War propaganda - are we really THAT retarded?

Łukasz Warzecha's makes a couple of good points in his article in the recent issue of "Do rzeczy"*. We all know how detached from reality is the Russian propaganda but what about our own - the Ukrainian/Western one. Why don't we demand higher standards of information coming from the war and why do we fall for the same bulls*it over and over again?

1. How many times did we hear that Vladimir Putin is on the brink of death (all the cancers and other deadly diseases)? On Polsat News Victor Suvorov made a prediction that Putin will be dead by Christmas (true, he didn't mention which Christmas - maybe he meant Christmas in 2047?).

2. How many times have Russians practically ran out of ammo (especially rockets - they ran out of them at least 20 times now)?

3. How many times the Russian conscripts rebelled and refused to fight? How many times the distant republics of Russia were on the verge of declaring independence and Russia was practically falling out into pieces?

4. How many times was Russian army totally disorganised and withdrawing in chaos?

5. How about general Ben Hodges' prediction (made in March) that Russians will run out of ammo and soldiers in 10 days?

6. In September "Die Welt" wrote that Russians only have ammo stock until the end of the year.

7. We keep getting information about exorbitant Russian losses but somehow we receive almost no info about Ukrainian losses.

I could go on, but you get Warzecha's point - we hear the same bullsh*t over and over again. When will our societies finally start to demand sensible, reliable information about the war? How come so many people who until February 2022 did the job of journalists have so suddenly transformed into primitive propagandists? Are we really THAT retarded to believe the same lies repeated over and over again?

Let's make a prediction about what will be happening in the front in the coming 3 months according to our media. I'll make an educated guess:

- Russians will be withdrawing chaotically, abandoning weapons to which they don't have any ammo left anyway;
- Vladimir Putin will contract three more cancers and will be dead by Easter;
- Thirty seven (possibly thirty eight) Russia republics will practically rebel and leave Russian Federation.

Any other predicitions of media news in coming months?

* Łukasz Warzecha, "Wojenni podżegacze", Do Rzeczy 3/150, 16-22 January 2023

@GefreiterKania
Finally, a post written by an adult. Brilliant.

Thanks, Novi. :)

Anyways, propaganda has always been a useful tool but it shouldn't become too primitive and obvious, and access to different points of view should never be denied to people (as it, unfortunately, is the case in Poland).

@GefreiterKania
Great post

I brought Number #7 up awhile back.


If I remember correctly the answer I got was because Ukraine does not keep records of their losses.
So if I got it correctly then, Ukraine only keeps records of Russian losses but not their own losses.
The U.S. says that about 200,000 military causalities on both side with Russia at 110,000 and Ukraine at 90,000.
I can't wait for the movie to come out.

@GefreiterKania

Whoa! Kania! Perhaps we should hire Pan Warzecha to head our information warfare efforts...

This is one field where Ukraine has achieved an indisputable victory. Perhaps this is not so surprising when you take into account that their commander in chief is a former entertainer. Meanwhile, we Russians have always been terrible at propaganda.

If you think about it, in Russia, 70%+ of our famous actors and singers are Ukrainians, or born in Ukraine. Those fellows always knew how to present something in the right way, haha!

It also helps that there are many more Ukrainians living in Europe and North America than there are Russians. The emigrant Ukrainians have played a huge role in helping their government back home calibrate their message, in such a way that it hits precisely the correct notes to a Western ear.

Warzecha is a good Polish patriot; he would rather have sexual intercourse with a hedgehog than work for Putin, but I suppose you meant it as a compliment. ;)

Yes, he's a good, objective journalist - a rarity these days.

Kania - it is possible to organize both! In Russia, anything is possible.

Naive in the extreme, but I admire your idealism.

Integrated Operations in the gray zone is standard doctrine for the military. All those memes and news reports you see are a part of the war. tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13523260.2021.1980984?cookieSet=1

I am 99% sure you're joking.

EDIT: Make that 95%.

@amiga500

People deserve reliable information. The primitivism of propaganda on both sides starts to annoy me. :-/

As was Ronald Reagan.


No, not 'your'.

Ironically, given a couple of posts in this thread, no single country has ever spent anything like as much as r*SSia spends on propaganda.

Could the answer be they were never really anything more that propagandists all along, and that their propagandism has just now become inescapably apparent?

The free world's journalism is in crises, IMHO. It has discredited itself so often that what they report can only be taken with a grain of sand...or until it has been corroborated by a gazillion sources over the course of many many months. It's flipping distressing!


Uhh, yeah! :) Considering media is a consumer product and this nonsense is consumed heartily by the consuming public, we're pretty damned retarded. OMG, I sound like Novi.


