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Poll: Real Or Fake News?

Real, or fake news?

  • Total voters
    18
maxflinn

maxflinn

pfm Member
This little video montage appears to show a North Korean defecting across the DMZ to the South:


To my mind it looks about as staged as the US elite's concern for the North Korean people.

What do you guys think; real, or fake news?
 
I'm in the middle east and have seen two other videos that look much more convincing. One of which is night vision showing the apparent body of the absconder being dragged the last few yards into South Korea. I'm convinced the event is not fake however the video you posted may be.
 
I thought it was real, as:
  1. I'm fairly sure South Korea won't be short of CCTV on the major border with the North
  2. To fake this up, they'd need (a) a good reason, and (b) agreement from South Korea (assuming think it is the US Government behind this)
  3. If it was staged, they'd look a bit more professional and not be running around trying to see him, falling over, etc.
  4. The guy is in hospital with multiple gunshot wounds (unless he is a ... wait what is it again, a "false flag crisis actor" (is that the right lingo?))
 
What Michael P said. I would add that if I were faking something like that I'd make the footage a little longer, rather than a "blink and you miss it" job.

Of course it's possible to question everything but it will probably drive you mad. I have a first degree and Ph.D. in Philosophy so I know that once you embrace radical scepticism it becomes almost impossible to stop.

Also, if you question reports like this, what's to stop you questioning reports from RT, Jimmy Dore and so on - why believe any testimony when the only thing you can *really* trust is what you've seen with your own eyes?

These are genuine questions by the way. We all depend on testimony to a large extent (our access to reality is, mostly, mediated). How do we decide which sources to trust? I find this question relatively easy to answer in the domestic political sphere. I really have seen the effect of Tory policies on poor and vulnerable members of society firsthand, and this leads me to view any news that supports the Tory "austerity" narrative with suspicion. Forming a reasoned view of international affairs is much harder because I don't have the same unmediated access to information, and different sources say different things.
 
Probably real? Although of Michael P's 4 points above, I only find the last compelling. It looks fake, mainly because the signs of realism are deployed a bit too pedantically (shaky camera, pulled focus).

But the larger point is that neither CNN or the BBC say anything about the source of the footage. Have they checked? One of the reasons that people have lost trust in the mainstream media is that facts and sources are not as well checked as they used to be.
 
So the fact that something looks realistic is reason to believe it's fake? I understand what you're saying but, as I said above, that way lies madness (e.g. 9/11 never happened).

I agree that facts and sources should be checked and made explicit where possible. It's quite maddening that even respected websites often don't give links to original research when reporting on them (I had to root around to find the austerity = murder report in the BMJ).
 
Seanm said:
Probably real? Although of Michael P's 4 points above, I only find the last compelling. It looks fake, mainly because the signs of realism are deployed a bit too pedantically (shaky camera, pulled focus).

But the larger point is that neither CNN or the BBC say anything about the source of the footage. Have they checked? One of the reasons that people have lost trust in the mainstream media is that facts and sources are not as well checked as they used to be.
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Interesting. What would you consider to be a good reason for faking this? The only reason I can think of faking this would be if it didn't happen and you want to persuade people it did, and why would you want to do that? Persuade people that North Korea isn't actually a dictatorship?

As for source - it was released by UN Command in South Korea (hence the UN symbol in the top left), and I think I recall the intention was to show violation of the agreement for the border.
 
Several supposed North Korean soldiers appeared to be only maybe 5 metres from him firing what one would assume were fully automatic weapons yet he neither died nor it seems was he even injured enough to stop him sprinting like Usain Bolt across a border suspiciously absent of any er, border fence.

Plus he must only weigh about 4 stone if a couple of South Koreans could pull him along like a rag doll as per the footage, and why would they need to do so under cover of darkness if the supposed defector had already made it to their side? They could have walked out and got him straight away.

It doesn't add up for me.
 
Michael P said:
Interesting. What would you consider to be a good reason for faking this? The only reason I can think of faking this would be if it didn't happen and you want to persuade people it did, and why would you want to do that? Persuade people that North Korea isn't actually a dictatorship?
Click to expand...

