• cecinestpasunbot@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    It’s not that corporate news in the western world has to be well organized to put out the same perspective. Rather, they operate under the same kinds of selective pressures and as such they develop similar biases.

    A good example is all the reporting on WMDs in Iraq that went unquestioned by much of the western press until well after it mattered. Unfortunately nothing has really changed since the invasion of Iraq.

    • TheSanSabaSongbird@lemdro.id
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      1 year ago

      And yet, there was a considerable portion of the western press that very much did question the WMD narrative, most notably in the US, Gannet, which still owns more newspapers than any other publisher in North America.

      I had recently finished up an undergrad degree in journalism at the time and it was very obvious to anyone who was paying attention that people were selectively consuming whatever news told them what they wanted to hear. A huge portion of the country went bat shit crazy after 9/11 and had no interest whatsoever in listening to anyone who urged caution. At the time I worked for a local paper in California’s Central Valley and we were basically called traitors every time we questioned the narrative at all.