The Language of the Ukraine Story

The 'western' press has decided the Ukraine story is about "Pro-Kremlin self appointed eastern separatists" (sometimes 'terrorists') versus a nice Kiev government just trying to get along.

The Guardian etc are unanimous in using certain terms: the east of Ukraine are 'separatists', they are also 'self appointed', in contrast to the west. It would be far more truthful to say that the western Ukraine government, which came to power through violent protests, are the real separatists, since they want separation from Russia which is a close neighbor with historic connections, and that actually Kiev is 'self appointed' in the way they came to power; but this is obviously not the case.

The debate is 'framed' and the terms used are biased already to a particular story.  

E.g. New York Times talking of the east:

"In areas under the separatists' control, there was growing evidence of arbitrary rule by self-appointed local officials, backed up by heavily-armed militias, and of violence being meted out against opponents. 

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/23/us-ukraine-crisis-idUSBREA3L11A20140423

The Guardian:

"but instead a pro-Russian mob took over yet another government building in Horlivka "

versus

"In Kiev, two candidates from a pro-Russian party campaigning for planned May elections were attacked by loyalist crowds." 

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/15/ukraine-armed-conflict-east

The BBC:

"In recent weeks, pro-Russian militants have seized administrative buildings in at least a dozen towns in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.They have occupied public buildings and installed their own officials, in similar tactics to those used to take over the Ukrainian region of Crimea earlier in the year." 

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-27124453

The 'mob' versus the 'loyalist crowd'. The 'self appointed' with arbitrary rule, and the militia, of the east.

At the same time the violent uprising in Kiev that led to the ousting of the president and a change in the government is rewritten as merely a 'row': -

Reuters:

"The Kiev government, which took power after Moscow-backed President Viktor Yanukovich fled the capital in a row over whether to strengthen ties with Europe, appeared to have been emboldened by Tuesday's visit of U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden. 

"http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/23/us-ukraine-crisis-idUSBREA3L11A20140423

The revolt has strangely disappeared. Only the later intervention by Russia in Crimea is remembered.

How is this prearranged story arrived at?

We know that similar happens in Russian media of course, but in the west there is the idea that we have a 'free press' and that it makes its own decisions independent of government.

Has it made these decisions and decided to treat protesting eastern Ukrainians with less credibility than the western ones? Why should it do that? It is not credible that they are all made up of Russian special forces who have entered the country.

Class relations are one answer. The western press is independent but owned, and the owners and those who have influence with its editors direct the product, and they are ruling class, the same class as the government.

On the other hand, the unanimity seems more controlled and precise than can be explained by this alone, even down to the exact same terminology used.  The debates seem scripted.

This 'scripting' happens at a variety of sources, but a major one is the nexus of private contacts via the editors of big news media organizations with the secret government security agencies and various non governmental but affiliated 'think tanks' all of which tend to bypass democracy.

Naturally, it is not in the interests of this murky grey area to have such connections publicized, it would eject the idea that western press is free and 'unbiased' and therefore diminish its effectiveness as a tool for persuasion in circumstances where it has, especially, profit interests.

But also the structural way news is filtered through the specialist agencies used, like Reuters, refines and pre-digests the output. And on another level, the choice of the personnel who are to be journalists and reporters is also a filtering process; it is not a democratic matter, of course, but decided by bosses and leaders, in effect dictatorially, since there is little democracy within private corporations.

Additionally, there is a kind of need for people to join with others and relax into the standard ideology rather than to maintain a rebellious critical posture, which after all can be exhausting. This gives to the whole process inertia of its own. This is coupled with social alienation, the social feelings associated with work in capitalism that are always manipulated expertly by the media.

And the context: economically speaking, the more capitalism becomes monopolized by certain successful corporations, the more the media and government plus the clandestine agencies become an adjunct of this monopoly and the more it functions in its interests, which are identified as the equivalent to national interests.

