Daily reader of Meduza here. They publish consistent and high quality coverage both about headline events in the war as well as odd ramifications of it in Russia and Ukraine. And it doesn’t have the annoying US-centrism of Ukraine coverage that you get elsewhere.
Well, yes and no, even people who are strongly anti-Russian-regime-oriented told me that they stopped reading Meduza because it's giving info which is extremely one sided and not objective, like it's propaganda but opposite to a Russian-state one
They might not be as anti-regime as they like to think. Apart from Meduza, I also read mainstream UK, US, German and Ukrainian media, and Meduza doesn't seem to be more biased than either of those. Their predictions of regime's difficulties seem to be exaggerated (compared to what seems to be happening in reality), but so are predictions of Western media.
Most people are like this for many issues on either side. If your media outlet isn't pouring kool-aid over your personally held belief it's viewed as suspect. Meanwhile your mind quickly discounts obvious contradictions to your held belief.
Popular contradictions today:
It's a human right to dress and act like any sex one chooses. It's evil and horrible to dress and act like a different race.
Global warming is the biggest threat to mankind. Coming into the office is more important.
Flying around the globe is to talk down to others who are doing more about global warming earns praise.
> while Russia is responsible for invading, Victoria Nuland was caught red-handed orchestrating the Ukrainian coup/government that precipitated it
Fyi the leaked Nuland call (which I assume is what you're referring to), is of her discussing who they should support after the massive protests started and Yanukovych and his ministers left the country. She did not "orchestrate a coup". At most, it's the US trying to get Ukrainian parliament to pick the interim candidate they want which while is still manipulative, is far from "orchestrating a coup".
The call was leaked on the 4th of February (and apparently recorded on the 28th of January), Yanukovych fled on the 21st. The correct context is that negotiations were ongoing between Yanukovych and the Maidan organisations, with him offering Yatsenyuk the prime minister job on the 25th of January as part of a potential deal to end the protests.
It's a very tired canard to call it a coup, of course, but it's important to be accurate about these details.
Giving her support of a particular candidate is not "orchestrating" any coup. By that logic, the Democratic party giving support to Biden means the Democratic party enacted a coup on the US. Following the law of a country is not a coup.
In order for there to be a coup, there has to be an unlawful seizure of power and that never happened. The president and his ministers left. I assume because the unrest of the people was so massive, he expected there would be a revolution. That would have been a coup, but even giving her support to a particular candidate the revolutionaries put forward, is not her causing a coup. Giving the revolutionaries weapons would be causing a coup. Sparking the revolution would be causing a coup. Getting one part of the government to overthrow the controlling part would be a coup. She did none of those things though (as far as we know).
Facing the reality of having no president and having no line of succession remaining, the Ukrainian parliament selected an interim president for an interim government until a new, full president could be elected and that is what happened.
There's a relatively reasonable timeline of the coup available here. [1] And it was a coup in the most classical definition of the word. The military began refusing to carry out government orders, entire regional police departments were defecting to the protesters, cities were openly refusing to recognize the government, and so on. Had Yanukovych stayed, he would likely have been killed, with or without a Ceaușescu style kangaroo court.
And if you want to see the sparking of the coup, this [2] is a video of John McCain (who was working alongside Nuland) instigating and emboldening the protesters, "America is with you. Europe is with you. The destiny you seek lies in Europe!" At the same time this was happening, Nuland was on the ground with protesters, memed as 'handing out cookies.'
Try to imagine something comparable happening in America. Imagine America was a relatively weak nation, and you had e.g. leading politicians from China out there rallying the protesters in DC, telling them that "China is with you! The destiny you seek lies in China!" That is going to not only dramatically embolden the existing protesters, but also draw out people from everywhere in the country who start thinking 'this could be it.' And indeed it was "it."
I can see how it can be called a coup because of the protesters' violence and arguing that difference is pretty pedantic so I have no problem with that.
The main point I was making was in response to the person confidently claiming Nuland orchestrated the coup. I don't think the call shows evidence of that. They only talk about coordinating their support for a candidate.
> And if you want to see the sparking of the coup, this [2] is a video of John McCain (who was working alongside Nuland) instigating and emboldening the protesters, "America is with you. Europe is with you. The destiny you seek lies in Europe!" At the same time this was happening, Nuland was on the ground with protesters, memed as 'handing out cookies.'
