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 amid war
fevers. Yet, American journalism has failed miserably in this regard
during the Ukraine crisis.
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Ukraine (Consortiumnews) |
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. There has been little effort to
view the 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.
Frankly, I cannot recall any previous situation in which the U.S.
media has been more biased – across the board – than on Ukraine. Not
even the “group think” around Iraq’s 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 western Ukrainians who led the
overthrow of elected President Viktor Yanukovych, whose political base
was in the east.
So, what might appear to an objective observer as a civil war between
western Ukrainians, including the neo-Nazis who spearheaded last
year’s coup 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 “Russian aggression” as Russian
President Vladimir Putin is depicted as a new Hitler.
Though the horrific bloodshed – more than 5,000 dead – has been
inflicted overwhelmingly on the ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine by
the forces from western 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.)
I realize that anyone who doesn’t accept the Official Washington
“group think” on Ukraine is denounced as a “Putin apologist” – just as
anyone who questioned the conventional wisdom about Saddam Hussein
giving his WMDs to al-Qaeda was a “Saddam apologist” – but step back for
a minute and look at the crisis through the eyes of ethnic Russians in
eastern Ukraine.
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 – at the hands of neo-Nazis – in Odessa and
elsewhere.
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 economic relations with the
European Union, the eastern Ukrainians would be among the worst losers.
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. Much of that economic pain would have fallen on eastern Ukraine.
Economic Worries
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.
For instance, in April 2014, Washington Post correspondent Anthony Faiola reported
from Donetsk that many of the eastern Ukrainians whom he interviewed
said their resistance to the new Kiev regime was driven by fear over
“economic hardship” and the IMF austerity plan that will make their
lives even harder.
“At 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,” Faiola
reported.
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.
When some eastern Ukrainians mounted protests and occupied buildings –
similar to what the western Ukrainians had done in Kiev before the coup
– these protesters were denounced by the coup regime as “terrorists”
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.
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.
Even Human Rights Watch, which is largely financed by pro-coup billionaire George Soros, reported
that “Ukrainian government forces used cluster munitions in populated
areas in Donetsk city” despite the fact that “the 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.”
Neo-Nazi and other “volunteer” brigades, dispatch by the Kiev
regime, have 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 noting abuses committed by the pro-Kiev Aidar militia.
“Members 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,” the Amnesty International report
said.
The Aidar battalion commander told an Amnesty International
researcher: “There is a war here. The law has changed, procedures have
been simplified. … 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.”
Amnesty International wrote: “Some 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.”
Neo-Nazi Battalions
And the Aidar battalion is not even the worst of the so-called
“volunteer” brigades. Others carry Nazi banners and espouse racist
contempt for the ethnic Russians who have become the target of something
close to “ethnic cleansing” in the areas under 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.
As the conservative London Telegraph described in an article
last August by correspondent Tom Parfitt: “Kiev’s use of volunteer
paramilitaries to stamp out the Russian-backed Donetsk and Luhansk
‘people’s republics’… should send a shiver down Europe’s spine.
“Recently 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’s Hook) symbol on their banner and members
of the battalion are openly white supremacists, or anti-Semites.”
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.
Andriy Biletsky, the Azov commander, “is also head of an extremist
Ukrainian group called the Social National Assembly,” according to the
Telegraph article which quoted a commentary by Biletsky as declaring:
“The 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.”
The Telegraph questioned Ukrainian authorities in Kiev who
acknowledged that they were aware of the extremist ideologies of
some militias but insisted that the higher priority was having troops
who were strongly motivated to fight. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Ignoring Ukraine’s Neo-Nazi Storm Troopers.”]
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 “death squad” purges by
out-of-control neo-Nazis.
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.
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’s 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.
Granted, some of these Russian fears may be overwrought, but the
Kremlin has to worry about threats to Russia’s national security just
like any other country does. If you were in Putin’s 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 used to remove Ukraine’s constitutionally elected
president?
Even if the U.S. press corps fulfilled its obligation to tell both
sides of the story, many Americans would still condemn Putin’s
acceptance of Crimea’s pleas for reentry into Russia and his assistance
to the embattled eastern Ukrainians. They would accept the U.S.
government’s relentless presentation of the Ukraine crisis as “Russian
aggression.”
And, they might still buy the story that we’re endlessly sold about
the Ukraine crisis being a premeditated move by Putin in a Hitlerian
strategy to conquer the Baltic States. Even though there’s zero evidence
that Putin ever had that in mind, some Americans might still choose to
believe it.
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 “group think” corral. A good journalist would want to present
the positions of both sides with some evenhandedness.
Yet, that 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.
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