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So, just out of curiosity a few years back I clicked on a headline for like an annual day of remembrance for tiannemen square, and it included a video so I wanted to see if they would play the full clip.

That clip stopped at the same point that the clip is always stopped when used in news stories, but the article linked a source about tiannemen square for further reading.

I clicked on that source, and it was very similar to the first article, roughly 2-3 short paragraphs of declarative statements, the same clip edited to cut off before it shows "tank man" climbing on top of the tank shortly before walking away unharmed, and another link to a source for further reading about the events at tiannemen square.

At that point I wanted to see if I would ever get through this chain of an attribution of an attribution down to any primary sources or even a single article that just showed the full, unedited clip at the very least.

Every link I clicked on had the same exact structure. It was an article from a major publication, they all featured either the singular famous still frame of Tank Man standing in front of the tank or they showed the edited clip that is cut before the clip shows him walking away safe and unharmed in order to imply that the tank ran him over, they all had a short summary of events and then the "source" provided if a reader wanted to verify the facts of the article was just another article repeating the same thing which linked to another article repeating the same thing which linked to... and so on and so on.

I probably went a few dozen links deep and never found a single article that used any primary source documents or historical analysis or investigative reports as a source for any of the claims made in the article. The only primary source to be found was the singular video that every article refused to show in full.

And to be clear, this isn't just some odd quirk of this specific event. This pattern is exactly how most modern propaganda makes its way into the public consciousness. When a claim or accusation is made and the source making the claim is of dubious veracity (such as when the US state department, intelligence agencies, and various affiliated NGOs make claims about states or groups that are targets of US aggression and intervention), then going through this process of publishing hundreds of articles that amount to little more substance than saying "BBC reported that NYT reported that The Sun reported that WaPo reported that The Guardian reported that an anonymous state department official said something happened" serves two purposes.

The first purpose that this process serves is that the original source that is of dubious or sometimes completely discredited veracity is now buried from scrutiny under and attribution of an attribution of an attribution of an attribution.

The second purpose this process serves is that it creates the appearance of academic, journalistic, and/or scholarly consensus even though this large volume of reporting ultimately traces back to a singular source.