Comment by skinnymuch
3 years ago
Yeah this problem affects all countries to varying degrees. Usually not as bad as the CCP. Most of the west have no opinion or don’t support Yemen against the oppressive Saudis who are backed by the US and more of the west. Same issues: propaganda/how News and media is handled.
To be clear: The Russian Govt invasion of Ukraine is awful. They are completely in the wrong. Putin needs to go and another strong man duplicate must not replace him. Don’t get me started on how bad the CCP is!
What always does my head in here is Wikipedia's claim or requirement to present a "Neutral Point of View".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_vie...
Theoretically, this would mean "representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic."
The way that Wikipedia justifies not presenting, say, Russian or Chinese views on global politics as prominently as Western views is that Russian and Chinese sources are simply not "reliable".
But of course, that merely begs the question.
In a way, it would be interesting to read a publication that really does present all the competing narratives, if only to learn what people elsewhere are told by their media.
The downside is that it would contain not just different viewpoints but also an even greater number of outright lies, as one would actively have to abandon any attempt to present the truth to the best of one's ability. :/
It would contain a greater number of everything if you resolve to put everyone's perspective in. Would it contain a greater proportion of lies? Maybe - there are a lot more lies about a thing than truths about a thing. And if there's a consensus truth against a 0.005% lie, that sums as 1 truth and 1 lie. But:
1) what it would completely eliminate, though, is lies that are presented with no opposing perspective. And, along with that...
2) it would have more truths. If you're the victim of a lying culture/government, there would likely be truth in one or more of the opposing perspectives, where normally there would be silence.
That is nicely put and actually a good way of looking at it. Thanks.