{"id":53648,"date":"2015-02-16T12:00:28","date_gmt":"2015-02-16T12:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=53648"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:26:06","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:26:06","slug":"wretched-us-journalism-on-ukraine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/02\/wretched-us-journalism-on-ukraine\/","title":{"rendered":"Wretched US Journalism on Ukraine"},"content":{"rendered":"

The U.S. news media has failed the American people often in recent years by not challenging\u00a0U.S. government falsehoods, as with\u00a0Iraq\u2019s WMD. But\u00a0the most dangerous violation of journalistic principles has occurred in the Ukraine crisis, which has the potential of a nuclear war.<\/em><\/p>\n

A basic rule of journalism is that there are almost always two sides to a story and that journalists should try to reflect that reality, a principle that is especially important when lives are at stake\u00a0amid\u00a0war fevers. Yet, American journalism has failed miserably in this regard during the Ukraine crisis.<\/p>\n

With very few exceptions, the mainstream U.S. media has simply regurgitated the propaganda from the U.S. State Department and other entities favoring western Ukrainians.\u00a0There has been little effort to view\u00a0the worsening crisis through the eyes of ethnic Russian Ukrainians living in the east or the Russians witnessing a political and humanitarian crisis on their border.<\/p>\n

\"ukraine-map-300x225\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Frankly, I cannot recall any previous situation in which the U.S. media has been more biased \u2013 across the board \u2013 than on Ukraine. Not even the \u201cgroup think\u201d around Iraq\u2019s non-existent WMDs was as single-minded as this, with the U.S. media perspective on Ukraine almost always from the point of view of the\u00a0western Ukrainians who led the overthrow\u00a0of\u00a0elected President Viktor Yanukovych, whose political base was in the east.<\/p>\n

So, what might appear to an objective observer as\u00a0a civil war between western Ukrainians, including the neo-Nazis who spearheaded last year\u2019s\u00a0coup against Yanukovych, and eastern Ukrainians, who refused to accept the anti-Yanukovych order that followed the coup, has been transformed by the U.S. news media into a confrontation between the forces of good (the western Ukrainians) and the forces of evil (the eastern Ukrainians) with an overlay of \u201cRussian aggression\u201d as Russian President Vladimir Putin is depicted\u00a0as a new\u00a0Hitler.<\/p>\n

Though the horrific bloodshed \u2013 more than 5,000 dead \u2013 has been inflicted overwhelmingly on the ethnic Russians in\u00a0eastern Ukraine by the forces from\u00a0western Ukraine, the killing is routinely blamed on either the eastern Ukrainian rebels or Putin for allegedly fomenting the trouble in the first place (though there is no evidence that he did, as even former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has acknowledged<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

I realize that anyone who doesn\u2019t accept the Official Washington \u201cgroup think\u201d on Ukraine is denounced as a \u201cPutin apologist\u201d \u2013 just as anyone who questioned the conventional wisdom about Saddam Hussein giving his WMDs to al-Qaeda\u00a0was a \u201cSaddam apologist\u201d \u2013 but step back for a minute and look at the crisis through the eyes of\u00a0ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine.<\/p>\n

A year ago, they saw what looked to them like a U.S.-organized coup, relying on both propaganda and violence to overthrow their constitutionally elected government. They also detected a strong anti-ethnic-Russian bias in the new regime with its efforts to strip away Russian as an official language. And they witnessed brutal killings of ethnic Russians \u2013 at the hands of neo-Nazis \u2013 in Odessa and elsewhere.<\/p>\n

Their economic interests, too, were threatened since they worked at companies that did substantial business with Russia. If those historic ties to Russia were cut in favor of special\u00a0economic relations with the European Union, the eastern Ukrainians\u00a0would be among the worst losers.<\/p>\n

Remember, that before backing away from the proposed association agreement with the EU in November 2013, Yanukovych received a report from economic experts in Kiev that Ukraine stood to lose $160 billion if it broke with Russia, as Der Spiegel reported<\/a>. Much of that economic pain would have fallen on eastern Ukraine.<\/p>\n

