The DM was a DM asking us to change our no tankies policy and remove the fuck tankies banner as it was apparently upsetting hexbear users. Apparently tankies view the word tankie as a form of slur. The admin wants us to ally as a form of “left solidarity”
This is not the same as jailing “unapproved” journalists. The point is you can start your own paper/report/etc. without central approval of what you can and can’t produce. The US is still a capitalist and authoritarian nation which causes some hindrances to this sometimes (see the recent police intimidation of that local newspaper), and makes it harder (but NOT impossible) to start things like coop newspapers.
Secondly, I generally don’t buy into viewing people’s and organisation’s behaviour in this sort of way, at least not exclusively. It’s too oversimplified and highly reductionist, even if I do think class is an important aspect of behaviour.
Refusing to acknowledge the differences doesn’t mean they don’t exist ., even if most are capitalist most of the time, they promote very different things and engage in different behaviours (and then there was that one Financial Times oped promoting the end of capitalism which was hilarious ;3, but it illustrates my point that these organisations are distinct).
It also provides more routes for important information about abuses of power to get out, which is the most important aspect even if capitalism does seriously get in the way of this due to private accumulation of media corpos.
Furthermore, the US generally doesn’t censor social media most of the time, and in particular has very loose libel laws which make it harder for billionaires (other than the ones that own a specific social media platform) to shut people down, like JKRowling recently did to people calling her a TERF on twitter who live in the UK >.<
What I consider is “degrees of freedom”. Private ownership of the press is somewhat more free because it isn’t directly controlled by the government, but it is still much less free than autonomous and independent cooperatives or collectives or other groups taking part in the press, and capitalism also reduces the ability for journos to report on certain stuff in certain ways. The important aspect is that people can form new outlets autonomously and they usually can’t get shut down easily .
The fewer outlets, the less “free” the press becomes, and the harder it is for new, independent outlets to form, the less “free” it becomes, and the more hierarchical each individual outlet becomes, the less “free” it becomes ;p (which is why private and especially capitalist ownership and class dynamics do have pretty significant issues of press freedom) - really the thing I value is information freedom and transparency, press freedom and universal access to an open and anonymous internet are means to that end.
Seriously, are you just going to ignore the history of the US jailing or straight up killing dissident journalists?
Snowden, Manning, and Assange are still going on.
Gary Webb was assassinated in recent memory along with dozens of other journalists covering protests and corruption.
The US actively supports Saudi Arabia that liquidated journalists like no other country.
During the bombing of Yugoslavia the US killed hundreds of Yougoslavian journalists when they openly targeted the offices of newspapers and television stations.
The price of starting a paper in the US is also absolutely prohibitive. With the primary mode of funding being advertisment. A funding vector that is just pure open conflict of interest.
And sure you can start your own, but how long until the local sheriff decides you’re not worth keeping alive and just kills you because you’re exposing their corruption?
I can understand that, but an open and anonymous Internet does not exist and never will, that’s the whole reason Snowden is in exile, he revealed that and they don’t like the story. We also don’t have universal access to the Internet as ISPs are all privately owned and you need to pony up a rent to use it.
And if you really value freedom and transparency, the US is in fact the opposite. I focused mainly on recent instances of journalist suppression in just the US, but the Yougoslavian instance isn’t uncommon. The US will target media offices in countries it attacks. The first goal is to cut off the flow of information, and not replace it with “free press and truth”, but American propaganda.
I do not think the US does good things in countries it invades and fucks up. I’m not unaware, seriously. That was not my point and you kind of shifted the conversation away from what I axtually said.
I don’t really get how that’s off topic when your were claiming that the US doesn’t jail journalists or censor media and I presented you with journalists that have been killed or jailed and media that is censored.
There’s a difference between concentrated and diffuse spectacle and the US is the poster child of allowing managed dissent. The Financial Times isn’t exercising free press because they had one article about the end of capitalism, because the private editorial board still signed off on that. The investors allowed it, and the advertisers probably used it to sell generators or guns.
Mass media is an amazing tool for censorship that appears to be freedom. Other countries have adopted similar strategies too. Though most still have big state media outlets that they directly control like BBC, ABC, RT, SCMP, CGTN, etc. But the state control of those outlets has less bearing on their legitimacy than their dedication to upholding the interests of their respective countries ruling class.
There really just isn’t any world in which the US could be considered to have free press in any way and using the US as an example of a place that has “more free press” is total nonsense unless you mean “incredibly expensive press that the ruling cost is allowed to buy and own”.