I've seen this mentioned before. While I think it's clear who the US supported in this coup and the US was certainly trying to influence the situation, calling John McCain's speech three months before Yanukovych left, the sparking of the coup, is very disingenuous. That speech didn't cause the coup.
I could definitely see the US actually being behind the coup though. They've shamelessly done it countless times throughout history. It's just nothing out there so far is evidence of it.
The US would not have been in the ground riling up protesters if they thought the protests could organically overthrow their government, which was the US goal. It 'taints' the protesting by making it seem like it's just another US puppet protest. And it also makes a complete mockery of any efforts for us to make claims like 'foreign countries shouldn't interfere in the democratic process of other nations.' There is 0 doubt that Yanukovych was the legitimate democratically elected leader of Ukraine, but because he made interests that were not aligned with those of the US, of course it didn't matter.
Beyond this, I think you're also aware that if the US is sending people like McCain and Nuland to visibly rile up protesters, "we" were also doing far more behind the scenes, to make sure the coup could succeed. The number of protesters involved in the final attack on the Ukrainian Parliament was extremely small, relative to the earlier mass gatherings - numbering about 20,000 people. There was no real reason to think they would win, yet you had cities, police departments, and others openly and overtly defecting to the protesters, the military refusing to carry out orders and so on. That seems extremely unlikely to be organic, because if the protesters had failed overthrow Yanukovych, which one had every reason to think would be the case, then the defectors would have faced extremely severe consequences, up to and including charges of treason.
Oh there's also another funny little point. When the final charge on the parliament began, riot police managed to successfully scatter the first wave. Many protesters being pursued by riot police managed to evade them by taking shelter in... the Canadian Embassy. It's all about as organic as nuclear waste.
> The US would not have been in the ground riling up protesters if they thought the protests could organically overthrow their government, which was the US goal
The US can show their support for the protesters (if only to get them to think favorably of the US), regardless of whether or not they think the coup will work. It's not evidence they caused the coup.
I agree with the rest of that paragraph up until the last sentence:
> There is 0 doubt that Yanukovych was the legitimate democratically elected leader of Ukraine, but because he made interests that were not aligned with those of the US, of course it didn't matter.
I think the people of Kyiv are the cause of the coup, not the US.
The rest of your comment does not provide good evidence of the US causing the coup. Like I said before, it's clear who the US supported, but none of what you presented is good evidence toward the US causing the coup.
Unless you have evidence of a bribe, staging of protests, blackmail of officials, puppeteering of officials, attempted assassination of officials, government spy, some record of this plot, or some other good evidence along those lines directed toward causing the overthrow of the Ukrainian government, I don't think you can say the Ukrainian coup was orchestrated by the US.
...under threat of lethal violence. Their offices/residences were assaulted soon after they fled. Many people were murdered during the "protests". Is a "coup" really determined by whether the overthrown leader is nimble enough to evade arrest/murder?
> Giving her support of a particular candidate is not "orchestrating" any coup.
Please, let's be real. If Lavrov were caught saying things like "Trump should be President over Desantis. Let's keep Desantis out of government for now. Also let's be discreet about this. Putin is on board." and then all of that actually happened, like Desantis dropped out and endorsed Trump, what do you think the American reaction would be?
Some Americans even believe that something like this happened in 2016 ("Russiagate conspiracy theory"), but there is scant evidence to support it. In reality, Trump was impeached over far less evidence.
We can debate semantics over the preferred definition of coup, but the bottom line is there was extraordinarily blatant foreign interference in Ukraine's democratic process, and the US government clearly played a central role and achieved their goals.
I can see how it can be called a coup because of the protesters' violence and arguing that difference is pretty pedantic so I have no problem with that.
The main point I was making was in response to you confidently claiming Nuland orchestrated the coup. I don't think the call shows evidence of that. They only talk about coordinating their support for a candidate.
> If Lavrov were caught saying things like "Trump should be President over Desantis. Let's keep Desantis out of government for now. Also let's be discreet about this. Putin is on board." and then all of that actually happened, like Desantis dropped out and endorsed Trump, what do you think the American reaction would be?
If DeSantis dropped out because of Putin, it would be Russian influence again but on another level. Going to war level. DeSantis and Trump would be traitors and Russian co-conspirators, but I'm not sure if it would be a coup. Although I'm sure some would say that, the fact he was voted in would remain.
