It’s a report that has been widely reported on in the media at the time. They could not just “craft data” and get away with it. Forging verifiable data is the stupidest thing that a think tank could do if they want their future reports to also be picked up by mainstream media. They can be creative with their conclusions or accusations, but claiming that official government data says X, while it doesn’t, that’s not going to fly and they know it.
It’s a report that has been widely reported on in the media at the time.
Well, yeah, that’s the whole point of Think Tanks - it’s to produce reports for the media to unquestioningly parrot and in this day and age they definitelly unquestioningly parrot Think Tank reports without actually checking them, especially when they align with what the Government says and the target is a different nation’s Government (they’re more likely to actually check those things and even question them if the target is an internal group in a country, but even in certain countries you see for example reports of the words of spokespersons from, say, representatives of the industry treated with more implicit trust than those from unions, even though both sides should be thought of as equally biased towards certain interests),
Australia specifically falls in the “Country with wholly captured Press” category, same as the US, the UK and China itself.
As an example, a lot of the Propaganda pushed out around the 7 of October attack of Hamas on Israel was also pushed out by amongst others similar organisations and was widely reported in the media at the time as well as repeated by countless politicians in the West, and in the fullness of time most of that turned out to be wildly exagerated, misportrayal of events and even complete total bollocks.
Given the present day levels of “journalistic” “integrity” of the Press, especially in Anglo-Saxon countries, “widely reported on the media” isn’t the stamp of trustworthiness you seem to think it is.
It’s a report that has been widely reported on in the media at the time. They could not just “craft data” and get away with it. Forging verifiable data is the stupidest thing that a think tank could do if they want their future reports to also be picked up by mainstream media. They can be creative with their conclusions or accusations, but claiming that official government data says X, while it doesn’t, that’s not going to fly and they know it.
Well, yeah, that’s the whole point of Think Tanks - it’s to produce reports for the media to unquestioningly parrot and in this day and age they definitelly unquestioningly parrot Think Tank reports without actually checking them, especially when they align with what the Government says and the target is a different nation’s Government (they’re more likely to actually check those things and even question them if the target is an internal group in a country, but even in certain countries you see for example reports of the words of spokespersons from, say, representatives of the industry treated with more implicit trust than those from unions, even though both sides should be thought of as equally biased towards certain interests),
Australia specifically falls in the “Country with wholly captured Press” category, same as the US, the UK and China itself.
As an example, a lot of the Propaganda pushed out around the 7 of October attack of Hamas on Israel was also pushed out by amongst others similar organisations and was widely reported in the media at the time as well as repeated by countless politicians in the West, and in the fullness of time most of that turned out to be wildly exagerated, misportrayal of events and even complete total bollocks.
Given the present day levels of “journalistic” “integrity” of the Press, especially in Anglo-Saxon countries, “widely reported on the media” isn’t the stamp of trustworthiness you seem to think it is.