Informative article on Caucus war

[Steve Mcdonagh]

I have been following this also and I am thus far of the opinion that 'Bush has not increased the stakes' with the signing of the agreement, but rather the agreement was the stakes.

Steve

Actually I’m coming to believe that was the case. Even if the Ossetians did carry out attacks against Georgian civilian and military targets Georgia’s response was disproportionate, but then again so was Russia’s. According to the BBC despite the ceasefire the Russian army is still advancing deeper in to Georgia.

According to a few pundits the odds of Georgia getting full NATO membership at this point are slim to none. The west would not want to get dragged into a war with Russia over this dispute.

Agreed. It seems that Bush has increased the stakes with the agreement signed yesterday in Poland.

[Peter McKenna]

Peter, you may think that Novosti, Izvestia, Pravda are the epitome of propaganda and I am not saying that they can't be used for propaganda purposes but they are clumsy and crude. Most East Europeans I know are in total awe and amazement of that well oiled, smooth, wall to wall, all encompassing and slick propaganda machine called the western media, particularly the US variety complete with Hollywood, product placement, talking heads, Madison Avenue, celebrities, spin and photo shop. The old soviet newspapers don't stand a chance.

Surely the best way to sift through any information is to read widely and deeply and know one's sources. It is not a matter of trust. You can often find the truth in an organ of propaganda, western or other. It may be on page 28 in the bottom of the 6th column but it may often be there. But don't rely on the MSM. Look well beyond. Know your journalists who employs them (and who owns the employers and what else they own) and their strengths and weaknesses no matter who they write for. And just as importantly know your own strengths and weaknesses. Take off the blinkers and the rose coloured glasses, open the mind but use the brain. Learn to read between the lines and the fine print and listen for the dog whistles.

Just curious, any reason you point out Novosti in particular?

No, I didn't really mean to single them out, but Novosti has been central to Russian reporting of the Georgia crisis. Aren't they State sponsored?

Novosti has been the object of propaganda claims recently in some articles from some fringe news agencies (eg EIN News). Also I tracked a recent Georgian news claim to Novosti, showing a supposed Georgian rocket attack on Ossetia. The pictures could have been pretty much from anywhere, anytime, and I held a pretty heavy amount of skepticism.

There was also a special a while back on a public relation campaign for Vladimir Putin, where he spent the equivalent of about thirty million dollars on his image. The "Russian News and Information Agency" was reported to be part of Putin's image polishing machine.

[Christopher Hall]

Mark,

I agree that the Western Media can't be trusted. But I don't trust the opposite side either, having seen their propaganda machine (which is coming back to be fairly effective). I also am very wary of Brzizenski and his world view, because his theories IMO are a main reason for our occupation of Iraq.

How are you sifting through information to make conclusions?

Also I've read where Russia is at odds with the Azerbhaijan-Turkmenistan oil and gas supply lines to Israel and wants to take control of the Caspian Oil supply route, which could place Georgia in center stage.

Russia has, in the past, engaged in military aggression where it helped their agenda, also they have been the masters of propaganda and disinformation in the past, and Novosti seems to be very much players. Why do you think this case is different?

Hi Peter,

In a situation like this, I think the western media is useless as a source of credible information. The western media is merely a cheerleader for Washington.

The only source of information I use is the alternative media, including this forum. There was a good piece by Michael Klare posted on Common Dreams this week which backgrounded the situation well:

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/08/04/10977/

I know the Russians have shown they are capable of brutal suppression at times and are determined to control the Caspian oil routes. However, if the roles of America and Russia were reversed, America would have secured control of those routes, with force if necessary, long before now, imo. The Georgians, despite the tragic loss of life, should be thankful that it wasn't US forces invading their country, as I believe they have even less concern for civilian casualties, as was shown in Iraq.

The US have a long history of subversive interference in smaller nations as well as being responsible for the invasion of some 45 sovereign nations since 1900. Further, their recent efforts to install missile defence systems in Poland and the Czeck Republic, fully aware of the discomfort caused to Russia, show they are prepared to ratchet up tensions when it suits their purpose. As the Buchanan article posted by Maggie points out, the US would never permit the Russians to carry out subversive activities in Cuba, Mexico or anywhere near their backyard. So why should Russia allow the US to do the same?

It will be interesting to see where this all leads. I think it's got a while to go yet.

Mark-

Could you please direct me to a list of the 45 soverign nations for which the US is responsible for invading since 1900?

Thanks.

Chris

[Paul Rigby]

No, I didn't really mean to single them out, but Novosti has been central to Russian reporting of the Georgia crisis. Aren't they State sponsored?

A compelling, if inadvertent, argument for state ownership of the media - Novosti was much more accurate than the US media.

Novosti has been the object of propaganda claims recently in some articles from some fringe news agencies (eg EIN News). Also I tracked a recent Georgian news claim to Novosti, showing a supposed Georgian rocket attack on Ossetia. The pictures could have been pretty much from anywhere, anytime, and I held a pretty heavy amount of skepticism.

A remarkably one-sided scepticism, it should be noted. The US media? As pure as the driven snow. Not a spook in sight.

