I’m not sure what VoA should do beyond what it already does. It already provides a wide range of free programming to the world in a bunch of different languages. The programming—so far as I’ve seen it—is terrible and completely unconvincing for foreigners. On the other hand, home-grown youtube networks like The Young Turks seem to already have a large following from non-American viewers, despite being targeted towards Americans, and seem to do a much more effective job in exporting Western values to people who don’t already believe in them.
Investigative journalism costs money. Even in the US it’s hard to fund it in a for-profit way as shown by outlets like the New York Times employing fewer investigative journalists. VoA should fund investigative journalists in other countries.
The Young Turks aren’t doing genuine news. They comment on what various other people report and do little research into the subjects they cover.
To the extend that what VoA is producing is terrible, they should produce better content. Focus on material that get’s shared in the target nations via social media. I see stories from RussiaToday from time to time on my facebook feed. There’s no good reason why VoA shouldn’t be able to do the same thing in the countries it targets.
Pay local bloggers with regime critical views to write stories. If needed allow them to publish stories under a pseudonym if the story would get them thrown in prison otherwise.
We aren’t talking about journalism here. We are explicitly talking about propaganda. Or counter-propaganda, if you prefer.
The Young Turks aren’t doing genuine news. They comment on what various other people report and do little research into the subjects they cover.
Much like the rest of the media. And, again, geniune news is off-topic. Although they do tend to bring into focus some subjects that the rest of the media is hesitant to cover.
Pay local bloggers with regime critical views to write stories
No use if they get blocked, thrown in prison, etc. And even if not, it would most likely turn out to be very counter-productive if it emerged that anti-government bloggers were paid off.
We aren’t talking about journalism here. We are explicitly talking about propaganda. Or counter-propaganda, if you prefer.
Not really. Alex Jones is speaking critically about the US system but the factual background of what he says is poor. While he do has a relatively large audience he doesn’t strongly affect the political system.
To do effective propaganda you need to actually engage with the reality on the ground.
Michael Hastings couldn’t have written an article that forces Stanley McChrystal into resignantion without doing investigative reporting.
Much like the rest of the media. And, again, geniune news is off-topic. Although they do tend to bring into focus some subjects that the rest of the media is hesitant to cover.
Quite a lot of mainstream reporters do pick up the phone to call people to research a story.
The Young Turks just seem to pick up news story and then have a few people sit together to speak about what they think about that story.
Specifically, Russian propaganda in my country (don’t know if it works the same everywhere) usually markets itself as “the news for people who are not satisfied with propaganda and censorship in mainstream media”. Obviously, any information inconvenient for Putin’s regime is called “propaganda”, and the fact that Putin’s propaganda is not published in our mainstream media is called “censorship”. The target group seems to be people believing in conspiracy theories, and young people.
Essentially, they are trying to role-play Assange, while publishing the same stuff you would find on the official Russian TV. Plus the conspiracy theories, because everything that puts West in a bad light is a bonus. (Yes, that includes even theories like “vaccination causes autism”, because vaccination = big pharma = capitalism = the West.)
One tool in the toolset is providing a lot of links to “suppressed information” and encouraging readers to do their “research” for themselves. Basicly, instead of one propaganda website, you have dozen websites linking to each other, plus to some conspiracy theories written by third-party bloggers. And it works, because people who follow the links do have the feeling that they did a research, that they are better informed than the rest of the population, and that there is a lot of important information that is censored from the official media. If you ever had an applause light of “internet will bring freedom of speech and make the old media obsolete”, it feels like you are in the middle of it, when you read that stuff.
So, having a network of websites debunking Russian propaganda—using the engaging language of blogs, instead of the usual boring language of newspapers—would provide some balance. (Of course it would only take 10 seconds for all the “independent” websites to declare that all these websites are paid by evil Americans, but they already keep saying that about everything that opposes them.)
I’m not sure what VoA should do beyond what it already does. It already provides a wide range of free programming to the world in a bunch of different languages. The programming—so far as I’ve seen it—is terrible and completely unconvincing for foreigners. On the other hand, home-grown youtube networks like The Young Turks seem to already have a large following from non-American viewers, despite being targeted towards Americans, and seem to do a much more effective job in exporting Western values to people who don’t already believe in them.
Investigative journalism costs money. Even in the US it’s hard to fund it in a for-profit way as shown by outlets like the New York Times employing fewer investigative journalists. VoA should fund investigative journalists in other countries.
The Young Turks aren’t doing genuine news. They comment on what various other people report and do little research into the subjects they cover.
To the extend that what VoA is producing is terrible, they should produce better content. Focus on material that get’s shared in the target nations via social media. I see stories from RussiaToday from time to time on my facebook feed. There’s no good reason why VoA shouldn’t be able to do the same thing in the countries it targets.
Pay local bloggers with regime critical views to write stories. If needed allow them to publish stories under a pseudonym if the story would get them thrown in prison otherwise.
We aren’t talking about journalism here. We are explicitly talking about propaganda. Or counter-propaganda, if you prefer.
Much like the rest of the media. And, again, geniune news is off-topic. Although they do tend to bring into focus some subjects that the rest of the media is hesitant to cover.
No use if they get blocked, thrown in prison, etc. And even if not, it would most likely turn out to be very counter-productive if it emerged that anti-government bloggers were paid off.
Not really. Alex Jones is speaking critically about the US system but the factual background of what he says is poor. While he do has a relatively large audience he doesn’t strongly affect the political system.
To do effective propaganda you need to actually engage with the reality on the ground. Michael Hastings couldn’t have written an article that forces Stanley McChrystal into resignantion without doing investigative reporting.
Quite a lot of mainstream reporters do pick up the phone to call people to research a story. The Young Turks just seem to pick up news story and then have a few people sit together to speak about what they think about that story.
Specifically, Russian propaganda in my country (don’t know if it works the same everywhere) usually markets itself as “the news for people who are not satisfied with propaganda and censorship in mainstream media”. Obviously, any information inconvenient for Putin’s regime is called “propaganda”, and the fact that Putin’s propaganda is not published in our mainstream media is called “censorship”. The target group seems to be people believing in conspiracy theories, and young people.
Essentially, they are trying to role-play Assange, while publishing the same stuff you would find on the official Russian TV. Plus the conspiracy theories, because everything that puts West in a bad light is a bonus. (Yes, that includes even theories like “vaccination causes autism”, because vaccination = big pharma = capitalism = the West.)
One tool in the toolset is providing a lot of links to “suppressed information” and encouraging readers to do their “research” for themselves. Basicly, instead of one propaganda website, you have dozen websites linking to each other, plus to some conspiracy theories written by third-party bloggers. And it works, because people who follow the links do have the feeling that they did a research, that they are better informed than the rest of the population, and that there is a lot of important information that is censored from the official media. If you ever had an applause light of “internet will bring freedom of speech and make the old media obsolete”, it feels like you are in the middle of it, when you read that stuff.
So, having a network of websites debunking Russian propaganda—using the engaging language of blogs, instead of the usual boring language of newspapers—would provide some balance. (Of course it would only take 10 seconds for all the “independent” websites to declare that all these websites are paid by evil Americans, but they already keep saying that about everything that opposes them.)