--That Putin will give a televised public address, whereby he peels off his mask to reveal his true identity: Adar, leader of the Orcs. [which, of course, many on PF will go, "well, duh!"]

--That Putin is setting off for Argentina to have a secret meeting with a very old frail man with a Charlie Chaplin mustache who speaks with a distinct Austrian accent who goes by the name, Hitolf Adler--must be some kind of enigmatic code name or something.

How do you know it is propaganda for retards??? :):):) Are you one of the Magi like Milo who can read stars and know Putin will survive Easter at least until Christmas??

Not long left.

You are referring to Suvorov's prediction from January 2023.

The sooner he dies the better.

Please, pretty please with sugar on top, stop quoting Do Rzeczy chucklefucks like Ziemkiewicz, Wildstein, Semka, Łysiak, Lisicki, Cenckiewicz, Zychowicz, and certainly do not bring up Warzecha here. Let this particular facet of Polish public life be well hidden from foreigners, in case they want to claim a new form of brain cancer evolved in Poland specifically.

What's your favourite weekly?

The problem with journalism is that somewhere along the line, informing stopped being important, now everyone has to "create a narrative", they teach it even in journo training, so it's not some kind of accident at work, it's clearly what the so-called market expects from them.

I recommend trying Tygodnik Powszechny, even though the dickheads are now hiding behind a paywall. It's not a particularly scintillating read, but it's informative. I've been trying for a while to find equivalent material in the rest of the Media Hostile to Poland, but it seems that describing a topic in any detail is beyond the typical intern.

I've been a faithful subscriber since highschool - good recommendation.

The best option is to read from left to right: TP, Przegląd, Do Rzeczy, Najwyższy Czas, Warszawska, Myśl Polska etc. Don't close yourself in any information bubble.

There is something called a political commentator. As for your traditional journalist trade, there have not been many since the 1960s. Keep up with reality: we have party or ideological hacks and conservative journalists, but no more independent objective journalism.

I'd say that there haven't been many new ones since the 80s or early 90s. By the 90s it had started to decline, largely as the new technology was introduced and as it was around a generation in to seeming a glamorous job.

Before, there were apprenticeships, skills etc. Now rich kids do internships for free and so much content is just sourced online.


There never has been, unless you mean neutral reportage like share prices or crime and court reports. Comment and editorials aren't meant to be objective.

ARD and ZDF, viewed together, were quite objective, one more left-wing, the other more right-wing. The BBC and CNN were certainly mainstream as well.

The Western audience needs to be fed such lies because their support for the war would diminish. I simply dislike that the Polish media parrot these falsehoods. Poles do not need artificial support to remain steadfast in their backing for Ukraine.

Only unreasonable actions by the Polish government undermine that support because Poles get the impression they are being taken advantage of. As a result, they naturally blame Ukrainians, when in fact much of the fault lies with our glorious politicians-as usual.
---

Most people believe there is some objective journalism. Rather than fight that ingrained bias, I roll with it. If you know what I mean.

There are two kinds: objective and investigative.

Practice either in America and your career will be very short. Hence, "presstitutes"...My apologies to the honest prostitutues.

There's no such thing as purely "objective" journalism!
My favorite saying about the masthead of the New York Times is,
"All the news that fits, we print"LOL

Livestock prices and reports of chip pan fires maybe.

Nothing else, except "breaking news" stuff and announcements of Royal births and sports coverage, however the better state-owned news outlets aim for neutrality.

Any sort of comment and analysis by news media is necessary subject to the outlets' editorial policy and sometimes the journalists' own views.

Good journalists however can turn out copy that suits that regardless of their own views. We should not assume that if a newspaper is either rightwing or decent, that the journalists' own views are the same.

Let me teach you the difference between "purely objective journalism" and Western garbage:

Western garbage: Russian depot falsely claimed...

RT: Russian president said...

That was a fictional example...Now the real British garbage:

SCHEMING VLAD 'Laughing' Putin 'laying a trap' as tyrant's wild new demands...

Ukrainian troops are bravely clinging on to the last stronghold in the Donbas

Putin's reel of ruthless demands was unchanged by his meeting with Trump

Putin's henchman Sergei Lavrov said on Thursday that the Russian despot is ready ...

No, British presswhores, Lavrov never said or meant "the Russian despot..."

This shlt from the azzholes who invented English and know the rules how to use it. Pravda editors must be turning in their graves...

Memo to Putin: If you have this irrestitable urge to drop one on somebody, go for Londonistan...

Just because he didn't say it doesn't mean he didn't think it.