Is it remarkable, or is it completely expected for propaganda?

I've been visiting the US for 6 months now, and the only time I hear anything about the outside world is when (China/Russia/NorthKorea) are doing something bad, or their citizens lives suck, or rarely when a social program in a developed country (UK, Europe) goes a little wrong (over budget or whatever).

Interestingly, the fact that hundreds of millions of people living in developed countries have better health care, education, roads, etc. than Americans is never mentioned. It's also never mentioned that American politicians are for sale, and bribery is completely legal here.

I really feel like this is an unnecessarily melodramatic comment. I can't tell if you're being serious about American news only reporting things that make America look good but that's certainly not true in my experience. Mainstreams outlets (NYT/WSJ/etc.) have different biases on their editorial boards but they are more than willing to report negative news about the US and mundane current events from around the world.

Also, I think it's a little bit to early to call propaganda/controlled-opposition on this leak. Because the US has such a strict tax evasion regime, it's pretty reasonable to believe that Americans would be treated differently by firms selling tax evasion services. Or, it could be that American names will be released later. Hard to tell at this point.

> I can't tell if you're being serious about American news only reporting things that make America look good

I'm being serious.

Other countries I've lived in spend a lot of time in their media comparing their own country to other countries that are doing very well, or are doing something better than them, such that they can learn from that and make their own situation or system better.

When you only compare America to countries doing much worse, you never get that.

The American sentiment of "we are the best" has been seriously harmful in the last ~20 years because it means there is no drive to improve anything. In fact, I notice it's very "un-American" to even suggest changing/improving things.

Hypothetically, even if a given country were the best at something, that's not a reason not to improve it.

I don't believe the US is hung up on not improving. I think that's blatantly false and I think you're wrong about some of what you're claiming.

It's also a fascinating bit of hypocrisy, to say that the US is hung up on being right, and yet you feel free to bash the US while promoting the things others do right (you listed healthcare, education, roads). How does that work again?

The US does in fact improve. See: gay marriage legalization (something many of those supposed progressive nations you're referring to still lack). Body cams for police (a wide national interest in ending police brutality). Ending mass incarceration and the war on drugs (changes that are now supported by the majority of Americans). The ACA / Obamacare.

If you want to talk about roads, much of Europe for example has seen its spending on infrastructure plunge dramatically. The US is now spending more on its infrastructure than most of the countries you're likely to reference:

"Infrastructure spending in the euro zone has dropped to an average of 2.7 percent of gross domestic product, compared with 3.4 percent of GDP for the U.S. and 3.6 percent for Japan."

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-11-27/europe-has-...

It's almost universally recognized within the US that there are significant problems in both education and healthcare. You can hardly get away from discussions on these topics. What is occurring, is a slow moving national debate on what to do about fixing them. The US has a healthcare system the size of all of Europe's healthcare systems combined in dollar terms, which employs directly or indirectly millions of people - there's no scenario under which you're going to radically remake something like that in short order.

The US is a relatively complex, massive representative system, with local + state + federal systems that all play an important role and a total government budget so large it would be the world's #3 economy by itself. It's difficult for a government system that large to move quickly on almost anything. Imagine trying to get most of the countries in Europe to agree on major changes to their education or healthcare systems simultaneously, it's approximately an equivalent feat to remake education or healthcare in the US - both of which are heavily managed at the state levels.

> It's also a fascinating bit of hypocrisy, to say that the US is hung up on being right, and yet you feel free to bash the US while promoting the things others do right (you listed healthcare, education, roads). How does that work again?

He's not bashing the US, but rather being realistic about the sorry state of American healthcare, education, and infrastructure. And it's perfectly valid to suggest that both American exceptionalism and a general lack of exposure to the ideas and experiences of foreign citizens, are partially to blame for America's failures domestically and abroad.

> The US does in fact improve. See: gay marriage legalization (something many of those supposed progressive nations you're referring to still lack). Body cams for police (a wide national interest in ending police brutality).

Gay marriage is a great step forward, but there are more pressing issues honestly, primary among them reigning in the military-industrial complex that has been steadily toppling democratically-elected governments for the past 60 years, stealing resources, fighting proxy wars, and selling weapons to one or both sides.

> Ending mass incarceration and the war on drugs (changes that are now supported by the majority of Americans). The ACA / Obamacare.

