Distorting Russia
How the American media misrepresent Putin, Sochi and Ukraine.
The degradation of mainstream American press coverage of Russia, a country still vital to US national security, has been under way for many years. If the recent tsunami of shamefully unprofessional and politically inflammatory articles in leading newspapers and magazinesparticularly about the Sochi Olympics, Ukraine and, unfailingly, President Vladimir Putinis an indication, this media malpractice is now pervasive and the new norm.
There are notable exceptions, but a general pattern has developed. Even in the venerable New York Times and Washington Post, news reports, editorials and commentaries no longer adhere rigorously to traditional journalistic standards, often failing to provide essential facts and context; to make a clear distinction between reporting and analysis; to require at least two different political or expert views on major developments; or to publish opposing opinions on their op-ed pages. As a result, American media on Russia today are less objective, less balanced, more conformist and scarcely less ideological than when they covered Soviet Russia during the Cold War. . .
But the most crucial media omission is Moscows reasonable conviction that the struggle for Ukraine is yet another chapter in the Wests ongoing, US-led march toward post-Soviet Russia, which began in the 1990s with NATOs eastward expansion and continued with US-funded NGO political activities inside Russia, a US-NATO military outpost in Georgia and missile-defense installations near Russia. Whether this longstanding Washington-Brussels policy is wise or reckless, itnot Putins December financial offer to save Ukraines collapsing economyis deceitful. The EUs civilizational proposal, for example, includes security policy provisions, almost never reported, that would apparently subordinate Ukraine to NATO.
Any doubts about the Obama administrations real intentions in Ukraine should have been dispelled by the recently revealed taped conversation between a top State Department official, Victoria Nuland, and the US ambassador in Kiev. The media predictably focused on the source of the leak and on Nulands verbal gaffeFuck the EU. But the essential revelation was that high-level US officials were plotting to midwife a new, anti-Russian Ukrainian government by ousting or neutralizing its democratically elected presidentthat is, a coup.
Americans are left with a new edition of an old question. Has Washingtons twenty-year winner-take-all approach to post-Soviet Russia shaped this degraded news coverage, or is official policy shaped by the coverage? Did Senator John McCain stand in Kiev alongside the well-known leader of an extreme nationalist party because he was ill informed by the media, or have the media deleted this part of the story because of McCains folly?
http://www.thenation.com/article/178344/distorting-russia#
newfie11
(8,159 posts)elleng
(130,989 posts)I think its important, and combines well with Lawrence Wilkerson's discussion (on Chris Hayes show) about effect of NATO's creep east.