By Robert Coalson March 05, 2014A woman and her daughter watch television during a discussion on the proposal of Russian President Vladimir Putin and the use of Russian armed forces in Ukraine in parliament in Moscow on March 1.
Getting the real story of what is going on in Ukraine is hard enough. And the Russian media seems intent on making it even harder.
With Russian forces controlling Crimea and with Moscow contemplating further military action in Ukraine, Russian media and leading political figures have been shrill in their denunciations of “fascists” in Kyiv and their claims of anti-Semitic incidents, of attacks on ethnic Russians in the eastern reaches of Ukraine, and of floods of beleaguered refugees streaming across the border into Russia.
But much of this information is demonstrably false, emerging from unsourced media reports, then making its way into the statements of Russian politicians, and even into Western media reports. Events are echoing the 1997 U.S. film “Wag the Dog,” in which spin-doctors use the media to whip up support for a nonexistent war.
“This is how wars get started. As they say, ‘truth is the first casualty of war’ and we are really seeing that with the way Russia is handling this,” says Catherine Fitzpatrick, a writer and translator who has been live-blogging events in Ukraine for Interpretermag.com. “I think they are really irresponsible. They are inciting a lot of hatred and whipping up a lot of panic. People in places like Kharkiv are watching Russian TV. They may be watching also local TV, but they are dependent on Russian TV and a lot it is not checking out.”
via Russia Wags The Dog With Ukraine Disinformation Campaign.
Filed under: Disinformation, Information operations, Russia
