While the extent and effectiveness of Russian propaganda is hard to assess, and that of other supposedly more liberal countries should equally not go unrecognised, it would be pretty darn stupid to pretend that Russia is a lovely place and that Putin lacks malevolent designs on the West. Nor are those designs reciprocated by the Western powers towards Russia. The two sides may both be amoral, but one is very clearly worse than the other.
Russian state media created secret companies in order to bankroll websites in the Baltic states — a key battleground between Russia and the West — and elsewhere in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
The scheme has only come to light through Skype chats and documents obtained by BuzzFeed News, Estonian newspaper Postimees, and investigative journalism outlet Re:Baltica via freedom of information laws, as part of a criminal probe into the individual who was Moscow’s man on the ground in Estonia.
The Skype logs and other files, obtained from computers seized by investigators, reveal the secrets and obfuscating tactics used by Russia as it tries to influence public opinion and push Kremlin talking points.
The websites presented themselves as independent news outlets, but in fact, editorial lines were dictated directly by Moscow.
In early October 2014, Aleksandr Kornilov — a member of the Coordination Council of Russian Compatriots in Estonia, an organization known by its Russian acronym, KSORS that appears to be dealing with minority rights, such as Russian-language education, but is seen by Estonia’s counterintelligence agency as a tool of the Kremlin’s foreign policy — gave an interview to a news website in Lithuania called Delfi.lt, about the launch of three new websites in the Baltics, all called Baltnews.
In a Skype chat obtained by BuzzFeed News and its reporting partners, Kornilov is ordered by an employee of Rossiya Segodnya — which runs the website and news agency Sputnik and the news agency RIA Novosti, and is closely connected to RT (formerly known as Russia Today) — to comply with a list of approved topics to cover.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/holgerroonemaa/russia-propaganda-baltics-baltnews
Rhys Taylor one is very clearly worse than the other...but to my moral compass the one that has shattered International law, launched multiple wars of aggression slaughtering millions of innocents, puts people in black holes without trial for years and tortures them, funds, trains and arms Jihadis is a tad worse. Can you think of anything remotely comparable coming out of Russia?
ReplyDeleteAnd if we are limiting the moral evaluation to propaganda, US propaganda is legendary and orders of magnitude more widespread and sophisticated. This article leaves the reader to think that some of the techniques alleged here are something new and shocking when they are SOP for interest groups around the world...it is not far-fetched to consider that Buzzfeed was paid to publish this by the CIA itself and written by one or more of their embedded reporters, stationed in every major news outlet. for decades. A fact that was exposed many years ago.
The longest running foreign policy of the West has been to destroy Russia and this propaganda campaign to sell the "Russian manipulation' story should really be looked at with great skepticism. Especially when it was launched exactly as the Neocons lost the election and needed a way to disable the new administration and its plan to end foreign wars and repair the relationship with Russia.
But of course Western propaganda is assumed to be de facto good and opposing viewpoints are bad. This only serves to advance a war agenda, which is the intent. and btw is the essence of amoral.