> The real risk for American broadcasters is not that dissent will be visible. It is that audiences will start assuming anything they do not show is being hidden
Kinda daft not to assume this has been the case for a long time already
The opening ceremony for the London 2012 Olympics included a celebration of the National Health Service, which got mysteriously cut from the broadcast in the US, at a time when there was a bunch of fuss over Obamacare that had come into effect a year or two before.
Was hard not to imagine that was a deliberate choice.
You can check it out - the first couple of minutes here of people in nurse costumes standing by beds and moving around a bit. Not really must see stuff. https://youtu.be/ReJjvlipXpM
Even if a large conspiracy isn't involved, I believe that biases in worldview can contribute to these effects. However, I still think it's important to inform people of things they might be missing and hold media accountable for their choices, regardless of whether those choices are random or unknowingly biasedWe need to be careful not to fall into the allure of "fake media" in our outrage, as this could ultimately benefit populists in the long run.
Well the "no censorship!"-crowd in rhe US has been strangly focused on the censorship of racists, bigots and nazis. I don't think they consider censorship that benefits the Neo-feudalist lords as censorship.
The NHS is genuinely loved by most British people, for all it's faults. Not celebrating it would have been very weird. So not really propaganda, just showing the world the things we are proud of.
Feel free to censor it on your end if you find the very idea dangerous.
How is the NHS very different from the military. Americans love their military and often have propaganda-style bits like fly-overs during football games. American's don't get the option to 'opt-out' of paying for its gigantic costs. Why not have military spending depend on voluntary donations?
They actually should be able to, for the most part.
The original idea of state exists to ensure 3 things:
- Protection of the territory of the state
- Protection of the integrity of the individual citizen
- Protection of the private property of the citizen
This is why people started organizing in societies and allowing the existence of a ruler class. These 3 things.
You will always need some amount of military to be part of the state. But what most countries waste today (the USA for instance), is pornographic. The state should only be allowed (by taxation) enough military to defend their territory, not to exert control over the all planet like the USA wants to do.
EDIT: Yeah, I should have guessed the part of the "integrity of the individual citizen" would, of course, be twisted. No, it's not protection of the individual from disease of from his own stupidity or lack of ability. It just means the role of the state is to ensure the citizen is protected from deliberate harm from another individual.
I would say that in the list 'Protection of the integrity of the individual citizen' is something that a NHS would serve. Individually, people want to know that if they get injured or sick they can be taken care when they can't for themselves. Everyone is at risk of these things. Society as an organism also benefits from having resources dedicated to repair of its components in the same as it does in defense of external threats. 'Protection of the territory of the state' also can be served by an NHS because of the damage and danger of highly infectious diseases.
> 'Protection of the territory of the state' also can be served by an NHS because of the damage and danger of highly infectious diseases.
Let's be honest here. You know the NHS (and various equivalents across the world) go way, way beyond this.
And I'm not even against the existence of a public funded health service within limits. But this is just phonographic. In my country (and from what I've read in the NHS it's relatively similar), in the past 10 years we added more than 90% medical doctors and nurses to the national NHS. The budget for the local NHS increased by 72% in that same period.
And the service has become absolutely terrible and now people (the ones that only benefit from it but don't pay the costs) are asking to raise taxes even more to put even more money into the problem.
Naa, enough is enough. I don't want to support this crap.
Fair enough to complain about the execution, but glad to see you see the logic of its existence. Back to the military comparison, the waste (fraud, corruption, kickbacks, etc, etc) in that part of the public expenditure is pretty massive. Yet there don't seem to be the same outrage or call for reforms in that area. Even when multi-billion dollar programs stagger about for years then produce nothing useful (except for the profits extracted by the defense firms and their investors). Lots of hate for NHS waste, but military spending waste seems to get a free pass. Why is this?
Basically, because the military got a massive budget in WWII and Americans just got used to it because slaughtering the Nazis was the only thing that can convince Americans to buy into that level of welfare.
Now it's mostly a jobs program for poor people plus pork for politicians to throw at their favored contractors/companies. Can't really be eliminated without political suicide because too many mouths are fed off of it and will make it their mission every waking moment to damn anyone who tries to do it.
Since prevention is a lot cheaper than cure we're trying to avoid the same mistake with other things rather than commit political supuku on things that already exist.
