Lies, Damn Lies and Western Media Coverage of Russia

Since the Maidan Revolution, Russia has been receiving somewhat more media attention than previously (although still not as much as China or the Middle East). Unfortunately, the quality of this media coverage has been fairly low. Most coverage follows an a priori format according to which Russia is constantly on the verge of some disaster or another, and the intentions of the country as a whole, or Vladimir Putin in particular, have to be seen in a purely malevolent light, with little attempt made to understand the concerns and legitimate complaints of the other side.

Paul Robinson, on his Irrussianality blog, has written about a particularly egregious recent example of this, in which a single anecdote about the theft of toilet paper is taken as an indictment of the entire Russian economy (See here) Mark Adomanis has documented numerous cases of doom-and-gloom articles that fail to do even the most basic due diligence, such as making sure that statistics are up-to-date. Meanwhile, a 30-second Google search will reveal that, despite Russia's recent economic difficulties, GDP per capita remains near record highs, unemployment remains near record lows, the fertility rate is now the highest in Eastern Europe and above the EU average, and death rates and alcohol consumption have both significantly declined since the "bad old days" of the 1990's. This information is neither controversial nor difficult to find, yet it is routinely contradicted in the opinion columns of reputable Western media outlets.

Now that the Ukraine situation has drawn attention to Russia's foreign policy, the same tendency to neglect basic rules of evidence and fact-checking have been in evidence. For example, Anne Applebaum has claimed that Eastern Ukraine has no history of ethnic conflict, and therefore the rebels must be nothing more than a Russian puppet force. The absurdity of this claim is obvious to anyone with even the most superficial knowledge of modern Ukrainian history. Although tensions have never before been violent, the conflict between a purely ethnic Ukrainian identity for Ukraine and a more multicultural view goes back to the state's foundation. Just looking at the current conflict, the post-Maidan Rada attempted to pass discriminatory language legislation almost immediately after taking power, which was only prevented by Poroshenko's veto. Posters of the Nazi-collaborator and extreme nationalist Stepan Bandera were prominently displayed at Maidan. Neo-Fascist groups such as Svoboda and Right Sector were given prominent positions in government. After the Russian take-over of Crimea, but before the beginning of the war in the East, Russian-speaking activists were trapped in a building and burned alive by pro-Western forces. In the light of all this, it's hardly mysterious why the Russian East might have started feeling nervous. The assumption that Russia somehow must be ultimately behind the unrest has no evidence to support it, and is completely unnecessary, given that the motives of the Eastern Ukrainian activists are entirely comprehensible in their own terms.

Furthermore, the Eastern Ukrainian activists have shown considerable independence from Moscow. Putin has consistently supported a (sensible) settlement in which an undivided and neutral Ukraine grants increased authority to the regions, especially in the East. Many of the East Ukrainians, however, have pushed for either independence or annexation to Russia.This is consistently ignored by the majority of the Western commentariat.

Finally, a further disregard of fact is shown in the readiness to attribute motives to Putin with little or no basis in objective evidence. For example, the canard is often repeated that Putin intentionally creates "frozen conflicts" on the borders of Russia, as a means of exerting control over neighbouring states. The only evidence that is ever produced in support of this idea is that fact that Russia's interventions in Georgia and Ukraine have, in fact, produced frozen conflicts. On this basis, it could just as easily be claimed that America and the West prevent the solution of these conflicts with the aim of creating frozen conflicts to destabilize Russia's borders. Both claims are equally plausible (or implausible), and both claims are equally ungrounded in actual fact.

None of this is to say that all criticism of Russia is illegitimate. Russia does have some serious demographic challenges, and its economy has been hurt by Western sanctions. In its foreign relations, Russia has sometimes been guilty of acting thuggishly, and of using dirty tricks to improperly influence the domestic politics of other countries. But, if we're going to talk about Russia, let's take the trouble to do our homework, and let's avoid unproven, and therefore slanderous, accusations.