A while ago I made the mistake of subscribing to Time magazine, which, recently, has only redeemed its value through the comical transparency of its article’s authors, who despite they’re every attempt to remain credible journalists, do nothing but support systems of power. I.E. writing full-length profiles of the owner of Starbucks (will he run for president?) and Jeb Bush, with the latter proclaimed in bold print “NEXT IN LINE.” Seriously, what the fuck?
Anyway, it gets better, or worse. I don’t even know anymore. It’s terrible. The latest installment contains “Putin’s on Air Army,” a completely un-ironic look into Russia’s YouTube propaganda machine (Russian times or RT), which, don’t get me wrong, is not a good thing. But I don’t know how I’m supposed to read some of the article's quotations without both wanting to laugh, and at the same time, throw the magazine at the wall.
Look for yourself:
“No one shows objective reality. The Western Media are not objective, reality-based news,” says RT’s vilified Editor and Chief. …. Basically, she just comes right and goes, “yea, Im connected to the Kremlin, so fucking what? Don’t act like you’re any better,” and the whole article the correspondent reels trying to wrestle with this.
Later, the reader is supposed to scoff at West Germans siding with the Russians. The one, from the “right wing fringe,” they quote says, “We like Russians here. For a stable Europe, you need a friendship with Russia. If we are getting into a war with Russian in Europe, you in the states will laugh about it because you are far away, while we get destroyed cities.” Is he off, really? I can’t imagine too far off, and yet his remark is followed by the authors, ‘It was a line that could have come straight from RT’s talk shows.” And the author states this, again, completely un-ironically. My head spins.
And finally, we get the authors ending remark, “For now, the west seems likely to stick to it’s journalistic traditions—and trust the viewers to decide.”
Well, I know what I’ve decided. The U.S. media is obviously struggling with how to deal with online platforms. RT has 1.466 million subscribers by the way, almost double that of the CNN or five times more than the BBC. And it seems that while the U.S. has been all along denying their platforms ever were propaganda, the Russians have been perfecting it to an upsetting degree. How this plays out, I do not know. But I think it’s a phenomenon worth watching.
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