Recent Trends

As months go by, I have increasingly felt that the information that I was exposed to in my filter bubble has become worse. At first, I could not exactly identify what made it less engaging for me, it seemed that I was not being offered the broad range and utter quality of reports that media outlets like NYT and le Monde are supposedly providing their readers (and this is after ackowledging their own political agendas, which naturally aim to sprinkle some topics with frames that support and embellish their arguments). When the coin dropped, I realized that the answer was inside the articles I had been reading. The whole frenzy about Trump, Russia, North Korea and their propaganda machines at work. This was it. The “traditional high quality media” had progressively fallen into this information trap themselves. They had started to function as counter channels to those spreading wrong information but rather than simply fact-checking, they also started to create their own kind of narratives against the original disseminators. You could have learned from one of the most qualitative news outlet, the BBC, that every North Korean student was now required to adopt the same haircut as their leader. This was wrong, lacked sources and failed at most basic journalistic rules. Yet it was published, and it surely had an impact on public opinion in regards to the view of Kim Jong Un. He sure is far from being an exemplary leader, yet such framing reminds me of the one previous ambivalent despots such as Hussein and Qaddafi received. They’re orchestrated steps to undertake and legitimize further actions, often military.

Surkov, again

In a previous post about the documentary Hypernormalisation, I highlighted the importance of Vladislav Surkov and his strategy to create a state of continuous uncertainty, where objective information cannot be identified anymore. We can once again look at North Korea and the way it was covered in the news during the last few weeks. Every few weeks, we learn that the seemingly insane, evil despot Kim Jong Un has launched a new rocket to… “defy the occident”? So we’re looking at some good old cold war military strategy. Meanwhile, it’s absolutely legitimate for NATO to run “military parades” of thousands of soldiers and tanks in Estonia, at the border with Russia, because we must appear strong and prepared for armed conflict with the Russians. Talk about double standards, we’re rather equivocally pushed towards a single, anti-NK narrative while demonizing such states to the extent that we can legitimize our own actions.

The Medium is the Message?

Can we argue that the Internet is the problem? Our great equalizer, the supposed end to discrimination, the chance for all to have a voice? It certainly contributed to disseminate the wrong kind of information to those who misused it. And the Internet is efficient, it can be used by those who seek to control and dominate. But it’s also the holy Grail, the solution to the majority of the information gaps and access that were, until recently, limiting each and everyone’s ability to be fully informed about important topics.

A Few Resistants

There are still however a few outlets and jounalists that I admire for their consistent and thorough reporting on world events. I find The Intercept to be one of those, notably for their continuous coverage of the Yemeni conflict, which is more of a David against Goliath struggle as one side consists of a coalition formed by some of the richest Sunni Middle East powers as well as the USA and GB, who provide logistical support to the coalition, and the other consists of Houthi militants fighting the power abuse from President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi with some support from Iran. You would think more major media would have found a moral responsibility in pushing people to become aware of such a tragic civil war, which the UN itself has called critical at all levels.

Another quality source comes from Frédéric Lordon who recently wrote about the hostage situation of the French elections, acurately depicting the absence of true choice that French citizens were presented with during the second turn, as the pro-neoliberal political agenda of Macron is the specific political plan that brings extreme parties like the National Front to be popular among those who are the most hurt by the applied policies. Macron is currently very popular, in particular for his perceived strong liberal narrative towards Putin. Yet it would be foolish to be overly optimistic about his presidency with such haste while his political agenda seems to be perceived by the population as lacking social and ecological commitment.

Doomed Dichotomy

The underlying problem, in my opinion, is the continuous dichotomy of good vs. bad that we are being fed in traditional media. Very rarely are we presented with alternativ grounds to interpret the phenomena that are being fed to us on a daily basis. Macron is good, Le Pen is bad. Merkel is good, Putin is bad. South Korea is good, North Korea is bad. While those statements are certainly more correct than their contrary, they do not portray the full complexity and nature of the information at hand. The repercussions of acting in favor or against the most talked about stakeholders in the media can be gigantic, and they can be disastrous, such like the post 9/11 coverage of Hussein. I am simply concerned that we are currently collectively rushing towards the same kind of wall, with ever more speed, and ever more chaos looming behind it. For the greater good of a few, and the misery of the many.