There's option to opt out of social security if you are of the right religion that existed before, I want to say, by the 1960s was the nominal date in the statute -- and registered as such by some gatekeepers in the religion. The Amish won't let those who didn't grow up in the community register although some Mennonites might. Or are working as a preacher.
It should probably be challenged because it's a clear religious discrimination. I looked seriously at renouncing my right to social security but eventually I found out they've gamed the system in favor of a few insular religions.
What a weird worldview, celebrating censorship that aligns with corporate interests in healthcare, a basic necessity, while using the tired diatribe "but muh tax money!" to pathetically drum support for it, lol.
Aren't you tired of being so angry at the wrong stuff? Such an exhausting way to live.
Man, you really came commenting into an opinion piece by some "journalist" in a major news media outlet, denouncing that he didn't hear the "boos" loud enough, to tell the others that you think it's "an exhausting way to live" with the opposite opinion. Didn't you?
Nope, I came commenting on your comment which given the pattern of your other comments getting flagged all the time shows to be an exhausting way to live: being mad at small things.
I wish I could live in your bubble, where disliking the state forcibly taking away 50% of my salary (more actually) to redistribute to people that don't contribute to society and to waste in severely mismanaged public services is "being mad at small things".
You live in the bubble where taxation is only to redistribute to wasteful means. In that bubble you get blinded by black-and-white thinking that can never achieve any kind of nuance to actually address issues, only seeing issues in it all is not conducive to creating concrete criticism which is the first step to change. You can only be cynical, and contrarian.
So yeah, seems exhausting, being mad at it all because you can't think in specifics, just a general sense of madness and outrage at a black hole of frustration.
Unfortunately you live in that bubble.
Sorry you live in a broken society, maybe do something to change it.
The NHS is a bit like the NRA in the US. Politicians and rich folk would ideally do away with it, but they cannot, so they have to play lip service to gain favour with the public.
So its not propaganda in the way you are thinking of.
You make it sound like NBC is some sort of obscure specialist service, but it turns out that they're actually a mainstream national broadcaster, available not just over the air but also on just about every satellite, cable, and streaming provider in the country: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBC
Not only that, but they're the official Olympic broadcaster in the USA! Around 22m watched it on their broadcast services, and a further 3m on streaming.
In reality, an overwhelming majority of Americans watching the opening ceremony were doing so via NBC.
I honestly think the way they mix their audio is so the stadium noise gets turned down whenever the announcer talks and the American announcers just never shut the fuck up no matter how inane they might be.
I'll have to ask my brother but that might be NBC's audio engineer decision, or even his default settings (depending on the broadcaster voice).
I'm as critical as the US as they come, in fact I just cancelled my summer trip to the Appalachia, but seeing this as censorship is reading a bit too far, simpler explanations exist (crowd noises are dimmed by audio filters)
my question is more technical: how did the blot out the booing? and: how live was it in the US? from the Academy Awards we know that they have a 5s delay (following the Michael Moore incident), but what is it with olympics broadcast?
The audio engineers are monitoring multiple mics (for an event of this magnitude probably dozens) and increasing or decreasing volume on them in real time for the mix that goes on the air. Standard for any sports broadcast.
While they do show it live, it's in the middle of the workday, so almost everyone in the USA will have watched it delayed by many hours at "prime time", aka around 8pm local time in each zone.
That being said, I'm in the US and I heard boos on the delayed broadcast.
So North Korea, China, America, Russia and basically all other countries have propaganda, and Europe doesn’t? I live in Europe and think we do. Not everything that is in the news is true.
Europe doesn’t bill itself as “the land of the free” and doesn’t proudly tout itself as having free speech above all else no matter the cost. So famously fascist symbols - like the swastika/hakenkreuz among other things - are banned a few places, it may be controversial but it’s not a dirty little secret or anything like that
Your argument is no clearer. Someone's claiming US is beginning to resemble China in that they hide criticism of the ruling parties - they have not mentioned Europe once and you're saying ... something about censorship in Europe?
This reminds me of my Dutch friend who is prone to exaggeration to make things sound dramatic and scary to outsiders, and frequently claims the Netherlands is a "narco state" - big "Nederlandse hiphop: Ik kom van de straat" energy going on here.
