Slashdot Mirror
In Russia, 50% of News Must Be Happy
Several readers sent us to the New York Times for disturbing news on Russia's vanishing press freedoms. The story tells of how one of the few remaining relatively independent radio outlets in Russia recently acquired new managers, reportedly loyal to Vladimir Putin. Quoting: "At their first meeting with journalists since taking over Russia's largest independent radio news network, the managers had startling news of their own: from now on, they said, at least 50 percent of the reports about Russia must be 'positive.' In addition, opposition leaders could not be mentioned on the air and the United States was to be portrayed as an enemy, journalists employed by the network, Russian News Service, say they were told by the new managers, who are allies of the Kremlin."
If the US begins enforcing it again, how are we any different? "Oh, your broadcast was pro-X. You've got to give equal to the pro-Y guy." Who decides when timeX == timeY?
Bush-haters? Has the guy done anything worthy of praise?
You are about six years too late with the Bush-haters schtick. The man is going down in history as the worst President we've had.
You're lying, plain and simple. Or you don't remember. Or you only pay attention to Fox News.
None of these possibilities paints you in a good light. I can see why you posted anonymously.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
Poland, Romania and Eastern Germany never were part of the USSR in the first place. Some former USSR republic are NATO members now, but I am sure, you can't even name them, so please shut up and never talk about geography or history again.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Don't bring up Gore's house. A home that consumes 10 time the average amount of electricity in a country of 300 million people is so beyond irrelevant as to be ridiculous. If you want to make a point about hypocrisy, fine, but I don't think he's asked people to use less electricity in their homes. And anyway, to the extent that global warming will be solved through new technology and higher efficiency rather than voluntary altruism (which never works I might point out), I don't really care whether he heats his house to 82 in the winter or 68. If Gore came out and said people need to stop using so much energy in their homes, I could understand your annoyance. But since he says things like "let's implement a carbon cap and trade system (which albeit has its own problems) his house's energy consumption isn't really an issue.
And to the jet, if I had to pollute 10 times as much as 1 guy to convince 10,000 people to pollute half as much, I'm very obviously doing the planet a service. It might rankle you that he gets to enjoy all the benefits of high consumption and pollution in that scenario, but since there aren't really any other viable alternative for touring the world to promote a cause, I don't know what you would prefer he do.
Anyhow I felt like I needed to clarify that, the rest of your insights are quite good.
Relax I just want some peanuts.
Try doing a search on NYT articles about Russia. Theirs is a mirror-opposite censorship. They never print anything nice about the place, and anytime there is something relating to good news, they'll go out of their way to downplay it.
To me, it smacks of ethnic prejudice, as well as Cold War bias masquerading as "liberalism".
There are certain ethnic groups that the NYT hates, even while it heaps adoration on others. Any NYT article on Islam and Muslims invariably features them holding teddy bears, flowers and fluffy bunnies. Any NYT article on Russia invariably shows some old lady moaning about how Putin stole her pension money after ass-raping her. Conspicuously, the NYT will never report anything negative on the European Union (because Brussels is filled with saints, no doubt.)
The NYT is an EU embassy on US soil. They are an Atlanticist bastion.
People don't run newspapers like that to report the news. They run them to promote a particular political agenda. The NYT was originally derided as being "owned by Catholics and run by Jews." Now the Jews have been kicked out -- except for the docile ones, naturally -- and thus its remaining agenda is quite obvious. You'll now never see a positive article from NYT on Israel. Take a look at old articles from NYT on Israel, and you'll see a glaring difference.
I'm a longtime NYT reader, and it's excruciatingly obvious where their biases lie.