No way the majority of citizens of support ending the drug war. Legalization or decriminalization of marijuana are only small steps toward ending mass incarceration. How many people currently support heroin being legal, taxed, and available down the street? Not many, but until US society has that revelation, there will still be black market violence, and still be addicts ODing because their heroin is anything from 10% to 90% pure and potentially cut with other harmful substances, and because they hesitate to call an ambulance for fear of exiting the hospital in police custody.

Have you tried watching or reading the news at all while you're here? This comment reads like someone imagining what American media might be like.

I was wondering the same. Whenever I'm in the states, I don't find the media to be particularly different...read a NYT or a WSJ paper and you'll get a lot of international news, positive and negative. As always, if you want news, you have to go looking for it. It just isn't going to be hand fed into your mouth.

I do not for the life of me get CNN and the 24 hour news cycle, though. It just seems to be all noise for news on cable TV. Anyways, still better than what I can get in the country I currently live in (China), but there is always the Internet (even with the GFW in place).

I've been watching the news and reading newspapers every day for 6 months, across 4 different states.

Alright, well, most news is going to be negative, that's just how news works. You're not going to see the headline "Things at the NHS are going pretty well", because that's not news. Just like you won't see "Medicare has been pretty solid this month" or something. You will see that kind of analysis in editorials and magazines though.

So I can understand if you don't see much positive commentary about other countries, that's just the nature of the news. But if you're not seeing anything negative about America, then I can't believe you're actually reading any news.

I think the expected mindset for the reader is that things in other developed countries are usually going pretty well, and no news is good news. The media will report on ongoing stories, like Brazil's corruption scandal, the European migrant crisis, Israel/Palestine, etc., and on new newsworthy events, which unfortunately are usually negative. Something like "France passes great budget" is just not interesting enough for a general audience newspaper.

> I think the expected mindset for the reader is that things in other developed countries are usually going pretty well

You're expecting all too much of readers.

Of the hundreds of people I've hung out with in the last 6 months (in 4 different states) I would say less than 1% of them have any idea about the outside world.

They think healthcare in Canada is crap (which is very far from the truth)

They have no idea the murder rate in the US is so high compared to other developed countries.

They have no idea tertiary education is paid for with taxes in other countries, so students don't pay out of pocket.

etc.

In my experience, the majority of Americans don't know much about how the outside developed world functions, so they can't make meaningful comparisons for the purpose of improving things.

They can, however, compare America to Russia/China/NK all day long, and say "We're doing GREAT!"

Why would they, when Time Warner (owner of CNN), for instance, is a top 10 contributor to the Clinton campaign and is therefore legally bribing politicians?

Source: https://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/contrib.php?cid=N000...

What's so remarkable about focusing on heads of state rather than lesser ministers, members of parliament, etc.?

It makes me wonder why an "associate" of a foreign head of state is a more relevant story than the father of the head of state, or of serving politicians with close links to the party of the head of state, from the same country's taxpayer-funded news service.

The story doesn't even mention the implication of Cameron's father in the scheme. Which is odd, because Cameron stood to gain from the inheritance. And if the allegations are true, then he would have benefited from the proceeds of tax evasion.

There are also several other heads of state directly implicated in this scheme, yet they were not even mentioned in the story: the current heads of state of UAE, Ukraine, Argentina, and Saudi Arabia for example.

And the figure who is apparently at the center of the Russian allegations is a concert cellist who has known Putin since they were teenagers. Yet the link and related BBC story convey the impression (at least to my mind) that Putin was somehow complicit in the scheme, without establishing any proof for this.

Then why are they focusing on Putin's "associates" who are not even in the government?

> - Stavros Papastavrou, former advisor to the current Greek Prime Minister

He is a Nea Dimokratia member and was advisor of the previous government (Samaras'), not Tsipras' current one.

> Miguel Arias Cañete, wife of a current Spanish minister and European Commissioner

Nope. It's the man himself, not his wife.

Nope. His wife is the only one mentioned in the data according to the reporters:

> The third Spaniard to appear in the giant leak is the wife of former Spanish Agriculture Minister Miguel Arias Cañete, Micaela Domecq Solís-Beaumont, who was "empowered to approve transactions of Rinconada Investments Group SA, a Panama company registered in 2005 which was in existence while her husband Miguel Arias Cañete held public positions in Spain and the European Union.

https://www.thespainreport.com/articles/704-160403213534-ped...

His wife is not called "Miguel Arias Cañete" though.

That was what I was pointing out...

Can you provide a source for your list? I'm trying to find the complete list of people involved, but so far I have no luck.

Source was the Panama Papers mini-site [1] of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).

[1] https://projects.icij.org/panama-papers/power-players/index....