"So other heads are also flamable. Do you think your head isn't?"
Something potentially happening elsewhere doesn't invalidate it being pointed out. In fact if Von der Leyen got booed in China and a Geeman broadcaster muted it, I would also like to know what was ommited.
I have showdead set to yes, and while so some articles get a gray color and an occasional [flagged] tag, everything is still searchable[0]. The only form of censorship is the ordering in the news list, but I could pick any other list[1] if I wanted to.
...so what? "Most stories about politics" are considered Off-Topic, as per the guidelines[0], and some members favor the flag- over the hide-button more than I'd like. It's still on place 19 on the active list[1], and a far cry from any practiced censorship like on Reddit, where stuff just gets [deleted] out of existence.
Yes. When it is complaint about some leftist student protesting and thus interfering with far right speaker free speech rigth to never be opposed, regualarly discussed. Rarely flagged.
But, when there is something making current admin or far right lool bad, flagged quickly
Weird, I remember Western media ran full transcripts of his speech after the Ukraine invasion and every other time he crawled out of his bunker in the Urals. Would you like to enlighten us which important viewpoints of Putin get censored in the West?
Citation needed.. really sorry to say it because there are plenty of things to say about the current US administration.
It feels like people inventing this story, farming for followers on socials by manufacturing outrage. And a close read of the article will uncover that it was denied by the networks.
This needs a deeper dig before opinions be formed - especially given the vehement denials of manipulation by the broadcasters.
People in the US heard the boos, as evidenced by the comments and others posting about it. All politicians get booed. But how many? And who controls the mics? The editing? The news press?
More anti-American propaganda on HN. Why does this keep happening? This is not news, nor is it relevant for HN.
Hackers care about the truth. I don't think many here would consider the censorship of a US head of state being inherently pro-US (or the criticism of said censorship to be anti-US).
But feel free to elaborate why you feel wanting the US population to be able to see how their political leadership is perceived elsewhere is "anti-US" — cause I would describe it as the exact opposite.
Americans - and citizens of all big countries - know their leadership isn't popular everywhere, especially when other governments disagree with them on increasingly more issues (UK and French censorship of speech being one of them, ironically).
Seeing the 100th "U.S. government bad - please believe us this time" story from yet another activist-masquerading-as-journalist post from The Guardian (UK) ending up on the same website where technologists discuss innovations in tech and science is the real travesty here.
> The real risk for American broadcasters is not that dissent will be visible. It is that audiences will start assuming anything they do not show is being hidden
Kinda daft not to assume this has been the case for a long time already
The opening ceremony for the London 2012 Olympics included a celebration of the National Health Service, which got mysteriously cut from the broadcast in the US, at a time when there was a bunch of fuss over Obamacare that had come into effect a year or two before.
Was hard not to imagine that was a deliberate choice.
I’m in the US and I saw it and recall thinking it was a strange thing to specifically celebrate in the Olympic opening ceremonies.
But to each their own.
They might have just thought it a bit boring?
You can check it out - the first couple of minutes here of people in nurse costumes standing by beds and moving around a bit. Not really must see stuff. https://youtu.be/ReJjvlipXpM
Drug companies and insurers are big advertisers.
That's insane.
Even if a large conspiracy isn't involved, I believe that biases in worldview can contribute to these effects. However, I still think it's important to inform people of things they might be missing and hold media accountable for their choices, regardless of whether those choices are random or unknowingly biasedWe need to be careful not to fall into the allure of "fake media" in our outrage, as this could ultimately benefit populists in the long run.
Well the "no censorship!"-crowd in rhe US has been strangly focused on the censorship of racists, bigots and nazis. I don't think they consider censorship that benefits the Neo-feudalist lords as censorship.
So, due to US ideological propaganda, US media censored the part where the British do their ideological propaganda bit?
Well, at least the censorship was not paid by tax payer money… unlike the propaganda bit by the British, that was fully paid by taxpayer money.
The NHS is genuinely loved by most British people, for all it's faults. Not celebrating it would have been very weird. So not really propaganda, just showing the world the things we are proud of.
Feel free to censor it on your end if you find the very idea dangerous.
Great. Are British free to opt out? You know, they don’t pay into the NHS and they don’t get to use it.
