Western media famously laid the groundwork for Iraq war based on obviously false propaganda, so I suspect that the same frustration you feel about people denying the documented and obvious flaws with America is felt by people who try to explain that western media exaggerates a lot of things about foreign states. Especially ones the government is currently hostile towards.
I won’t say this is justification for blind defense of the targets of our medias current hate campaigns but maybe this will help you find a way to relate to them and share less sensationalized information that you have access to by virtue of crossing language and cultural barriers.
I understand what you are getting at but I have observed that almost all news media has some agenda, which is different for say the sources in my first language.
I have found the best way to understand things is to actually look at reporting from a few sources and see what is the commonality which usually has the kernel of truth. I usually look at the guardian, reuters, economist regularly and whatever articles that come up in Google on specific topics.
Once you have an idea, you go out and talk to other people and learn from your conversation. This is exactly the procedure I followed when I first heard about Iraq war and it led to me discarding the idea of WMDs in Iraq almost immediately.
I find it funny that people’s reaction to finding some news media untrustworthy is not to view all media with scrutiny and try to triangulate the facts, but to blindly switch their trust to some other news media.
Western media famously laid the groundwork for Iraq war based on obviously false propaganda, so I suspect that the same frustration you feel about people denying the documented and obvious flaws with America is felt by people who try to explain that western media exaggerates a lot of things about foreign states. Especially ones the government is currently hostile towards.
I won’t say this is justification for blind defense of the targets of our medias current hate campaigns but maybe this will help you find a way to relate to them and share less sensationalized information that you have access to by virtue of crossing language and cultural barriers.
I understand what you are getting at but I have observed that almost all news media has some agenda, which is different for say the sources in my first language.
I have found the best way to understand things is to actually look at reporting from a few sources and see what is the commonality which usually has the kernel of truth. I usually look at the guardian, reuters, economist regularly and whatever articles that come up in Google on specific topics.
Once you have an idea, you go out and talk to other people and learn from your conversation. This is exactly the procedure I followed when I first heard about Iraq war and it led to me discarding the idea of WMDs in Iraq almost immediately.
I find it funny that people’s reaction to finding some news media untrustworthy is not to view all media with scrutiny and try to triangulate the facts, but to blindly switch their trust to some other news media.