"Admittedly, Ukraine’s debt burden is nowhere near that of Greece, and its maturity profile is not that bad. Also, the immediate disruptions from a restructuring could be large. Yet, aside from the challenge the international community faces in raising enough cash to cover Ukraine's ever-increasing, multiyear financing gap, there is no easy way to lock in existing creditors. As a result, the West faces the prospect of seeing some of its money transferred directly to others, as Ukraine uses the proceeds of new loans to pay off maturing debts." 

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-04-14/what-greece-could-tell-us-about-ukraine

By 'others' he presumably also means Russia, who is owed gas debts of about 2bn. But Russia also has debts, and to western companies and investors. So in a roundabout way, which we have become used to, such money will eventually go to pay the biggest investors, i.e. normally western ones but in any case private cosmopolitan and transatlantic ones, east and west. Politically an immediate restructuring of Ukraine's debt obligations would be difficult too, as would immediate austerity policy, which is the normal way for it. 

So, strategic expansion via the EU and its future interests conflicts to an extent with its own immediate financial interests. The EU is the bourgeois investor's vehicle for future profit if it continues to expand eastwards, it is the expansion of the US free trade area; it is a kind of new or at least refreshed frontier for capital to exploit.

"On April 17, top diplomats from the U.S., EU, Ukraine, and Russia signed an agreement in Geneva calling for insurgents in eastern Ukraine to leave occupied buildings and lay down their arms." -- Isaac Webb 

http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine/obama-on-geneva-agreements-were-going-to-prepare-additional-responses-should-russia-fail-to-take-a-different-course-344125.html

This is how the Kiev government 'understands' the (already severely tested) Geneva agreement on peace, as one-sided, only applying to the east. Of course they would. But will its erstwhile new creditors back it up? Well, probably only rhetorically. Which means that it is in the interests of the far right elements that Kiev has in its ranks to escalate the situation further.

"There is an illusory hope for the conference in Geneva. Ukraine will be presented there as a pie which will be divided. Everything ... shows the signs of a grand plot, where big geopolitical players resolved their issues at Ukraine's expense. It will be like that this time around too." - Editorial in Glavkom. 

http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746

New York Times Article on Obama Out of Line

New York Times Article on Obama Out of Line
Thomas Riggins

An article in the today's NYT (6-22-10) crosses the line between reporting and Glen Beck style defamation against President Obama. An article by Kevin Sack and Sheryl Gay Stolberg ["As Law Takes Effect, Obama Warns Insurers on Big Rate Increases"] reports that health care reform was helped through Congress due to Obama's "vilification of insurers." "Vilification" means, according to most dictionaries, and Wikepedia:

"Defamation—also called calumny, vilification, slander (for transitory statements), and libel (for written, broadcast, or otherwise published words)—is the communication of a statement that makes a claim, expressly stated or implied to be factual, that may give an individual, business, product, group, government, or nation a negative image. It is usually, but not always [in Wales and parts of England--tr] a requirement that this claim be false and that the publication is communicated to someone other than the person defamed (the claimant)." [Wikepedia]

In fact Obama only said was everyone knows were the practices of the insurance
industry: denying coverage for preconditions, putting caps on payments, leaving millions of people out of the insurance pool, putting profits first, etc.

To report that the president engaged in "vilification" in a supposed news story is irresponsible and partisan, and the New York Times, which claims in its ads that it "employs the best journalists in the world, and the there is no disputing that", is a form of the worst yellow journalism and should be protested by all Times readers interested in factual reporting and not right-wing slander.

Media Tries to Undermine Obama Agenda

From BeyondChron:
By Randy Shaw
BeyondChron - March 10, 2009
(San Francisco's Alternative Online Daily)

Barack Obama has been President for eight weeks, and much of the traditional media remains incapable of making sense of his agenda. In one corner we have hosts like Hardball's Chris Matthews, who appears to be compensating for pro-Obama campaign comments by giving excessive voice to the president's critics. Or we have CNN's John King, who appears almost willfully ignorant in describing Obama's budget plans. The media appears hellbent on 'proving' two points: first, that Obama is breaking his campaign promise to chart a new direction, and second, that his economic recovery plan is suspect. The most common media shortcoming is intentional forgetfulness, as it downplays or entirely ignores the GOP's own nonsensical budget plans, as well as Republican's responsibility for the current economic crisis. Fortunately, polls continue to show the public tuning out the media chatter. The average person understands the causes and solutions of our crisis far better than the punditry, who remained trapped in an echo chamber of their own making.

