I resisted for long the idea of the responsibility of the media in shaping our populist crazy times.
After reading today about the Austrian elections on CNN and in the New York times and in so many other supposedly mainstream respectable news media, I started wondering.
http://edition.cnn.com/2017/10/16/opinions/austria-nationalism-hockenos-opinion/index.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/16/opinion/austria-election-sebastian-kurz.html
I do not understand the discourse about the Austrian_elections. OVP is not a far right party, it is the equivalent of the Conservatives in England. True that the discourse was populist trying to win some of the FPO (extreme right) party voters, but they remain the liberal right and not the extreme right.
The results indicate that Austrians are unsettled by the influx of refugees. Austrians received the refugees with open arms at first. They went to the boarders with Hungary after they were badly treated by the Hungarian authorities. Austria received the highest number of refugees at this time if we calculate the number of refugees per inhabitant. The rest of Europe did not share the burden. With time this caused stressed and populist politicians played on the fear and frustration.
But the results also indicate that even those frustrated by emigration did not move to the extreme right, they chose to vote for one of the mainstream parties. OVP has been ruling Austria in coalition since long.
One needs also to pay attention to the fact that SPO (social democrat) was in the lead until a month ago when a financial scandal was revealed. Many people shifted then to vote for OVP because Austrians are very sensitive to corruption.
So why the warmongering of the media with references to Ausria' WWII baggage? The reporting was pure sensationalism, no real background research effort or fact check analysis.
For me it was like the drop that made the vase overflow.
I often wondered about why I was hearing simple two dimensional reporting and sometimes straight out false statements on news from the Middle East. I often said it was due to laziness in research, lack of understanding falling in line with foreign policy priorities, etc. Not to say these are good excuses but they made sense to me.
This time, it is clear to me that the mainstream media, like mainstream politicians have dropped ethics and values for quick easy gains.
Sad state of affair; it is the failure of democracy when there are no proper fact checks and people do not have access to honest information.
Maybe fake news is not as crazy as it sounds.
After reading today about the Austrian elections on CNN and in the New York times and in so many other supposedly mainstream respectable news media, I started wondering.
http://edition.cnn.com/2017/10/16/opinions/austria-nationalism-hockenos-opinion/index.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/16/opinion/austria-election-sebastian-kurz.html
I do not understand the discourse about the Austrian_elections. OVP is not a far right party, it is the equivalent of the Conservatives in England. True that the discourse was populist trying to win some of the FPO (extreme right) party voters, but they remain the liberal right and not the extreme right.
The results indicate that Austrians are unsettled by the influx of refugees. Austrians received the refugees with open arms at first. They went to the boarders with Hungary after they were badly treated by the Hungarian authorities. Austria received the highest number of refugees at this time if we calculate the number of refugees per inhabitant. The rest of Europe did not share the burden. With time this caused stressed and populist politicians played on the fear and frustration.
But the results also indicate that even those frustrated by emigration did not move to the extreme right, they chose to vote for one of the mainstream parties. OVP has been ruling Austria in coalition since long.
One needs also to pay attention to the fact that SPO (social democrat) was in the lead until a month ago when a financial scandal was revealed. Many people shifted then to vote for OVP because Austrians are very sensitive to corruption.
So why the warmongering of the media with references to Ausria' WWII baggage? The reporting was pure sensationalism, no real background research effort or fact check analysis.
For me it was like the drop that made the vase overflow.
I often wondered about why I was hearing simple two dimensional reporting and sometimes straight out false statements on news from the Middle East. I often said it was due to laziness in research, lack of understanding falling in line with foreign policy priorities, etc. Not to say these are good excuses but they made sense to me.
This time, it is clear to me that the mainstream media, like mainstream politicians have dropped ethics and values for quick easy gains.
Sad state of affair; it is the failure of democracy when there are no proper fact checks and people do not have access to honest information.
Maybe fake news is not as crazy as it sounds.
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