Are they? I mean, if it’s such a great idea and universally loved, it’s weird it needs to be imposed by force. Doesn’t it?
How is the NHS very different from the military. Americans love their military and often have propaganda-style bits like fly-overs during football games. American's don't get the option to 'opt-out' of paying for its gigantic costs. Why not have military spending depend on voluntary donations?
They actually should be able to, for the most part.
The original idea of state exists to ensure 3 things:
- Protection of the territory of the state
- Protection of the integrity of the individual citizen
- Protection of the private property of the citizen
This is why people started organizing in societies and allowing the existence of a ruler class. These 3 things.
You will always need some amount of military to be part of the state. But what most countries waste today (the USA for instance), is pornographic. The state should only be allowed (by taxation) enough military to defend their territory, not to exert control over the all planet like the USA wants to do.
EDIT: Yeah, I should have guessed the part of the "integrity of the individual citizen" would, of course, be twisted. No, it's not protection of the individual from disease of from his own stupidity or lack of ability. It just means the role of the state is to ensure the citizen is protected from deliberate harm from another individual.
I would say that in the list 'Protection of the integrity of the individual citizen' is something that a NHS would serve. Individually, people want to know that if they get injured or sick they can be taken care when they can't for themselves. Everyone is at risk of these things. Society as an organism also benefits from having resources dedicated to repair of its components in the same as it does in defense of external threats. 'Protection of the territory of the state' also can be served by an NHS because of the damage and danger of highly infectious diseases.
> 'Protection of the territory of the state' also can be served by an NHS because of the damage and danger of highly infectious diseases.
Let's be honest here. You know the NHS (and various equivalents across the world) go way, way beyond this.
And I'm not even against the existence of a public funded health service within limits. But this is just phonographic. In my country (and from what I've read in the NHS it's relatively similar), in the past 10 years we added more than 90% medical doctors and nurses to the national NHS. The budget for the local NHS increased by 72% in that same period.
And the service has become absolutely terrible and now people (the ones that only benefit from it but don't pay the costs) are asking to raise taxes even more to put even more money into the problem.
Naa, enough is enough. I don't want to support this crap.
Fair enough to complain about the execution, but glad to see you see the logic of its existence. Back to the military comparison, the waste (fraud, corruption, kickbacks, etc, etc) in that part of the public expenditure is pretty massive. Yet there don't seem to be the same outrage or call for reforms in that area. Even when multi-billion dollar programs stagger about for years then produce nothing useful (except for the profits extracted by the defense firms and their investors). Lots of hate for NHS waste, but military spending waste seems to get a free pass. Why is this?
Basically, because the military got a massive budget in WWII and Americans just got used to it because slaughtering the Nazis was the only thing that can convince Americans to buy into that level of welfare.
Now it's mostly a jobs program for poor people plus pork for politicians to throw at their favored contractors/companies. Can't really be eliminated without political suicide because too many mouths are fed off of it and will make it their mission every waking moment to damn anyone who tries to do it.
Since prevention is a lot cheaper than cure we're trying to avoid the same mistake with other things rather than commit political supuku on things that already exist.
Are Americans free to opt out of taxation for things they don't want to support?
There's option to opt out of social security if you are of the right religion that existed before, I want to say, by the 1960s was the nominal date in the statute -- and registered as such by some gatekeepers in the religion. The Amish won't let those who didn't grow up in the community register although some Mennonites might. Or are working as a preacher.
It should probably be challenged because it's a clear religious discrimination. I looked seriously at renouncing my right to social security but eventually I found out they've gamed the system in favor of a few insular religions.
They absolutely should!
Every Brit has used the NHS multiple times.
It's far from perfect but no propaganda is ever required, just direct experience.
Every Brit has also used a Pub multiple times. Let’s nacionalize them and make them “free”.
What a weird worldview, celebrating censorship that aligns with corporate interests in healthcare, a basic necessity, while using the tired diatribe "but muh tax money!" to pathetically drum support for it, lol.
Aren't you tired of being so angry at the wrong stuff? Such an exhausting way to live.
Man, you really came commenting into an opinion piece by some "journalist" in a major news media outlet, denouncing that he didn't hear the "boos" loud enough, to tell the others that you think it's "an exhausting way to live" with the opposite opinion. Didn't you?
