This is a valid point. Film as a media is a far more potent vector for propaganda than print. Increasingly this is being leveraged by bad actors or those who are more interested in persuasion or psychological effect than in presenting truth. That said I assume John Cusack isn’t trying to psy-op the public in this particular instance. But as a more general point, I agree people are increasingly being impacted in unproductive ways by inflammatory videos.
> Film as a media is a far more potent vector for propaganda than print.
I definitely agree with this, but in my perception the moving images themselves are secondary in effect to the audio. Tone of voice and emotive music in particular are very powerful methods of hacking emotions. When watching videos that I think are trying to be manipulative with music or tone of voice, I like to mute the audio and rely on subtitles. This is also one of the reasons that I read newspaper articles but avoid all radio and TV news broadcasts (the other reason being that newspapers hire better writers and provide more details and nuance. I read https://lite.cnn.com/ to stay in touch, but the writing there is abysmal.)
I’m converging on this myself. Very little interest in news tv, especially the highly partisan flavor which increasingly dominates. Sadly some of the better print journalism is paywalled. Sub stack is great but I’m used to free so probably not doing my part to support independent voices.
I'm sorry. I didn't know wanting to read something rather than watch a video is somehow self-censorship.
Tell me again how video is the ONLY means by which someone can educate themselves? Without using words.
Edit: In fact, by pretending that the ONLY means to watch this is a video which everyone in this thread admits is hard to watch, you are in fact helping to limit the knowledge that it shares.
Rather than present other means to learn about this, you insist that this is the ONLY way to learn about this.
It's not education of the topic you are promoting, but hurting people. You are, in many ways, supporting Modi's cause by actively working to limit the spread of the knowledge of a chilling and depressing story of how an Indian politician uses communal violence to further his career and promote religious fundamentalist fascist ideology in India.
With 8 billion people in the world, even with the 4 billion when I was born, there's enough genuine evil[0] in the world to wreck anyone with even the slightest capacity for empathy. I have no idea if this documentary is or isn't at that level, because I have enough going on without wading into Indian politics.
Will this documentary cause its viewers to end whatever specific ills are shown within? I presume so, otherwise it wouldn't be getting censored.
Will it cause any specific person to effect that change? Probably not, most of us have no influence whatsoever over Indian politics or economics.
[0] or, if you don't like the word "evil", sadistic Machiavellian psychopathy
Maybe people can learn in other ways that also don't subject them to harm.