There is something to be said for manipulating the electoral process to a degree where it can't be called democratic, such as the situation in Russia at the moment where Putin's potential electoral opponents are jailed, killed, scared off, or oppressed to the point there is no other viable candidate to choose. So yes, I'd say there is a point where manipulating the democratic process prevents it from being fair and is unlawful and it could be considered a coup in that scenario, but I don't think the US meets that threshold here. Would you call every other leader selection process where the US has given their support for a candidate a coup? I agree it is wrong and shouldn't be done, but do you really think it qualifies as a coup?
The US caused a coup in Panama when it bombed their infrastructure, invaded, and took their leader under arrest. The US caused a coup in Iraq when it invaded. The US caused a coup in Iran when it staged riots, paid off journalists, and paid off generals resulting in a change of leadership. There are many more examples of this, but all that was shown here was Nuland coordinated US support for a candidate. That's not enough.
You said the US orchestrated the coup so confidently and absolutely as if it was another one of these scenarios. It was a call for coordinating and exercising the US' influence on Ukraine. Not a coup though.
> We can debate semantics over the preferred definition of coup, but the bottom line is there was extraordinarily blatant foreign interference in Ukraine's democratic process, and the US government clearly played a central role and achieved their goals.
Unfortunately semantics is where we have gone. The call does not show the US orchestrated any coup. That's a significant mischaracterization. Influenced? Yes. Interfered with? By talking to their politicians, probably. Orchestrated the overthrow of their government? No.
I could definitely see the US actually being behind the coup though. They've shamelessly done it countless times throughout history. It's just nothing out there so far is evidence of it.
> Would you call every other leader selection process where the US has given their support for a candidate a coup?
That's clearly a mischaracterization of what happened in Ukraine. Yes, Washington declared its support for the opposition in Ukraine. It also:
- bragged about spending $5 billion funding the opposition over preceding years.
- participated closely in the Yalta European Solution for decades, which was a forum for Washington power brokers + Ukrainian oligarchs.
- endorsed the overthrow of Yanukovych (i.e. by not demanding his democratic government was restored, which e.g. Washington did in Niger recently).
- and so on
It was a coup. It was primarily achieved through covert action, which by definition avoids yielding smoking guns that would cater to your personal, precise, technical definition of "coup", but given the totality of the circumstances we can only conclude that it was a coup.
> It was a coup. It was primarily achieved through covert action, which by definition avoids yielding smoking guns that would cater to your personal, precise, technical definition of "coup", but given the totality of the circumstances we can only conclude that it was a coup.
What it seems like is that there isn't much evidence or sources. Anyone could claim anything was achieved through primary covert action and has not yielded any smoking guns or real evidence.
I could claim that all the coup hubbub was started by Russia as an attempt to ferment a civil war in Ukraine as a pretext for invading as achieved through covert action.
And when that failed they used there 'little green men' to start the civil war instead.
Exactly. There is no real evidence, so we can't conclude one way or another. A lot of people are treating the Nuland call like a smoking gun, but it isn't one.
That call happened around the time when the opposition, the government, the EU and Russia were negotiating the "Agreement on settlement of political crisis in Ukraine"[1].
The gist of the agreement was that the opposition candidate would become prime minister and Yanukovych would remain president until the elections (which didn't materialize because he fled the country).
Note that there was no US at the table. Nuland and Pyatt weren't "orchestrating" anything. In fact, they were frustrated that the US wasn't participating in the talks, hence the "fuck the EU" in that call.
All this leak shows is that US officials were trying to influence negotiations to which they weren't invited.
Most of the world's population that do live in liberal democracies with free press also believes all kinds of conspiracy theories. I doubt you could find a single trustworthy source that could prove any significant difference between the two.
I'd say the US and Russian populations are just as susceptible to conspiracy theories and propaganda, but Russia's propaganda is on another level and much more blatant. Their line seems to be further than the US'.
From my experience living in Russia I would say if you _don't_ believe in conspiracy theories, somewhat in the line of all democratic regimes being fake and secretly ruled by some invisible shadow global government, you are perceived as weirdo and an outlier. That's purely anecdotal of course, I couldn't find any studies that would show the numbers.
Edward Bernays, the father of modern public relations/propaganda, wrote in the 1920s about such flaws of democracy. He directly employed terms similar to "shadow government". He was not a fringe dissident or "conspiracy theorist", he was a influential member of the establishment, who participated in the overthrow of Latin American governments. You really should read at least the intro of Propaganda (1928). Here are the first three sentences:
> The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.