There was also a special a while back on a public relation campaign for Vladimir Putin, where he spent the equivalent of about thirty million dollars on his image. The "Russian News and Information Agency" was reported to be part of Putin's image polishing machine.

Poor, plucky little Georgia, and the "lion of Tskhinvali" – not a friend in the world!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/aug/1...lishing.georgia

On the press: Georgia has won the PR war

By Peter Wilby

The Guardian, Monday, August 18, 2008

Whenever, to coin a phrase, a war breaks out in a faraway country of which we know little, I am reminded of a news editor I once worked for. He would go to a wall map showing the location of the paper's correspondents, produce a ruler, and measure the distance of each from the area in question. Regardless of travel links or national boundaries, he decreed that the nearest should go.

It was a bit like that, I imagine, in many media offices when the conflict between Georgia and Russia broke out. Not only was it August, when many reporters are on holiday, it was also the Olympics, and the few still on duty were mostly in Beijing. The Financial Times headline, "Georgia says Russia at war", may have seemed strange, but it summed up the state of Fleet Street's verifiable knowledge as the armies moved into action. In the age of 24-hour news, however, the press cannot hang about waiting for reporters to arrive. Readers want bombs, tanks and death tolls. They need to be told who are the goodies and baddies. News, remember, is part of the entertainment industry.

Into the vacuum stepped the Georgian government. Its president, Mikheil Saakashvili, speaks English, wants to join Nato, sent troops to Iraq, got himself educated at Harvard, cultivates a media-friendly style, and sends Georgian university exam papers to be marked in Britain, though whether he expects to get them back is another matter. He took power in the Rose revolution of 2003-04 and professes to be a democrat. He's clearly an all-round good egg. And he has a PR firm, Aspect Consulting, based in Brussels, London and Paris, which also acts for Exxon Mobil, Kellogg's and Procter and Gamble.

Almost hourly over the five-day war, press releases landed on foreign news desks. "Russia continues to attack civilian population." The capital Tblisi was "intensively" bombed. A downed Russian plane turned out to be "nuclear". European "energy supplies" were threatened as Russia dropped bombs near oil pipelines. A "humanitarian wheat shipment" was blocked. Later, "invading Russian forces" began "the occupation of Georgia". Saakashvili's government filed allegations of ethnic cleansing to The Hague. Note the use of terms that trigger western media interest: civilian victims, nuclear, humanitarian, occupation, ethnic cleansing.

It would be unfair to accuse the British press of accepting the Georgian PR uncritically. Most papers dutifully reported that a Georgian attack in the breakaway province of South Ossetia, where most people want to join Russia, started the conflict. But casual readers might have struggled to understand that. The Mail's headline announced: "'1,500 die' as the Russian tanks roll in". Only in the last paragraph of the story did it become clear that the Georgians, not the Russians, were alleged to have killed 1,500.

Russia's behaviour, newspapers implied, was in a quite different category from Georgia's. In the Sunday Times, Russian tanks went "rampaging" in South Ossetia, while Georgian tanks merely "moved". If Georgian forces had bombarded civilians, it was "reprehensible", the Telegraph allowed. Russia, however, was "offending every canon of international behaviour". An analysis in the same paper avoided any mention of how Georgia provoked the crisis. Saakashvili was "paying the price" for his pro-western foreign policy. A "resurgent Russia" was "itching to flex its muscles and burning with post-imperial hubris". Such comments are illuminated by substituting Britain or America for Russia, and Iraq for Georgia. Try "resurgent Britain ... itching to flex its muscles", etc.

As the conflict went on, press coverage became more balanced, with several commentators noting, to quote the Independent's Mary Dejevsky, that "it is quite hard to argue that there is one law for assisting Albanians in Kosovo and quite another for Russians and Ossetians in Georgia". Increasingly, the press portrayed Saakashvili as a self-regarding fool who blundered into a war he was bound to lose.

But Georgia's actions in South Ossetia went largely unexamined, and it was hard to find, from press accounts, what refugees from the province were fleeing from. Again, the Georgians played the PR game more skilfully. Western correspondents were welcomed into Gori and shown areas apparently bombed by the Russians. Saakashvili held international media phone conferences, got himself on TV news channels and even found time, within hours of war breaking out, to write for the Wall Street Journal. Russia, by contrast, allowed little access to South Ossetia. Its government attempted no comparable media offensive. Though it also has a PR agency, GPlus Europe in Brussels (and Ketchum in Washington), it was not asked to issue press releases. As a source wryly put it, "the press release is not a common tool of the Russian government".

The brief war in the Caucasus was a classic example of the situation outlined in Nick Davies's book Flat Earth News. Most newspapers hadn't a clue what was going on and lacked sufficient resources to find out. So skilfully presented PR was at a premium. Most journalists treated it with at least some scepticism, but it inevitably had an effect. If there was a military war, there was also an information one, and Georgia got the better of it.

About this article:

This article appeared in the Guardian on Monday August 18 2008 on p7 of the News & features section. It was last updated at 12:51 on August 18 2008. Printable version

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