(On a personal note, this statement does not apply to ET, most people here speak upwards of 2 languages, some even Russian!)
I can't count the number of times I have seen this illustrated on the tv. Most of the US newscasts seem to be -weirdly enough- relying on Russian footage. Or, well, all the captions are in Russian, not Georgian. And repeatedly the reporters will be talking about, say, Gori or Tblisi, when the footage on the screen, in Russian, is labelled South Ossetia. The effect is super weird. I assume most of us do speak multiple languages here at ET, so imagine, Nanne, watching German news, and the footage on the screen is a feed from CNN in English, and not of what the German reporters are talking about. I guess they are assuming no one reads Russian. I guess no one in the newsrooms reads Russian. Makes me wonder how much footage I've seen of Iran is in Iraq or something. Since I can't read Arabic, how would I know the difference?
As for State-run media & propaganda: I think 1) Russians, used to being lied to, are a bit more cynical about the honesty of the official news in their country than are Americans, who are just now figuring out that they may have been lied to, and 2) both countries have relatively unfettered access to the internets, but average Americans will nevertheless stick to American news or the BBC. I'm guessing most Americans who are even aware that the Moscow Times or Russia Today exist, already have a bit of background in Russian. Come, my friends, 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
This can create weird effects. My parents came to this country convinced supporters of the Vietnam war, going on the assumption that the Polish press was just lying. Took them about a year in the US to change their minds.
I just posted that based on my own observations. Apparently I wasn't the only one who noticed:
CNN blamed for using misleading war video
American broadcaster CNN has been accused of using the wrong pictures in their coverage of the conflict in South Ossetia. A Russian cameraman says footage of wrecked tanks and ruined buildings, which was purported to have been filmed in the town of Gori, in fact showed the South Ossetian capital Tskhinvali. Gori was said to be about to fall under the control of the Russian army but the cameraman says the video was actually shot in Tskhinvali, which had been flattened by Georgian shelling. Aleksandr Zhukov, from the Russiya Al-Yaum channel, said: "When we arrived and news came that Gori was being shelled, I saw my footage. I said: that's not Gori! That's Tskhinvali. Having crawled through the length and breadth of Tskhinvali, I don't need much to tell from which point this or that footage was recorded. I can swear in front of any tribunal. I can point at this location on the map of the town, because I and the cameraman of the Rossiya channel videotaped that."
Aleksandr Zhukov, from the Russiya Al-Yaum channel, said: "When we arrived and news came that Gori was being shelled, I saw my footage. I said: that's not Gori! That's Tskhinvali. Having crawled through the length and breadth of Tskhinvali, I don't need much to tell from which point this or that footage was recorded. I can swear in front of any tribunal. I can point at this location on the map of the town, because I and the cameraman of the Rossiya channel videotaped that."
Maybe RT isn't the most objective source, but I can tell you this has been happening regularly since Friday. I see it everyday with my own eyes. Come, my friends, 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
But western media is if not as bad, still horribly slanted, especially during this war. You can't trust it, and as people think they can trust it, it's even worse.
The only high quality unbiased media on the planet is Al-Jazeera English. Staffed by ex-BBC guys who know what they are doing and take their journalistic mission seriously. I guess that's why the Americans keep bombing them.
What a funny world when the freest media is run and financed by a Mideast despot... Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
All sides are lying. Russian media is a joke (an honorable 140th rank when it comes to media freedom, just ahead of Congo), but everyone knows that so that's okay.
This brings to mind Germany at the turn of the 20th century, i.e.: The same players (wealthy industrialists and the professional classes) are expressing the same attitudes and going largely unchallenged in our national discussion.
I don't know the truth of the fighting in Georgia...yet. Is it a move of a pending Russian reconquista? An effort to maintain some stability on Russia's borders? A shot back at the West for recognizing the autonomy of the Kosovo enclave? All of the above?
I'll reserve judgement at this point. And watch. . . . "The cure for bullshit is fieldwork"--Robert Bates, Department of Government; Harvard University
Here's something interesting. Though I come here through Jerome's posts on DailyKos, I note also that on the blogroll of this blog, Foreign Policy Magazine's Passport blog, the first tab which comes up every time I fire up my browser, is...The European Tribune.
Small world :) "The cure for bullshit is fieldwork"--Robert Bates, Department of Government; Harvard University