This is written by a guy who did that for a living.
Acknowledging the systemic flaws of liberal democracy is not a conspiracy theory. In fact, it is the opposite: it explains the reality of modern democracy in terms of structural factors and incentives. That said, he also describes actual conspiracies e.g. how particular advertisement campaigns operated.
This was well-understood a century ago.
The people who regurgitate what they learn in their state-approved textbooks/movies are more akin to conspiracy theorists; it requires a certain level of fantastical thinking to believe that USA (or RF), on a national level, is a de facto democracy.
There is a lot of actual conspiracies. Much more than conspiracy theories. The only known working process to uncover a conspiracy is to conduct an investigation and then prove the findings in a court.
> e.g. while Russia is responsible for invading, Victoria Nuland was caught red-handed orchestrating the Ukrainian coup/government that precipitated it.
The claim of "orchestrating a coup" is unsupported by evidence, and any both-sidesism does not do justice to the fact that:
a) Ukraine has the right to elect whomever they want to govern their country, despite Russia's preferences to create vassals of its neighbor states
b) Russia has twice invaded Ukraine (as well as other neighbors like Georgia) and thus directly caused hundreds of thousands of deaths on both sides
Between Ukraine and Russia, only one of them is illegally occupying the territory of the other, only one of them is operating torture chambers in the territory of the other, and only one of them has kidnapped more than a million children from the territory of the other. There is no both sides between Russia and Ukraine in terms of guilt.
Israel is doing a great deal to support Ukraine with humanitarian and non-lethal military aid (like helmets) because Iran is on the other side, although you are correct to note that the situation is complicated, largely because of Russia support for a bloody regime in Syria.
People focused on US actions during the Yanukovych years seem to believe that he himself was legitimate, when there is much evidence that he was corrupt, anti-democratic and supported by Russia:
As for the 15% claim, I would add that a large part of that 15% supporting Ukraine includes countries that share a border with Russia or its vassals, including eastern EU and NATO states, as well as Japan and S. Korea. Those countries have the most skin in the game, and their position and actions in this conflict should be given much greater weight than the rest of the world. It's not a coincidence that they want Russia's wars of expansion to stop in Donbass.
Ask Finland, Poland, Romania, or any of the Baltic states about who they want to win in Ukraine and you will get a very clear answer. Their populations have all been under the Kremlin's yoke or fought a war against Moscow in living memory.
The anglosphere (US/UK/Australia/New Zealand/Canada) + EU is 470 million + 448 million respectively. That's the entirety of the Western world, and less than 12% of the world's population. One of JFK's greatest speeches [1] hit on this point:
"We must face the fact that the United States is neither omnipotent nor omniscient that we are only six percent [4% now] of the world's population, and that we cannot impose our will upon the other 94 percent of mankind that we cannot write every wrong or reverse each adversity and that therefore there cannot be an American solution to every world problem."
The sort of wisdom and pragmatism completely absent from politicians since JFK.
Just because the government of a country considers it politically expedient to treat the situation as morally grey does not mean the population uniformly shares the same opinion.
Vis a vis, just because the government of a country considers it politically expedient to treat the situation as the embodiment of Good vs Evil, does not mean the population uniformly shares the same opinion. In fact, I think this is the case nowhere in the world, including Russia and Ukraine.
Well I mean you can look at what polls do exist, and it's not ambiguous. But I'd also appeal to a logical aspect here. Homogeneous dogmatic thinking, at scale, is not natural - and arguably doesn't exist. Instead it's primarily a product of propaganda and efforts to drive people to self-censor.
Both of these are absolutely rampant in the West at the moment, but not so much in most of the rest of the world (at least not on this topic). People, left to their own devices, are generally pretty awesome. It's only when you introduce self righteousness and propaganda that we turn into unthinking animals. It's no coincidence that self righteousness and propaganda go hand in hand with war.
I'd argue the opposite. Some things, in the moment, are really quite morally obvious — and then propaganda starts doing its work to make them seem more ambiguous than they actually are.
> Both of these are absolutely rampant in the West at the moment, but not so much in most of the rest of the world.
You think propaganda-driven homogeneous dogmatic thinking doesn't exist in China and India...?!
Can you offer any examples? In general, I think you'll immediately run into a relativism problem. What is moral for one person is amoral for another. This is one of the main reasons I think it's safe to say that dogmatic thinking at scale is so unnatural.