Nope, I came commenting on your comment which given the pattern of your other comments getting flagged all the time shows to be an exhausting way to live: being mad at small things.
You just proved my point.
I wish I could live in your bubble, where disliking the state forcibly taking away 50% of my salary (more actually) to redistribute to people that don't contribute to society and to waste in severely mismanaged public services is "being mad at small things".
Unfortunately, I don't live in the bubble.
You live in the bubble where taxation is only to redistribute to wasteful means. In that bubble you get blinded by black-and-white thinking that can never achieve any kind of nuance to actually address issues, only seeing issues in it all is not conducive to creating concrete criticism which is the first step to change. You can only be cynical, and contrarian.
So yeah, seems exhausting, being mad at it all because you can't think in specifics, just a general sense of madness and outrage at a black hole of frustration.
Unfortunately you live in that bubble.
Sorry you live in a broken society, maybe do something to change it.
The NHS is a bit like the NRA in the US. Politicians and rich folk would ideally do away with it, but they cannot, so they have to play lip service to gain favour with the public.
So its not propaganda in the way you are thinking of.
What a mental stretch to compare a free life saving organisation with a organisation that supports guns to kill with. Seriously?
It's a classic American worldview.
> audiences will start assuming anything they do not show is being hidden
Will they? Possibly a portion of them, but I doubt they'll be the majority.
I’m a viewer in the USA and I heard the boos. They didn’t sound edited out. What did I do wrong?
You aren’t one of the few Americans who watched the opening ceremony on over the air NBC.
You make it sound like NBC is some sort of obscure specialist service, but it turns out that they're actually a mainstream national broadcaster, available not just over the air but also on just about every satellite, cable, and streaming provider in the country: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBC
Not only that, but they're the official Olympic broadcaster in the USA! Around 22m watched it on their broadcast services, and a further 3m on streaming.
In reality, an overwhelming majority of Americans watching the opening ceremony were doing so via NBC.
Dude just about all Americans watch the Olympics on normal network TV, in this case NBC. What are you talking about?
I honestly think the way they mix their audio is so the stadium noise gets turned down whenever the announcer talks and the American announcers just never shut the fuck up no matter how inane they might be.
I'll have to ask my brother but that might be NBC's audio engineer decision, or even his default settings (depending on the broadcaster voice).
I'm as critical as the US as they come, in fact I just cancelled my summer trip to the Appalachia, but seeing this as censorship is reading a bit too far, simpler explanations exist (crowd noises are dimmed by audio filters)
Someone in the US says they heard it. Another watching Eurosport said they didn't.
Who to believe?
Germany here - I also could not hear it. I was wandering though that there was no reaction from the crowd. So that explains it.
https://archive.ph/s7XuC
How very DPRK of them.
very American thing happens in America - "Wow, this is like those other bad countries!"
my question is more technical: how did the blot out the booing? and: how live was it in the US? from the Academy Awards we know that they have a 5s delay (following the Michael Moore incident), but what is it with olympics broadcast?
The audio engineers are monitoring multiple mics (for an event of this magnitude probably dozens) and increasing or decreasing volume on them in real time for the mix that goes on the air. Standard for any sports broadcast.
While they do show it live, it's in the middle of the workday, so almost everyone in the USA will have watched it delayed by many hours at "prime time", aka around 8pm local time in each zone.
That being said, I'm in the US and I heard boos on the delayed broadcast.
as I unterstand the boos were blotted out only on the NBC broadcast, did you watch it on NBC?
Oddly I watched it live on the Eurosport broadcast and didn’t hear any noticeable booing
Just checked what Moore has done and found that quote of him (about Bush):
> “we live in fictitious times with a fictitious president”
it was 2003, but oh, dear Michael, if only you knew what the future would be like...
it was his Oscar for Bowling for Columbine
These american news companies are so goddamn spineless.
Hey guess what forum flagged this story.
money is on the line
Wouldn't show that create vitality and more money? Or it's more of fear, I think the spineless adjective stands
Short term gain for long term loss
Short term gain of money in exchange for for short term loss of democracy.
Looks like Americans are adopting Chinese censorship methods. You won't see it thus it never happened.
