People are losing trust in mainstream media because of perceived biased coverage of the Gaza genocide. If that erosion of trust is real, why isn’t it prompting wider public re-examination of historical cover-ups and contested narratives — Watergate, Iran–Contra, Iraq, even shifting beliefs about who “beat” the Nazis? If we don’t question how past information was shaped, what’s the point of preserving evidence (e.g., Gaza genocide evidence recently removed from YouTube by Google)? Won’t this all be forgotten in a few years, the same way all those previous events are no longer discussed?

What’s stopping a sustained, constructive public inquiry into these parallels between past cover-ups and current information control? Where are good, constructive places to discuss these issues without falling into unproductive conspiracy spirals?

  • limer@lemmy.ml
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    8 hours ago

    What’s stopping a sustained, constructive public inquiry into these parallels between past cover-ups and current information control?

    There is no mechanism to promote the investigation. At best there will be queries like you made for the general, and social media reactions to specific events as they unfold.

    A large chunk of government, politics, and press in the USA no longer exists. There are no authorities to turn too, now or later, regardless who gains power in Washington.

    Most of the Anglosphere outside the USA is in a free fall too, a few years behind, maybe 20 years.

  • PumpkinDrama@reddthat.comOP
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    10 hours ago

    But you can bet we are going to keep discussing Tian’anmen Square instead of Pinochet’s dictatorship, Jeju Island massacre, Indonesian anti-communist purge, etc. It’s as if the average person believes anything so long as mainstream media says it.

      • Eldritch@piefed.world
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        6 hours ago

        That is the stance of the server that hosts this community. Make of that what you will. There’s a reason most avoid it.

        • eldavi@lemmy.ml
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          4 hours ago

          verifiable american propaganda is a very difficult pill for westerners to swallow; so most, like you, don’t bother.

          • Eldritch@piefed.world
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            3 hours ago

            Not at all. As an American and a westerner who’s family has suffered at the hands of the government. That’s easy, though you may want to check your Anglophobia. Campism and hypocrisy is the hard bit to swallow. Where when two groups do similar things but one is accepted or at least excused because they’re “your” camp right or wrong.

              • Eldritch@piefed.world
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                13 minutes ago

                Also many of the sources are 404s, or seem to link to different articles, or actually don’t contradict the general narrative. Also some random guys patreon. Gotta say I’m convinced.

            • eldavi@lemmy.ml
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              2 hours ago

              i’m an anglophile and dispelling the western propaganda about tianamen square is only a 30 second google search away; but your comment makes it look like you’ve never bothered.

              • Eldritch@piefed.world
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                50 minutes ago

                No, not at all. For using “the West” as a crutch to deflect all blame from your in groups. There isn’t one China, much less one West. More than anything, though, it is a tongue in cheek nod to the servers favorite deflection. Sinophobia.

                It’s also easy to find links to the United States or those in the West to exonerating themselves of things they’ve done. That doesn’t mean I believe them.

                • eldavi@lemmy.ml
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                  33 minutes ago

                  the difference is that sources defining the tiananmen protests as a massacre are funded by the state department (both directly and undirectly) which has a long, storied and undisputed history of peddling propaganda; including my government’s own public admissions of doing so.

  • geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml
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    13 minutes ago

    Most of the past ones have been admitted and are out in the open. A few big ones like JFK and 9/11 remain.

    Tucker Carlson did an Interesting 9/11 series recently though (no I don’t endorse Tucker Carlson as a whole)

  • FugaziArchivist [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    7 hours ago

    What’s stopping a re-examination of historical cover-ups? I think you answer your own question when you say: where’s a good place to discuss this without going into conspiracy spirals? I mean that any time topics like this come up, people who are sincerely interested have to constantly militate against the “conspiracy theory” stigma. If you’re hit with that label, you’re persona non grata in academia, news media, and mainstream accounts on social media. That’s what stops people. The places to discuss conspiracy adjacent topics would be alternative platforms like this, until news media slowly come around on accepting anomalies many years after the fact: Jack Ruby did have mob ties; the Saudis did seem to fund hijackers, etc.

  • DeathsEmbrace@lemmy.world
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    8 hours ago

    We never trusted the media either way it goes. History is written by the winners so how do we decide what really is history or propaganda? Without time travel at the end of the day everything is subjective truths

  • pyria@kbin.melroy.org
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    7 hours ago

    Information is about as rapid as money exchanges. There’s so much going around because News is 24/7 and there’s so many outlets that it will burn out anyone’s minds trying to follow it all. It was like with the Hong Kong protests, it got traction for a while, then something else happened and it was dropped within weeks.

    And we have all of these wikis in existence where the legitimacy of the articles written, are constantly challenged through the edits of those that believe differently in how it should be written to the reliable sources conflicting with those beliefs.

    And we have generations of people who do not remember the time of certain events as they’ve happened where previous generations did. So it can be harder for someone who wasn’t born around the time of Pearl Harbor and WWII to relate and take in information as opposed to the one who actually lived it.

    Then we take into account of instances of history being re-written by revisionists, some sections of history is white-washed, censored, redacted .etc

    Top it all off with how incredulous and sensationalist projections the media reports that just shits all over it.

    And we have ourselves one big, informational train-wreck where almost nobody knows what to believe. So what most people do anymore is if a news report aligns with their beliefs, they’re going to take it at face value.