As for my comment, I was obviously just referring to this topic.
What wrong with that? We have moral compasses built-in. When someone says that murdering of people is OK, because Russia will be great again, should we throw out our moral beliefs and carefully listen to both sides?
This can be applied to literally anybody. I've been reading them for many years (since their editor and most of their journalists were at lenta.ru — which they were thrown out of in ~2015 for daring to criticize the annexation of Crimea). They are not angels, but they have always at least tried to remain impartial and use relatively reliable sources of information. Many (most?) news outlets don't even try.
This is the actual reason why people treat Meduza as parent poster does.
The job of a news source it not to criticize, or not criticize, the annexation of Crimea. They're not a political party. Nobody but their mom really wants to know their private opinion.
The job of a news source is to provide news. All the news and articles Meduza produces follows the same pattern, where they would arrive at a predetermined conclusion regardless of the facts they are discussing, and the train of thought would go from A to B in a reasonably short route. If it's hard to derive the conclusion from some facts, they will be skipping reporting these where possible. If it's very convenient to derive the conclusion for unproven facts, they will be using these eagerly.
Propaganda is annoying to read, especially if you know you will disagree with their conclusion, which you obviously know in advance.
Yes, and I should write bug-free code, and doctors should never make mistakes. If you have any examples of a completely neutral news outlet that never made any blunders, I'd be very interested to know about and follow them. Until then, I see no point in comparing anyone against an unattainable ideal which can only exist in one's imagination. I try to correct for their biases by reading Kremlin propaganda (and US, and Chinese, and some others) and comparing what they are saying. Know of any better ways?
The amount of junk isn't boolean, it matters how much you have to filter. If you can find news with less junk, you can filter them with less effort. And big news are reported by everyone so you can't miss them.
It is the century XXI, and the mainstream way seems to be subscribing to Telegram channels whose vibe resonates with you.
Yes, you will be living in a tiny bubble. But at least you do not get to read propaganda pieces trying to derive prefabricated conclusions out of irrelevant small events. If anything large happens, you are going to hear of it earlier or later.
If you really want balanced coverage, choose a source from the other side which is so blatantly propagandist that you can have good laughs instead of grinding your teeth.
I am reading The Guardian for that purpose.
Perhaps there are better ways to consume your news, but I don't know these.
I think you misread their comment. If you didn't realize, you also misquoted their comment (unless it was edited).
> It is the century XXI, and the mainstream way seems to be subscribing to Telegram channels whose vibe resonates with you.
Yes, you will be living in a tiny bubble.
I believe they mean "the mainstream way" puts you into a tiny bubble, but they go on to say:
> But at least you do not get to read propaganda pieces trying to derive prefabricated conclusions out of irrelevant small events. If anything large happens, you are going to hear of it earlier or later.
Thus, I believe they were advocating for a tiny bubble -- not accusing the previous commenter of being in a tiny bubble.
In many (most?) developed countries, major media sources like newspapers and TV channels are each aligned with a specific political party or a specific political wing. So, their reportage is done through that political lens, and people have historically bought that newspaper because they want issues reported through that lens. It is mainly in American fora where people have this belief that news sources should be neutral.
What I said has nothing to do with the US. Do you think that if the US is wrong in a bunch of unrelated matters, it makes Russia's actions ok?
But even given this... Would you say "Nobody cares what you think about Iraq, except your mother, so don't bother telling me about ..." Yeah it doesn't hold.
> Would you be visiting an news site where every piece gravitates towards the many failings of USA in Iraq?
In the mid 2000s, I pretty much did this, and I don't regret it. It would have been better for the world if the New York Times and Washington Post had leaned a bit more that way.
There are Russians who do just that, and not an insignificant number, but certainly not enough to affect things. They also do not have any plan even if they wanted to try.
Nazi annexation of the Sudetenland objectively happened, and was not undone until the very end of Nazi regime.
Not everybody wants to read how mr. Hanz from "Der Jellyfisch" thinks that that the annexation of Sudetenland is wrong, day after day for a decade. We've got that already from you being in Switzerland, mr. Hanz.
On the contrary, it must be repeated, when an authoritarian regime conducting a murderous war of conquest of their neighbours promulgates their twisted justifications very loudly, and have entire state bodies devoted to manipulating the press, promoting a message that if left unopposed will become the prevailing narrative, as it has in their home nation.
