Every time I see a news story about Americans trying to be more welcoming to bring Canadian tourists back, I just think about how they don't get it. People don't feel safe at the border! People are reading the news stories and are afraid of being grilled, arrested, sent to jail, because someone at the border doesn't like them or has a quota to fill. You can't say "oh, it's fine, we love Canadians" - people here read the front page news stories about people for whom it wasn't fine.
#canpoli
@misty@digipres.club the news story isn't to reassure canadians, it's to reassure americans though heh
@tef@mastodon.social Forgetting that reassuring themselves isn't the same as actually summoning the tourists back?
@misty@digipres.club as bill hicks once put it "go back to bed america" heh
the news story isn't about the protests against the changes, or attempts to push back against the border, but that the american can-do attitude shines forth again, etc
@misty@digipres.club feel good small business stories do reinforce the narrative that "all businesses are just mom and pop business at heart" sure
which isn't to say it's selected for its propaganda but it is to say it isn't rejected like stories of "another business goes under" for being too depressing
people like to quote the "if one guy says it's raining and one guy says it isn't, your job as a journo is to look out the window"
but do not add "so i don't have to look every time"
@misty@digipres.club maybe i'm projecting from plucky britain over here but i see a lot of "america endures" type pieces heh
@misty@digipres.club years ago, decades even, i bumped into the "stuff white people like" post about how we love raising awareness and honestly i will never unsee it
there's this belief that with enough attention a problem gets solved, and that we as consumers set the narrative and the press reports on it
and well it's usually a cruel awakening when it's "wait why didn't they cover our protest" happens for the first time
i should stop before i turn into a chomsky parody
@misty@digipres.club aside, my "you are not immune to propaganda" moment, of many, was realising that in a "the purpose is what it does" way, the function of NASA was so that america could employ war criminals to build rockets to carry nuclear weapons, while putting a happy civilian smile on the end product
cf why the shuttle is like that, to steal satellites heh
the cognitive dissonance is akin to the NYT, which also hires war criminals, but to write propaganda, rather than engineering
Misty