Of course, on the Internet, it's not Occam's Razor that controls, but Godwin's, which states that among competing hypotheses, the hypothesis with the greatest dramatic implications must be selected.
To be fair, this being mentioned 2-3 times per channel kind of pales in comparison to when the Duck Dynasty thing happened it was on every news station nearly 24/7 for a week. I think the complaint is the amount of coverage this has been given, not whether it has been covered at all.
"Blackout" implies a direct or implicit threat of violence by the government against the media, and the media either willingly or unwillingly complying to censor something they would otherwise cover.
The American media is in the business of selling time to advertisers, not necessarily informing the public. Duck Dynasty is more popular than Edward Snowden and that particular story was incredibly sensational, so it gets covered more, so it gets more viewers, so it makes the commercial time worth more. Conspiracies aren't necessary to explain it... it's not worth more effort for stations than it gets.
Controversy sells. Also, crazy paranoid ravings are a time honored entertainment tradition. I don't buy for a second that Snowden's interview is being avoided because it's not newsworthy enough. In any case, since when did youtube exert editorial control to bar un-entertaining videos?
This looks like real self-censorship: it's not newsworthy enough to be worth alienating people that you might want to have as your friend later on. You still don't need a conspiracy to explain it; but it's nevertheless toxic for democracy.
Frankly, I think self-censorship like this is much worse than explicit censorship. At least with explicit censorship there's still some attempt to question the party line; but with self-censorship you've lost even that.
As to the video itself, is it possible ARD simply has a copyright claim it wishes to enforce?
I don't think the Snowden story is that controversial anymore.
>As to the video itself, is it possible ARD simply has a copyright claim it wishes to enforce?
Maybe? Affiliates certainly aren't going to pay money for it, they'll just take whatever feeds their parent station sends them, and if the parents aren't willing to pay for it then it doesn't get covered in depth.
I have no idea about whether Snowden was covered, but "media blackout" certainly doesn't require gov't violence:
* media (corporations typically owned by larger corporations) can decide not to report what's against owners' interests
* advertisers (corporations buying access to eyeballs) may find news against their interests
Many journalists might want to report, but they have bosses/editors, and those covering important news are selected for having certain attitudes. Government may threaten to revoke access, but that's probably too marginal to cause a blackout.
>"Blackout" implies a direct or implicit threat of violence by the government against the media, and the media either willingly or unwillingly complying to censor something they would otherwise cover.
Or you know, a soft-core version of the above.
Blackout doesn't involve violence -- just an order, implicit or explicit and some threat (which could just be "perhaps we'll call our friends at the IRS" or even "this is a matter of national security, trust us and don't play it. We'll return the favor to your media group.").
And it doesn't have to involve all the media, just the more wide-reaching networks, to control the main volume of public discussion. E.g they don't care if 20 or 30 million people see it. But they wouldn't like 350 million people watching it day and night, discussed in news and tv panels and editorials for a few days.
What adds more B.S. to all this is that the HN mods have not changed the title nor removed this blatantly false submit; even after it's been on HN for the entire day.
1) There is no blackout, 2) the US media is covering this, and 3) the general public does not care - hense it's not a major news story.
The question I ask myself is do I think that if Snowden were an enemy of an enemy (a "good" guy) of the US that this would have the same minimal media exposure?
I think "I'm terrified of being assassinated by Russian/Chinese authorities" from a major dissident asylum seeker would be getting much more play.
In any case I don't think this isolated interview is very significant in itself.
> "I think "I'm terrified of being assassinated by Russian/Chinese authorities" from a major dissident asylum seeker would be getting much more play."
There's no need for hypotheticals here. When actual Russian dissidents wind up actually dead under extremely suspicious circumstances it actually does not get much more coverage in the US media.
I, like almost everyone, heard about Litvinenko without trying. Nevertheless those circumstances are different: A dissident openly slamming their own (non-ally) government is a far clearer message than a dissident dying under dubious circumstances. It can also be repeated indefinitely.
Seems like US news mainly focused on the claims about threat to his life, which was a minor point in the interview. Seems like US public is largely uninterested by the real news. Things like international industrial spying is probably too heavy topic for Americans, so the news didn't want bore the audience.
I don't think your definition of Godwin's Law matches its stated definition. However, I want your definition to get forked into its own law because it is an incredibly astute observation.
Of course, on the Internet, it's not Occam's Razor that controls, but Godwin's, which states that among competing hypotheses, the hypothesis with the greatest dramatic implications must be selected.