Why Oh Why Can't We Have A Better Press Corp?

[elfs]

Y'know, I've heard stuff like this before. When Neil Armstrong landed on the moon in 1969, the Soviet mouthpiece paper Pravda ran a short article on page three about it, and never again mentioned any of the subsequent landings. To this day, most Russians have no idea how extensive our lunar project was.

It's just so weird to see a reporter from the French Press Agency so sadly uneducated that he writes something this stupid, and his editor lets it go:

Russia plans to send a manned mission to the Moon by 2025 and wants to build a permanent base there shortly after, the head of Russian space agency Roskosmos said Friday. The only moon landing in history is NASA's Apollo expedition in 1968.

Why oh why can't France have a better press corp?

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I guess a lot of us outside the US, at least in Europe (being British myself) have a lot of apathy about the history of the moon landings. After all to the US government it was just another cold war session of "mine's bigger than yours". On the whole we're not overly bothered about the details.

[tehrasha.livejournal.com]

All faked in a movie studio anyway. :)

[fallenpegasus]

"The US did it. Thus it muts have been pointless, stupid, gaudy, have an edge of violence, and have something to do with repressed sexual frustration."

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Well, they outsourced their military defense during the Cold War without having to pay for it. I suppose that gives them some Gaullic sense of superiority.

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

And I only misquoted Roy Batty yesterday.

Time to die...

But I wonder if the error is in the original Russian Press Release, reflecting the distortions of the Spviet Press, and what else their education system, didn't mention, and it looked near-enough right to a callow youth that it disn't need checking.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Motives shouldn't matter. Newton's motive behind calculus was to explain the mind of God; he thought calculus would make us all better Christians. Atomic theory's utility was driven mostly by the desire for the bomb. Great scientific and human endeavors deserve memory.

I think you're all just lazy.

There's an SF story there. One about decadence and incompetence.

[fallenpegasus]

I was actually snarking a bit about the comment I was replying to, not the French in general. But I suppose it probably also applies toward them as well...

[(Anonymous)]

Alright I'll put it more accurately then -

It was a US achievement, and the peoples of every country always learn history with a bias towards that which is directly relevant to their own country. Most people in Britain for example can tell you what the year 1066 represents, but many people outside Britain can't.

No need to snark. I don't care about the motives, and it was a fine achievement... but it was almost 40 years ago and it doesn't feel relevant to us. Remember - relevance of events varies between countries. We know vaguely about it, we just don't really give a damn.

[(Anonymous)]

More important question is -
How many people in France, or in many other countries for that matter, know what exact year it is... and how many of those care enough to complain? It was obviously aimed at a domestic audience after all.

We know it happened, we have seen the footage. Asking us to know anything beyond that is just plain pointless. It happened some time at the back end of the 60s. We don't care exactly when, we know some of the names involved but we don't really care who it was or care to see their faces. It is like the Russian revolution - we're just content knowing it happened.

Expecting us to know or care more is just having an inflated sense of NASA's importance outside the US.

[(Anonymous)]

Or to put it even more simply -
There was a slight error in a peripheral fact of a minor story, which few people know to be wrong and even fewer care. If this type of minor slip is the worst facet of the French media then I would be severely tempted to move.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Right now, the US media establishment is going through a spasm of deciding whether or not news reports should point out when a speaker is being deceptive or misleading, but when it comes to actual facts, the papers are usually pretty good. Bush got a solid drubbing for attempting to associate the phrase "killing fields" with the Vietnam pullout; the killing fields were a Cambodian phenomenon and while we did nothing to prevent them, nobody can claim our actions caused them as Bush claimed.

It's not a "minor slip"; it is an attempt to minimize history. It's right up there with forgetting Nagasaki because Hiroshima came first, or No Gun Ri because My Lai was more recent, or repeatedly screwing up the Malmedy story altogether and being unapologetic about it.

[(Anonymous)]

So a French news article slipping on the year of the American moon landing is an attempt to minimise history? I don't buy that for one second, and am frankly surprised that a seemingly intelligent individual like yourself would even suggest something so patently absurd. It is a slip in a fact that had no bearing on the story, which was in fact a minor story since it had already been announced some time previously that NASA was going to return to the moon and the Russians announcing they wish to go to the moon elicits a big "So?".

Claiming it is anything more than a simple error is just blowing things out of proportion.

[(Anonymous)]

Contrary to popular opinion the date of events is more than a basic fact. For those things where you only have cursory knowledge the date is a lot to ask of someone. Being British I don't even recall the decade Vietnam occured in, but I could tell you for the Falklands war. Being one year out isn't huge given that it is a media from another continent. Noone is trying to say it is less of an achievement, it is simply that people don't know the date. If the concept of people from different parts of the world having different ideas of what is important and having different imformation thrown at them is more than you can cope with then I advise you to reserve your complaints for your own media.

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

I guess a lot of us outside the US, at least in Europe (being British myself) have a lot of apathy about the history of the moon landings.

... and its historic importance as the first human ventures to another world?

Methinks you believe that because Britain wimped out of manned spaceflight, you believe the grapes were sour. You Brits should have paid more attention to Arthur C. Clarke and the Interplanetary Society ... the country who birthed the man who first thought of the communications satellite has no excuse for failing to reach for the planets.

[(Anonymous)]

Firstly okay I agree the journalist should have looked it up, I know I would have at least on Wikipedia or wherever.

Secondly I never said it was a case of America being self centred, I said it was an overreaction. I stand by this, why do you care if someone in France screwed up in a comment about the lunar landings? How has it affected you? How has it affected the world? It is a storm in a tea cup. There are so many problems and this is what you choose to be outraged about?

To summarise -
They screwed up... So?

[(Anonymous)]

Let me put it this way.

It is the public's responsibility to hold their media to account. This means to me it is the French's responsibility to hold their own media to account, and I feel it is wrong for anyone else to interfere except in the case where extreme bad judgement or a real insult is involved.

In other words, I don't feel it is useful to criticise the press of other countries for something like this. It just makes you look like you're overreacting and/or interfering.