Economic Worries<\/strong><\/p>\n

On the rare occasions when American journalists have actually talked with eastern Ukrainians, this fear of the economic consequences has been a core concern, along with worries about the harsh austerity plan that the International Monetary Fund prescribed as a prerequisite for access to Western loans.<\/p>\n

For instance, in April 2014, Washington Post correspondent Anthony Faiola reported<\/a> from Donetsk that many of the eastern Ukrainians whom he interviewed said their resistance to the new Kiev regime was driven by fear over \u201ceconomic hardship\u201d and the IMF austerity plan that will make their lives even harder.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt a most dangerous and delicate time, just as it battles Moscow for hearts and minds across the east, the pro-Western government is set to initiate a shock therapy of economic measures to meet the demands of an emergency bailout from the International Monetary Fund,\u201d Faiola reported.<\/p>\n

In other words, Faiola encountered reasonable concerns among eastern Ukrainians about what was happening in Kiev. Many eastern Ukrainians felt disenfranchised by the overthrow of their elected leader and they worried about their future in a U.S.-dominated Ukraine. You can disagree with their point of view but it is an understandable perspective.<\/p>\n

When some eastern Ukrainians mounted protests and occupied buildings \u2013 similar to what the western Ukrainians had done in Kiev before the coup \u2013 these protesters were denounced by the coup regime as \u201cterrorists\u201d and became the target of a punitive military campaign involving some of the same neo-Nazi militias that spearheaded the Feb. 22 coup against Yanukovych.<\/p>\n

Nearly all the 5,000 or more people who have died in the civil war have been killed in eastern Ukraine with ethnic Russian civilians bearing the brunt of those fatalities, many killed by artillery barrages from the Ukrainian army firing into populated centers and using cluster-bomb munitions.<\/p>\n

Even Human Rights Watch, which is largely financed by pro-coup billionaire George Soros, reported<\/a> that \u201cUkrainian government forces used cluster munitions in populated areas in Donetsk city\u201d despite the fact that \u201cthe use of cluster munitions in populated areas violates the laws of war due to the indiscriminate nature of the weapon and may amount to war crimes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Neo-Nazi and other \u201cvolunteer\u201d brigades, dispatch by the Kiev regime,\u00a0have also engaged in human rights violations, including death squad operations pulling people from their homes and executing them. Amnesty International, another human rights group that Soros helps fund and that has generally promoted Western interests in Eastern Europe, issued a report<\/a> noting abuses committed by the pro-Kiev Aidar militia.<\/p>\n

\u201cMembers of the Aidar territorial defence battalion, operating in the north Luhansk region, have been involved in widespread abuses, including abductions, unlawful detention, ill-treatment, theft, extortion, and possible executions,\u201d the Amnesty International report said.<\/p>\n

The Aidar battalion commander told an Amnesty International researcher: \u201cThere is a war here. The law has changed, procedures have been simplified. \u2026 If I choose to, I can have you arrested right now, put a bag over your head and lock you up in a cellar for 30 days on suspicion of aiding separatists.\u201d<\/p>\n

Amnesty International wrote: \u201cSome of the abuses committed by members of the Aidar battalion amount to war crimes, for which both the perpetrators and, possibly, the commanders would bear responsibility under national and international law.\u201d<\/p>\n

Neo-Nazi Battalions<\/strong><\/p>\n

And the Aidar battalion is not even the worst of the so-called \u201cvolunteer\u201d brigades. Others carry Nazi banners and espouse racist contempt for the ethnic Russians who have become the target of something close to \u201cethnic cleansing\u201d in the areas\u00a0under control of the Kiev regime. Many eastern Ukrainians fear falling into the hands of these militia members who have been witnessed leading captives to open graves and executing them.<\/p>\n

As the conservative London Telegraph described in an article<\/a> last August by\u00a0correspondent Tom Parfitt: \u201cKiev\u2019s use of volunteer paramilitaries to stamp out the Russian-backed Donetsk and Luhansk \u2018people\u2019s republics\u2019\u2026 should send a shiver down Europe\u2019s spine.<\/p>\n