So North Korea, China, America, Russia and basically all other countries have propaganda, and Europe doesn’t? I live in Europe and think we do. Not everything that is in the news is true.
Europe doesn’t bill itself as “the land of the free” and doesn’t proudly tout itself as having free speech above all else no matter the cost. So famously fascist symbols - like the swastika/hakenkreuz among other things - are banned a few places, it may be controversial but it’s not a dirty little secret or anything like that
Updated comment to make argument clearer
Your argument is no clearer. Someone's claiming US is beginning to resemble China in that they hide criticism of the ruling parties - they have not mentioned Europe once and you're saying ... something about censorship in Europe?
This reminds me of my Dutch friend who is prone to exaggeration to make things sound dramatic and scary to outsiders, and frequently claims the Netherlands is a "narco state" - big "Nederlandse hiphop: Ik kom van de straat" energy going on here.
"Your head is on fire!"
"So other heads are also flamable. Do you think your head isn't?"
Something potentially happening elsewhere doesn't invalidate it being pointed out. In fact if Von der Leyen got booed in China and a Geeman broadcaster muted it, I would also like to know what was ommited.
This website is one of the biggest culprits
Care to elaborate?
I have showdead set to yes, and while so some articles get a gray color and an occasional [flagged] tag, everything is still searchable[0]. The only form of censorship is the ordering in the news list, but I could pick any other list[1] if I wanted to.
[0]: https://hn.algolia.com/
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/lists
This thread will immediately disappear off the front page once some Americans wake up.
FYI [flagged] articles are still present on the front[0] list. I'd suggest you check out the active[1] or the newest[2] list instead.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/front
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/active
[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newest
There we go, it is flagged.
...so what? "Most stories about politics" are considered Off-Topic, as per the guidelines[0], and some members favor the flag- over the hide-button more than I'd like. It's still on place 19 on the active list[1], and a far cry from any practiced censorship like on Reddit, where stuff just gets [deleted] out of existence.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/active
People flag stuff. I don't think it results in removal automatically though it probably downgrades it as a story.
Some may regard this as off topic, but censorship seems to be a recurring subject and regularly discussed.
Yes. When it is complaint about some leftist student protesting and thus interfering with far right speaker free speech rigth to never be opposed, regualarly discussed. Rarely flagged.
But, when there is something making current admin or far right lool bad, flagged quickly
Not sure if HN monitors brigading.
No kidding
And Stalinist tactics in removing and erasing memorials and documents that contains subjects they don't like, e.g.,
And so on...trumpism
Some USA (and western) viewers even believe that Putin can't speak, because they never saw him speaking.
Organic lie generating machine not given airtime shocker...
If you are expecting leaders of countries and media to be truth-telling machines, sure, you are in shocker. Stay tuned to your truth machines.
Weird, I remember Western media ran full transcripts of his speech after the Ukraine invasion and every other time he crawled out of his bunker in the Urals. Would you like to enlighten us which important viewpoints of Putin get censored in the West?
Citation needed.. really sorry to say it because there are plenty of things to say about the current US administration.
It feels like people inventing this story, farming for followers on socials by manufacturing outrage. And a close read of the article will uncover that it was denied by the networks.
This needs a deeper dig before opinions be formed - especially given the vehement denials of manipulation by the broadcasters.
But until then, citation needed.
People in the US heard the boos, as evidenced by the comments and others posting about it. All politicians get booed. But how many? And who controls the mics? The editing? The news press?
More anti-American propaganda on HN. Why does this keep happening? This is not news, nor is it relevant for HN.
It is unusual to be booed at olympic.
Hackers care about the truth. I don't think many here would consider the censorship of a US head of state being inherently pro-US (or the criticism of said censorship to be anti-US).
But feel free to elaborate why you feel wanting the US population to be able to see how their political leadership is perceived elsewhere is "anti-US" — cause I would describe it as the exact opposite.
Americans - and citizens of all big countries - know their leadership isn't popular everywhere, especially when other governments disagree with them on increasingly more issues (UK and French censorship of speech being one of them, ironically).
Seeing the 100th "U.S. government bad - please believe us this time" story from yet another activist-masquerading-as-journalist post from The Guardian (UK) ending up on the same website where technologists discuss innovations in tech and science is the real travesty here.