Alex Kershaw – international and regional security blog

Coverage of the Ukraine crisis – how it is slanted

Same conflict different truths

The world is full of contradictions, hypocrisy and confusion that distorts truth and adds to/creates misconceptions. The conflict in Ukraine and the coverage of it via the various media outlets has lain out how absurd it can be to find out the truth and how the ‘truth’ really depends on your perspective. American, Russian, Ukrainian and European media outlets all have a different view on what is going on in Ukraine itself and all thus cause their readers/viewers to have slanted views  based on the information being relayed to them by the media. Furthermore the alternate representations of the crisis means that something that appears obvious to one set of people appears absurd to another. This creates misconceptions on a whole host of issues surrounding the crisis including; what is going on, who is to blame and what should be done. In this blog I will argue that the coverage of the Ukrainian crisis in the Western and Russian media has been contradictory, and represents a Cold War mentality that could have wide and damaging implications.

One media slant placed on the Ukrainian crisis is that of, Russia is to blame for the crisis and it caused the instability initially and then supplied weapons to the rebels. This view is strongly held by western media and has also been reflected within the western leadership with America enacting sanctions against Russia. Taking a quick glance at western coverage of the Ukraine crisis we see many headlines that are anti-Russian and are accusatorial of Russia. The newspaper headlines presented below (in bold) whilst being a small selection, are somewhat representative of the western mainstream Medias reaction to the Ukraine crisis and provides us with an example of the slant that the west has towards the Ukrainian crisis.

On the other hand when we look at Russian media we see an opposing viewpoint to that of the west towards the Ukrainian crisis. News corporations such as RT and Pravda report the crisis in such a way as to either shift the blame way from Russia or portray Russia as the good guy within the Ukrainian crisis. This information is then consumed by the Russian public and helps to guide their understanding of the issues albeit from a slanted perspective.  Below in italics are some headlines of various Russian news sources.

• Prince Charles compared Putin to Hitler  (CNN)[1]
• Poroshencko; peace depends on Putin’s mood (CNN)[2]
• Fearful Crimean’s flee for Kiev (CNN)[3]
• Ukraine warns west against lifting Russia sanctions (bbc) [4]
• MH17 dominates newspapers front pages around world, but not in Russia (guardian)[5]
• Putin’s missile (the sun newspaper UK)[6]

• A Goebbels propaganda prize for the corporate western media (Pravda)[7]
• Prince Charles, Hitler and ignorance (Pravda)[8]
• Homecoming: Crimean Tatars speak about living and voting on the peninsula (RT)[9]
• We’re coming home; Crimea celebrates after 97% vote for joining Russia (RT)[10]
• ‘China won’t support sanctions against Moscow’ (RT)[11]
• Was there a shot? Berlin is not telling the truth about the crash of the Malaysian Boeing (Rossiyskaya Gazeta)[12] (in this article the paper states that ‘the real cause of the disaster is still not clear’) – this is the opposite of the suns headline.

The biases are clear to see with the western media making it apparent that Russia is to blame whilst Russian media has a different angle in that they are the good guys or at least not the bad guys. These biases effect the consumers of the media in that they effect the perception they have of the situation and thus public consensus on what action should be taken is shaped by these biases. In the west it seems clear that the media is spinning an anti Russian rhetoric whilst in the Russia the media is spinning a defensive/pro Russia rhetoric. This cold war viewpoint of playing the blame game and defending against it shows that the media is a major player in exacerbating the good/bad dichotomy through its dissemination of information.

Therefore, the process of back and forth as established above between the two opposing media entities is relevant to the issues of security because it effects the everyday person. This is because the written media as well as the televised media for many people is the most accessible source of information. As these media platforms diverge and enter the blame game tensions and misconceptions will/have arise/arisen. The everyday New Yorker for example will have a different opinion on the issue to the average St Petersburg resident. These opinions will tend to run similarly to the political ideas at the time as the truth of the matter becomes distorted in the media and trickles into society as a whole.

These misconceptions in the public and in society at large could/have led to the emergence of tensions and these slanted truths could lead to real life security issues. So far these have only been enacted through the use of sanctions but there is the possibility for a localized event in Ukraine to turn into a much larger international issue and the media could play a role in this.

One problem is that these mainstream media outlets are not and have never been purely objective and we have the reader/viewer have to search out all the ‘truths’ and try to discover the most objective source of information possible. We need to be careful of the way we are fed and perceive information from news sources so that it does not create societal conflicts that could lead to excessive or irrational actions that could harm humanity as a whole.

[1] http://edition.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2014/ukraine

[2] http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/26/world/europe/poroshenko-interview/

[3] http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2014/ukraine

[4] http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-29357105

[5] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/18/mh17-crash-dominates-front-pages-world-not-russia

[6] https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/489886548440412160

[7] http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/23-09-2014/128593-goebbels_propaganda-0/

[8] http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/25-05-2014/127647-charlie_hitler-0/

[9] http://rt.com/op-edge/187724-crimea-tatars-election-russia/

[10] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJPIkPPs_yw

[11] http://rt.com/politics/189944-sanctions-china-russia-ukraine/

[12] http://www.rg.ru/2014/09/09/boeing.html