\u201cRecently formed battalions such as Donbas, Dnipro and Azov, with several thousand men under their command, are officially under the control of the interior ministry but their financing is murky, their training inadequate and their ideology often alarming. The Azov men use the neo-Nazi Wolfsangel (Wolf\u2019s Hook) symbol on their banner and members of the battalion are openly white supremacists, or anti-Semites.\u201d<\/p>\n

Based on interviews with militia members, the Telegraph reported that some of the fighters doubted the Holocaust, expressed admiration for Adolf Hitler and acknowledged that they are indeed Nazis.<\/p>\n

Andriy Biletsky, the Azov commander, \u201cis also head of an extremist Ukrainian group called the Social National Assembly,\u201d according to the Telegraph article which quoted a\u00a0commentary by Biletsky as declaring: \u201cThe historic mission of our nation in this critical moment is to lead the White Races of the world in a final crusade for their survival. A crusade against the Semite-led Untermenschen.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Telegraph questioned\u00a0Ukrainian authorities in Kiev who acknowledged that they were aware\u00a0of the extremist ideologies of some\u00a0militias but insisted that\u00a0the higher priority was having troops who were strongly motivated to fight. [See Consortiumnews.com\u2019s \u201cIgnoring Ukraine\u2019s Neo-Nazi Storm Troopers.<\/a>\u201d]<\/p>\n

So, the current wave of U.S. propaganda condemning a rebel offensive for violating a shaky cease-fire might look different if seen through the eyes of a population under siege, being cut off from banking services, left to starve and facing \u201cdeath squad\u201d purges by out-of-control neo-Nazis.<\/p>\n

Through those eyes, it would make sense to reclaim territory currently occupied by the Kiev forces, to protect fellow ethnic Russians from depredations, and to establish borders for what you might hope to make into a sustainable autonomous zone.<\/p>\n

And, if you put yourself in the Russian position, you might feel empathy for people who were your fellow citizens less than a quarter century ago and who saw their elected leader ousted in a U.S.-backed coup. You also might be alarmed at the presence of Nazi storm troopers (considering the history of Hitler\u2019s invasion) and the prospects of NATO moving up to your border with a possible deployment of nuclear weapons. You might even recall how agitated Americans got over nuclear missiles in Cuba.<\/p>\n

Granted, some of these Russian fears may be overwrought, but the Kremlin has to worry about threats to Russia\u2019s national security just like any other country does. If you were in Putin\u2019s shoes, what would you do? Would you turn your back on the plight of the eastern Ukrainians? Would you let a hostile military alliance push up against your borders with a potential nuclear threat, especially given the extra-legal means\u00a0used to remove Ukraine\u2019s constitutionally elected president?<\/p>\n

Even if the U.S. press corps fulfilled its obligation to tell both sides of the story,\u00a0many Americans would still condemn Putin\u2019s acceptance of Crimea\u2019s pleas for reentry into Russia and his assistance to the embattled eastern Ukrainians. They would accept the U.S. government\u2019s relentless presentation of the Ukraine crisis as \u201cRussian aggression.\u201d<\/p>\n

And, they might still buy the story that we\u2019re endlessly sold about the Ukraine crisis being a premeditated move by Putin in a Hitlerian strategy to conquer the Baltic States. Even though there\u2019s zero evidence that Putin ever had that in mind, some Americans might still choose to believe it.<\/p>\n

But my point is that American journalists should not be U.S. government propagandists. Their job is not to herd the American people into some \u201cgroup think\u201d corral. A good journalist would want to present the positions of both sides with some evenhandedness.<\/p>\n

Yet,\u00a0that is not what we have witnessed from the U.S. news media on the Ukraine crisis. It has been nearly all propaganda nearly all of the time. That is not only a disservice to the American people and to the democratic precept about an informed electorate. It is a reckless violation of professional principles that has helped lurch the world toward a potential nuclear conflagration.<\/p>\n

_________________________<\/p>\n

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. <\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 consortiumnews.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The U.S. news media has failed the American people often in recent years by not challenging U.S. government falsehoods, as with Iraq\u2019s WMD. But the most dangerous violation of journalistic principles has occurred in the Ukraine crisis, which has the potential of a nuclear war.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53648"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53648\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}