• mycorrhiza they/them@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    That claim includes a source

    Yeah, an anonymous source. Did you look at it?

    Why not just claim they eat babies or something equally horrific?

    They do publish many horrific claims.

    gets the same results in the end

    No it doesn’t. When your outlet is obvious propaganda, fewer people believe you. RFA’s sheen of reputability was a huge factor in the haircut story’s enormous reach in western media.

    Hire a bunch of hatchet job propagandists

    …the sort of people who would write this disproven haircut story and dozens of other goofy unsourced claims they’ve published, yes. You can even tell them to write normal stories too just to mix it up.

    Convincing journalists to lie seems like a lot of work

    Not if some or all of your journalists are US intelligence — Radio Free Asia began as a CIA front operation (google it), and might still be one.

    • Veraticus@lib.lgbt
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      1 year ago

      Of course I looked. An anonymous source is actually fine, especially when reporting on a regime known for torturing sources.

      You’re right that fewer people believe it; but again, it is obviously propaganda when it is and it’s not a secret. So again why bother with the fig leaf when no one will believe it anyway?

      And certainly you have a source for your absurd conspiracy theory that the CIA actually runs RFA, right?

      • mycorrhiza they/them@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        an anonymous source is actually fine

        …when they provide evidence.

        Wikileaks publishes leaks. Their sources provide falsifiable documents, transcripts, photos, and footage — actual evidence we can follow up on. The Panama Papers were evidence. 2.6 terabytes of data. 11.5 million documents. Edward Snowden gave us evidence. He didn’t just say “the NSA totally spies on you dude, trust me bro.”

        absurd conspiracy theory that the CIA actually runs RFA

        Conspiracy theory sure, but how is it absurd? They’re state funded, the CIA acknowledges it created them, they print a lot of unsourced claims about America’s enemies, you can’t find any information about their authors, etc. Ultimately I’m not sure it matters. Unsourced disproven bullshit is unsourced disproven bullshit, CIA or not. Either way, we can point to Radio Free Asia as an example of less-than-trustworthy US state media.

        • Veraticus@lib.lgbt
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          1 year ago

          If we need extraordinary evidence for the haircut story, the monumentally much more unlikely, conspiratorial, and unsupported assertion that actually the CIA controls the RFA definitely needs falsifiable documents, transcripts, photos, and footage. Actual evidence, as you say. For which, as you know, there is precisely zero.

          I mean, at least the haircut story has an anonymous source. You don’t even have that.

            • Veraticus@lib.lgbt
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              1 year ago

              Yeah, flying to North Korea and paying the government to get a restricted and guided tour of some barbershops doesn’t really prove anything though, does it? Except that these people are apparently perfectly fine forking over good money to the DPRK to get spoon fed literal propaganda and support their tyrannical regime at the same time.

              This video is shockingly disingenuous and I have serious doubts about the credibility of its authors entirely separate from the above. There is actually a difference between prison camps and prisons; that they don’t know this doesn’t make it less true. North Korea tried to invade and subjugate South Korea. The fact that both America and North Korea have nukes does not somehow excuse North Korean attempts to acquire them and terrorize South Korea and Japan. (Yes, despite the fact America has detonated them. In what sense do past American atrocities make North Korean aggression okay?)

              These people need to do much more research into what’s actually going on and has been going on in North Korea. Basically it seems like standard “well anything that America sanctions must actually be awesome” contrarianism.

              • Move to lemm.ee@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                Mate I don’t know if you’ve ever bothered to watch visits to NK but they’re not quite what you seem to think they are. There is a considerable amount of things that people do there, the downside being that they are all supervised.

                Like, just watch some? You’re perfectly happy to swallow everything from literal propaganda outlets but you’re unwilling to actually watch first hand accounts of any visitors? You are only willing to consume things filtered through a media lens? Why?

                “These people” have actually visited. You have not. You’re not even ALLOWED to visit because your government makes it illegal to. Wtf is up with that? And you’re the one that thinks you have more information than people who are not prevented from visiting and making their own minds up first hand?

                The only edgelord here is the person that is vehemently calling VOA fair and unbiased while simultaneously calling the first hand accounts of actual real visitors to the country propaganda. You’re out of your mind. You’re the most propagandised person I have ever had the displeasure of talking to actually.

                • Veraticus@lib.lgbt
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                  1 year ago

                  I think it’s hilarious you’re scolding me for not considering a badly edited 20 minute video filled with total propaganda and misinformation more canonical than, you know, actual reporting about North Korea and conditions there. Irony is truly dead.

                  This is just tankie apologia and badly done at that. If you can’t see that you’re blind.

                  Why don’t you go back to Lemmygrad? Our instance is unfederated with that so we don’t have to run into idiots like you.

                  • Move to lemm.ee@lemmy.world
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                    1 year ago

                    Yes I’m quite aware that some instances are full of authoritarians that like to restrict the speech of any political opposition to their left. Actually engaging with any arguments we make ends quite badly for you when you cite the CIA and its propaganda while we cite actual primary sources so you simply take the authoritarian position of eliminating left wing speech instead. An action Mccarthy would be proud of.

              • mycorrhiza they/them@lemmy.ml
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                1 year ago

                a restricted and guided tour of some barbershops doesn’t really prove anything though, does it?

                You’d think along the way they might pass a pedestrian with a Kim Jong Un haircut

          • mycorrhiza they/them@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            extraordinary evidence

            any evidence at all

            much more unlikely

            than a disproven story?

            at least the haircut story has an anonymous source. You don’t even have that.

            actually, yes I do. someone told me. /s

            • Veraticus@lib.lgbt
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              1 year ago

              This wound up being kinda sad honestly. I’m not sure how you can live in such an intellectually dishonest world. But, you do you.

                • Veraticus@lib.lgbt
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                  1 year ago

                  Because you are okay literally believing CIA conspiracy theories with no evidence. There’s no common ground here; I do believe you’re engaging in good faith, but you don’t seem to have any interest in what might be factual or true.

                  Which I guess your lack of sourcing anything should have told me awhile ago. Oh well, more fool me.

                  • mycorrhiza they/them@lemmy.ml
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                    1 year ago

                    I believe it’s plausible. I give reasons why. You think it’s implausible, and you give no reasons why. You’re also really condescending while doing it.