'ideological,' or otherwise aberrant, and will tend to fall by the wayside. While there may be a small number of exeptions, the pattern is pervasive, and expected. Those who adapt, perhaps quite honestly, will then be free to express themselves with little managerial control, and they will be able to assert, accurately, that they perceive no pressures to conform. The media are indeed free -- for those who adopt the principles required for 'societal purpose.'
Dat wat betreft de ideologische achtergrond, maar ook qua opzet en functioneren van de zogeheten vrije pers valt het nodige op te merken:
The technical structure of the media virtually compels adherence to conventional thoughts; nothing else can be expressed between two commercials, or in seven hunderd words, without the appearance of absurdity that is difficult to avoid when one is challenging familiar doctrine with no opportunity to develop facts or argument... The critic must also be prepared to face a defamation apparatus against which there is little recourse, an inhibiting factor that is not insubstantial... The result is a powerful system of induced conformity to the needs of privilege and power. In sum, the mass media of the United States are effective and powerful ideological institutions that carry out a system-supportive propaganda function by reliance on market forces, internalized assumptions, and self-censorship, and without significant overt coercion. This propaganda system has become even more efficient in recent decades with the rise of the national television networks, greater mass-media concentration, right-wing pressures on public radio and television, and the growth in scope and sophistication of public relations and news management.
Onder de kop 'The New York Times Versus The Civil Society' schreef professor Edward S. Herman naderhand een vernietigend artikel over 's werelds invloedrijkste krant:
The veteran Times reporter John Hess has said that in all 24 years of his service at the paper he 'never saw a foreign intervention that the Times did not support, never saw a fare increase or a rent increase or a utility rate increase that it did not endorse, never saw it take the side of labor in a strike or lockout, or advocate a raise for underpaid workers. And don’t let me get started on universal health care and Social Security. So why do people think the Times is liberal?' The paper is an establishment institution and serves establishment ends. As Times historian Harrison Salisbury said about former executive editor Max Frankel, 'The last thing that would have entered his mind would be to hassle the American Establishment, of which he was so proud to be a part.'
Het hele artikel vindt u hier:
https://www.alainet.org/es/node/113764
Op zijn beurt schreef een van de meest betrouwbare onderzoeksjournalisten, John Pilger:
On August 24 2006 the New York Times declared this in an editorial: 'If we had known then what we know now the invasion if Iraq would have been stopped by a popular outcry.' This amazing admission was saying, in effect, that journalists had betrayed the public by not doing their job and by accepting and amplifying and echoing the lies of Bush and his gang, instead of challenging them and exposing them. What the Times didn’t say was that had that paper and the rest of the media exposed the lies, up to a million people might be alive today. That’s the belief now of a number of senior establishment journalists. Few of them — they’ve spoken to me about it — few of them will say it in public.
De berichtgeving in het Westen is handel, onderworpen aan de markt van vraag en aanbod. Ralph Nader schreef terecht:
‘Face it, America. You are a corporate-controlled country with the symbols of democracy in the constitution and statutes just that-symbols of what the founding fathers believed or hoped would be reality.’
Onder de kop
Ouch. Jill Abramson, Ex-New York Times Editor: The ‘Narcissistic’ NYT Is Making ‘Horrible Mistakes,’ Needs a ‘Course Correction,’
schreef de Amerikaanse journalist Lloyd Grove, op de website van The Daily Beast van donderdag 28 juni 2018:
It may not have been the tweet heard around the world, but it was certainly heard — like a thunderclap — at The New York Times’ headquarters at 620 Eighth Avenue in Manhattan.
'Kind of pisses me off that @ nytimes is still asking Who Is Ocasio-Cortez? when it should have covered her campaign,' Jill Abramson erupted on Twitter on Wednesday morning — a biting reference to the newspaper’s original headline concerning the 28-year-old socialist’s shocking Democratic primary upset, a landslide actually, over incumbent Joe Crowley in New York’s 14th Congressional District.
Indeed, a quick review of the Times’ coverage of the primary race turned up mention of and quotes from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in two news stories prior to Election Night, and a few name-checks in editorials — one of which, published in the June 20 print edition, noted that she’s 'a challenger [Crowley] is heavily favored to beat.'
'Missing her rise [is] akin to not seeing Trump’s win coming in 2016,' Abramson added in her tweet — an even more biting reference to the Times’ self-acknowledged failings in the paper’s reporting of the presidential campaign.
In response to Abramson’s critique — which she elaborated in several emailed comments shared with the Times — Times spokeswoman Eileen Murphy told The Daily Beast: 'We have enormous respect for Jill and deeply appreciate her passion. Criticism and feedback helps us do better work and we’re always open to it. On these specifics though, we just disagree with Jill.' A few hours after Abramson’s tweet, the headline phrase that pissed her off, 'Who is Alexandria Ocasia-Cortez?' was changed online to 'Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: A 28-Year-Old Democratic Giant Slayer.'
The Times, of course, is used to reader complaints—but not to public spankings from former executive editors.
Abramson, 64, famously held that job for nearly three years—the first and only woman to do so—until she was summarily sacked amid an unseemly public-relations melee in May 2014.
Ondanks dit alles nam de NRC van maandag 25 juni 2018 de volgende bewering van The New York Times klakkeloos over:
Onderzoek New York Times : Assad zit achter chemische aanval op Douma
Na eigen ‘forensisch’ onderzoek concludeert The New York Times dat Assad achter de gifgasaanval op Douma in april zit. Met Virtual Reality sta je ín het gebombardeerde gebouw.
https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2018/06/26/de-gifgasaanval-op-douma-in-virtual-reality-a1608014
Inderdaad: 'Virtual Reality,' oftewel propaganda. Laten journalisten eerlijk zijn, de meeste journalistieke producten van de mainstream-media zijn doordrenkt met propaganda. De meesten van mijn collega's, zo weet ik uit ervaring zijn tamelijk lui en niet al te snugger.
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