This sounds like a clever attempt to "both sides do it" a way out of actually admitting that this video and its pushing by a bunch of partisans (right up to and including the office of the President of the United States) was awful.
You agree this is awful, right?
You don't have to look too far to see large media groups selectively editing videos, or at least choosing to not display portions of video that exonerate someone. Nicholas Sandmann, the MAGA-hat wearing teen, was said to be part of a group confronting a Native American protester. When you look at the full video, it was the Native American who was confrontational. He walked over into the middle of the group rather than the group confronting him.
Absolutely false.
This was a group of students who were using their free time to protest the reproductive rights of others, and in the midst of doing this did incredibly racist stuff to a Native American protester who was merely trying to keep balance of peace in these stressful engagements.
There is direct video evidence of students
* Shouting "go back to Africa"
* Doing the tomahawk chop
* Harassing other (even white) groups of women (https://twitter.com/roflinds/status/1087486166939680768)
All in a situation where they greatly outnumbered these people in the first place, and all of them wearing MAGA hats.
Basically your post is either extremely dishonest or ignorant about the actual facts. Not only does all available video evidence most definitely not exonerate the group, it puts them squarely right where people initially pegged them, and on top of all that no point is the Native American being the confrontational one.
> This was a group of students who were using their free time to protest
Because you disagree with what they were protesting, they had no right to be there? Absolutely wrong.
That's not aggression. Don't be stupid.
>Because you disagree with what they were protesting, they had no right to be there?
I never said they didn't have the right. Where did I say that? But allow me to help clarify whatever misconceptions you have about what I plainly stated in very few words: It's at best a fundamentally baseless position that has extremely negative consequences for society. At worst its downright an act of evil because you believe you should control other people based on faulty religious grounds.
They were using their free time to support this position. Not really a good look for them.
So I am absolutely correct in totality with my assessment of the situation. And if you think otherwise, allow me to make the claim that you need to evaluate some critical aspects of your perspective on this. If all you can say about what's being said is that it's a disagreement, then you're better of not saying anything at all. It makes you look better.
I noticed you couldn't or simply decided to not address the factual negations to your assumptions. Might want to work on that.
> That's not aggression.
Getting in someone's face is an escalation of physical aggression beyond merely saying something.
> Don't be stupid.
This will be my last interaction with you because you can't discuss ideas without hostility. Try discussing things like an adult.
> [them protesting abortion is] at worst a downright act of evil
You have no tolerance of opposing opinion yet claim to be the one with critical perspective. You've just proved my point: People wanted to believe that the Covington kids were aggressive and evil and so jumped to that conclusion without seeing the totality of what actually happened.
It's literally not. That's not what "physical" means. It's... provoking. The guy with the drum was... I dunno, he was an asshole.
It's certainly possible that he knew the kids were loose cannons and was hoping that by "getting in someone's face" he could get one of them to throw a punch on camera. Could be. I mean, the guy clearly had an agenda, and it probably doesn't align with your politics. But that's still not "aggression" by any reasonable definition. Stop being a snowflake.
>You have no tolerance of opposing opinion
If all you can say about what's being discussed is that it's a simple difference of opinion, you are far better off just not saying anything at all. You are effectively trying to debase constructive conversation and turn it into a meta argument, because you can't actually make a real one.
No, I don't have anything that specific in mind, but there's enough examples even in recent history of "selective editing" clearly aimed at taking people down, out of context. And yes, let me say it again, "on both sides".
This is probably driven by the fact that outrage brings views, and views bring money + influence to such media groups, and then it's just an extra step to manufacture outrage for your own benefits. That's why all sides do it: same incentives at play.
Selective editing? There's abundance of videos on youtube compiling Trump being unable to pronounce things and Obama missing a few words - all compiled to make them both of them look stupid. How is that not both sides? Not sure what your point exactly is.
I mean, Obama and Trump actually said that stuff. Yes, it's misleading, but it's "true" in some kind of abstract sense.
This video of Pelosi was a straight up lie. She didn't say that stuff that way. You get that there's a moral difference here, right?
The fact that people can be fooled with cleverly structure and possibly misleading factual argument is not a license to lie like a sumbitch whenever you want. And that you seem to think so is horrifying.
Are we talking about the same thing? Slowing down a video 25% is not fabricating anything, it's just "slowing down the actual video", and people found it very quickly so it was rather obvious. Fabrication involves changing what the person actually says in my book.
"One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" translates to "one person's information is another person's propaganda."
I have taken to reading a large number of individual sources, identifying the more trustworthy ones over time, and trusting primarily those sources. When one of them shifts to publishing propaganda (it is often a sudden unexplainable shift) then I write them off and remove them from my feed. Often I'll discover new sources through the networks of trusted sources.
This is very inefficient and I wish there were a better way to do it. It's not a perfect system, but it works well enough for me.
You used to be able to trust media institutions, as long as you knew their biases, but even basic facts are in question now and a great deal of so-called news is completely factless. (Headline: "Why politician X might be doing something illegal, maybe" with of course no facts to back up the supposition)
Media is flailing around searching for a sustainable business model, but it isn't working yet. Until they find something, I think we're stuck with bought-and-paid-for propaganda.
To me the answer lies in having access to a large variety of sources. The probability of false information goes down as decentralization of information goes up. For example, if you watch 10 people doing a live streaming event of a demonstration, you are probably going to have a better understanding of the event than from a single reporter on a major TV channel.
Of course, this means you can't fact-check everything because it would be way too much time consuming. So personally I live largely by ignoring the mass media and admit that I dont really know what is going on in most places besides very basic piece of news, and I certainly dont have enough information to have an opinion either.
No, most "large media groups" are not.
You know what would be REALLY neat? Like it'd absolutely tickle my pickle? For people trying to blandly "both sides" this to provide substantial evidence this is an endemic, inherit problem and that's it not really just one side who consistently misrepresents scientific and civic issues? Because even if you take the claim at face value, there is clearly a very appreciable gap in how these biases are applied and used.
This style of rhetoric and view point is irritating to see and engage with, because it's just cynicism masquerading as wisdom or insight, and it completely stifles constructive progress around these subjects.
You don't need to wait for the Internet, most large media groups are propaganda tools for their own political side. No need to do any "deep fake", "selective editing" is all that's needed to take things out of context and publish a different narrative based on what you want to portray.
Now the question is, what do we do about propaganda, regardless of the medium?