Read the whole article here

More ultra-right media chatter

Un-American:
Have you listened to the right-wing media lately?
Columbia Journalism Review
By Michael Massing

In the weeks following the election, the debate over the issue of media bias, and of whether the press was overly kind to Barack Obama, has continued to swirl. Much less attention has been paid to another, more troubling aspect of the coverage, and that’s the relentless and malevolent campaign that the right-wing media waged against the Democratic candidate. Few people who did not regularly tune in to the vast, churning combine of bellowing radio hosts, yapping bloggers, obnoxious Web sites, malicious columnists, and the slashingly partisan Fox News have any idea of just how vile and venomous were the attacks leveled at Obama. Day after day, week after week, these outlets worked determinedly to discredit and degrade Obama, accusing him of being a Muslim, a Marxist, a radical, a revolutionary, a socialist, a communist, a thug, a mobster, a racist, an agent of voter fraud, a black-power advocate, a madrasah graduate, an anti-Semite, an enemy of Israel, an associate of terrorists—even the Antichrist. Supplemented by a flood of viral e-mails, slanderous robocalls, and Internet-based smear campaigns, these media outlets worked to stoke firestorms of manufactured rage against Obama and the Democrats in what was perhaps the most concerted campaign of vilification ever directed at an American politician.

In light of Obama’s victory, one might be tempted to let it all pass. That would be a mistake. For the effects of that campaign remain with us. What’s more, the campaign itself is still going on.

Read the whole article here...

Venezuela's RCTV has Long Record of Law-breaking

A lot of organizations and politicians have criticized Venezuela for refusing to renew the broadcasting license of Radio Caracas Television, or RCTV.

In a press release today, the Washington-based Venezuela Information Office says the history of RCTV should be considered by Venezuela's critics:

RCTV's history of noncompliance with federal broadcasting guidelines that predate the Chavez administration. Since 1976, RCTV has been fined or temporarily closed six times, including for airing pornographic scenes, cigarette advertisements, sensationalist programming, and tendentious news coverage. Additionally, in 2002 RCTV aired programming calling on the public to take to the streets and overthrow the democratically elected president, a feat that would surely be punished by jail time and charges of treason if tried in the U.S. Yet, the station has been allowed to continue broadcasting to this day.

Venezuela's National Telecommunications Commission, which operates exactly like the US FCC, ruled that RCTV's long history of unlawful acts warranted the decision to refuse to renew the license. Venezuela's Supreme Court upheld the decision.

Olivia Goumbri, Executive Director of the Venezuela Information Office, stated that,

In the U.S. the FCC has shut down TV stations for far less. In this case though, the expiration of RCTV’s contract is an opportunity for the government to reconsider its 20 year old license, and whether or not a station which has violated broadcasting regulations and the law to such an extreme extent should have its license renewed.

RCTV will be able continue to transmit via cable and satellite. And despite the claims of those who hate the Venezuelan government, the vast majority of Venezuela's media remain in private hands, most of which oppose the policies of the government.

In a hypothetical comparison: imagine how the conservatives would howl if the New York Times called for the violent overthrow of the Bush regime and applauded his kidnapping and possible execution.

In a realistic comparison: Do you remember when right-wing pundits and politicians accused the New York Times of treason for doing little more than publishing stories with classified information purposely leaked to the press? What happens to people convicted of treason?

The point is that RCTV's record as a scofflaw and as an inciter of violence is clear. Let's not let political biases cover for phony claims of the abuse of a free press.

--Joel Wendland