The US may be about to attack North Korea, and when the US plan to destroy a country they always spread lies and propaganda about said country first via the media to try to gain public support for said destruction. They done this prior to destroying Iraq, Libya and Syria.

Why not do it now if they plan to attack North Korea? Showing a staged scenario of North Korean soldiers trying to murder a fellow North Korean trying to leave the country certainly fits the bill, IMO.
 
maxflinn said:
The US may be about to attack North Korea, and when the US plan to destroy a country they always spread lies and propaganda about said country first via the media to try to gain public support for said destruction. They done this prior to destroying Iraq, Libya and Syria.

Why not do it now if they plan to attack North Korea? Showing North Korean soldiers trying to murder a fellow North Korean trying to leave the country certainly fits the bill, IMO.
Click to expand...

Now you put it like that, I see your point. I admit I had always thought that North Korea was a hell-on-earth dictatorship where people lived in constant terror of starving to death or having their family executed, but now that I think about it the tens of thousands who have defected via more conventional routes like via China are more likely American Crisis Actors with a copy of Rosetta Stone: Introduction to Korean.
 
So the US make a crappy vid showing a bloke escaping from NK, then say "We won't stand for this any more, we're going in!"
 
droodzilla said:
So the fact that something looks realistic is reason to believe it's fake? I understand what you're saying but, as I said above, that way lies madness (e.g. 9/11 never happened).

I agree that facts and sources should be checked and made explicit where possible. It's quite maddening that even respected websites often don't give links to original research when reporting on them (I had to root around to find the austerity = murder report in the BMJ).
Click to expand...

It's worse than that drood: the fact that the signs of the real make it seem (to me) unreal is one of the reasons I think it's probably real: if I were going to go to the trouble of faking something like this there's no way I'd have I've passed the shaky camera and the pulled focus - that's over egging it!

Seriously though, I don't think scepticism needs to lead to madness. The real scepticism towards the MSM we're seeing at the moment is really damaging but it is richly deserved, and avoidable: if the MSM is to win back trust it needs to show a modicum of scepticism itself: check facts and sources, ditch its reliance on embedded journalism, PR firms and social media stories.


Michael P said:
Interesting. What would you consider to be a good reason for faking this? The only reason I can think of faking this would be if it didn't happen and you want to persuade people it did, and why would you want to do that? Persuade people that North Korea isn't actually a dictatorship?

As for source - it was released by UN Command in South Korea (hence the UN symbol in the top left), and I think I recall the intention was to show violation of the agreement for the border.
Click to expand...

Well who knows why they'd do it? That's generally why I don't find "Why would they bother?" arguments convincing. Here I can think of any number of hypothetical reasons, but really, I don't want to go down that rabbit hole.

Good that there's a known source, but it should be reported - it's important.
 
Seanm said:
Good that there's a known source, but it should be reported - it's important.
Click to expand...

They don't declare it in that video clip because they appear to be treating it as light entertainment. Have a look at our newspapers though, and see if they report the source.
 
CNN treat everything as light entertainment. BBC doesn’t report on the source, and most people get their news from them.
 
My tip... In fact, I'll give you two tips for the price of one.

Tip #1: Ask the South Koreans. They will know the terrain and they will know what a North to South Korea defection looks like.

Tip #2: Don't ask blokes on a hi-fi forum in the UK. They won't know the terrain and they won't know what a North to South Korea defection looks like.
 
Haven't bothered filling in the poll, although the footage looks highly suspect.

America wants to rule the world, especially North Korea, and Trump lies non-stop.

ABC would applaud Trump if he dropped the bomb on Kim Jong-Un. The BBC are happy to buy their stories and clap along with them, because we have a special relationship apparently.

The arms industry keeps America economically afloat and they need a couple of ongoing wars to achieve this.

America is running out of Muslim countries to invade. This is one of the reasons why they are lining up North Korea.

Jack
 
I agree with "fake news" Flinn. This is clearly fake news, I mean, it isn't on some loony website but on the established media. Now, if it was on a "Killary is a fascist" or a "Israeli plan to nuke themselves and blame it on Gaza" website, I'd believe it.
 
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