Head-in-the-sand bullshit neutrality is why Switzerland is a moral toilet. Demanding that journalists be "neutral" is a sliproad to manipulation. These are nothing more than an abandonment of principles.
The public in functioning democracies is most definitely interested in reading opinionated editorial. Representing otherwise is downright obnoxious.
Why more so than when the US destroy Afghanistan or some other place? What makes it worse and more worthy of being repeated because of authoritarianism?
The structural distinction is in domestic accountability to moral standards that limits the scope of action. This highlights the false equivalence (the US did not annex Afghanistan, nor has it attempted a genocide there) that imbues the whataboutism inherent to such questions.
A better comparison would be to the imperialist colonialism of the the 17th-19th centuries, as characterised by massacre, dictatorship, annexation, rape, child abduction, and the systematic and intentional destruction of entire cultures. This corresponds much more directly to the multiple Russian invasions of its neighbours in recent decades.
It doesn't matter what word you use: Genocide of X people is not worse than killing X+n in another country while calling it "victims from war on terror". This is not a competition of killing the most (if it were, the US would be in the lead).
The question is why does it matter what kind of government is causing the deaths? Why is it worse if X people are killed by an authoritarian regime than X people killed by a liberal democracy? If your Mother is killed by an authoritarian regime, is it worse than if your mother and child are killed by a democracy?
Instead of throwing whataboutism around, why not answer the question?
You are very obviously avoiding the question and trying to paint something that isn't there. It seems you have some very sore point about the US in Afghanistan? Swap US with France in Afghanistan then. It makes no difference to the question. Why is it worse? Or is it actually not different but the point was from the start to attack between the lines? It reads like someone using weasel words or whataboutism: Writing one thing but clearly trying to convey something completely different.
What's the difference with regards to annexing or not annexing?
You storm into a country, you kill a lot of people, repeatedly, you do not care about these people in the slightest, you bomb weddings for a decade, you put up whatever government that you want there. But at least you did not annex the country, i.e. did not take responsibility for it and its citizens.
You will keep the audience who already agree with you, and often bet on that agreement (for example, by fleeing the country). You will, however, lose the rest of your potential audience by repeating your opinion over and over again. Since they know your position, they do not share it, and they no longer need that information.
Especially as you cannot answer any hard questions about your position, and you could not answer even if you didn't. As a journalist, you cannot really suggest any solutions, since you are not a politician. You can only whine. That gets old pretty fast.
- promote the idea of a ruling class separate from the people
- journalists that publish uncomfortable truths are "whining"
- just give up because no-one is listening
These are neo-Tsarist civics. As before, they form conditions for decay and conflict.
In reality, people have never stopped listening, and never will. They may stop hearing - when voices are intentionally silenced. It follows that a critical and editorial press is the hallmark of democracy.
Russia is an authoritarian state. "Hallmarks of democracy" do not work here and likely never did.
Meduza and their ilk publishes the same uncomfortable truth tailored at comparatively small demographics. They fail to deliver their message to a wider audience because they don't understand it, have no message for it and perhaps don't really want to talk to it. That's what I was explaining. The only thing I'm seriously criticizing Meduza here is for their failure as journalists to get better coverage of their ideas. Part of which, their ideas aren't great.
Thank you for the link. It is interesting read, but it didn't say what you are implying. The article in the link states that 90% of the predictions of 1 Medusa corespondent were wrong.
This is very different than the entire publication being 90% wrong.
Non-Americans should not, and usually do not believe either. It's funny when Republicans/Democrats treat either as reputable.
They're politicking 101 made into 24/7 news media panic.
They're both charlatans and peddlers of lies and cheap tricks; they engage in propaganda and employ journalists who seem to believe that they're anything other than foot soldiers to stir up the masses against XYZ.
Everyone knows Fox News is trash, it's laughable when some continue to argue that CNN isn't.
Where XYZ can be anything, depending on which way the wind is blowing, sometimes it's each other, sometimes it's internal to the US, sometimes it's external
They're both plain ragebait. I wouldn't even take their world news seriously, mainly cause it's low quality. We have better options for mainstream news here, even though it's also under control.
what I'm saying is that there are very few sources that don't publish lies or have bents, so we have to do with what we have. Use many sources and triangulate. Some sources are more believable in some areas, less believable in other areas. Some contributors are more believable/truthful than others. It's not all on or off.
