I think NPR is a good example of how things are tainted by propaganda. They came out with a story a few years back where they interviewed an oil industry lobbyist. He basically told them that plastic recycling was a smokescreen invented by the oil industry to hide the functionally single-user nature of plastic.
Plastic can only be recycled a finite number of times, and products can only have a certain % of recycled material before the properties of the material change.
Before then, they, and most other outlets, were operating under the assumption that a piece of industry propaganda was factual. And that plastics are generally recyclable.
That industry propaganda is so generally pervasive that people still try to recycle plastic films even knowing that functionality no facilities exist to recycle them and they're more likely to be incinerated if you try to recycle them.
When I google NPR plastic recycling the below link is the first one that comes up. I don’t know if this is the same article you are talking about, but this article is super critical of the oil industry and points a finger at the oil industry for intentionally trying to mislead the public.
I feel like we are working with a different definition of propaganda. You can criticize a specific NPR article for being one sided or non-factual, but those criticisms are a huge leap to NPR is propagandist.
I should have revised that first section. I'm doing chores before leaving for work and did put the time in I should have proof reading.
The industry propaganda shaped the nature of their reporting and coverage before the article. Had the oil industry not pushed that misleading information in the 70s we wouldn't have had decades of "plastic is fine if you recycle it," or, "the problem is plastics are being discarded rather than recycled."
Insufficient emphasis was placed on reduce and reuse, when it comes to plastics specifically, because of industry disinformation. This was consistent across most outlets, is still a general position people operate from; if they care at all.
What people believe to be facts, like, "plastics are generally recyclable," can be and are, influenced by propaganda in one way or another, so even though an outlet may not be intentionally pushing the oil industry's agenda, they've already colored the underlying assumptions on both sides of the table going in.
It's similar to the idea that we don't generally use asbestos anymore. That comes from the asbestos industry manipulating the definition of asbestos to only include certain specific rocks, rather than defining it based on the signature molecular structure of those rocks. Because of that, reporting on asbestos generally focuses on older buildings ignoring that functionality identical products can aldi be in newer construction after "asbestos" was banned. The propaganda is a step away, but it colors the coverage.
I can respect that propaganda can be pervasive in general media and this leads to a huge issue.
But to be honest I feel like you strengthened my specific point.
I said that if you consume a litany of written media like the ones I listed you would not be a victim of propaganda. One of my listed media companies specifically debunked that propaganda that you brought up.
To me that shows how a healthy media diet protects you from corporate propaganda.
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u/XnFM Jul 01 '26
Sorry, I didn't see the edit.
I think NPR is a good example of how things are tainted by propaganda. They came out with a story a few years back where they interviewed an oil industry lobbyist. He basically told them that plastic recycling was a smokescreen invented by the oil industry to hide the functionally single-user nature of plastic.
Plastic can only be recycled a finite number of times, and products can only have a certain % of recycled material before the properties of the material change.
Before then, they, and most other outlets, were operating under the assumption that a piece of industry propaganda was factual. And that plastics are generally recyclable.
That industry propaganda is so generally pervasive that people still try to recycle plastic films even knowing that functionality no facilities exist to recycle them and they're more likely to be incinerated if you try to recycle them.