Thread: Could it be? A positive article on Russia?!!

Originally Posted by Bisquit

I often hear or read in papers that elections in Russia is free but not fair. What does that mean? I think that if election is free then it, obviously, fair.

Well, one part of 'fairness' would be equal access to the media. If one candidate cannot get his face on TV to get his message across and the other is plastered over every news bulletin every time he so much as blows his nose, then the latter obviously has a huge advantage.

Well. It's a magic circle, in a way.

You made a point that the press just makes money. Thus, to get more money, they have to publish facts and comments as close as possible to the opinions of their readers. But where do readers' opinion come from?
I'd say from the press and media.
I've studied PR techniques and know what one can juggle the public opinion in any way he wants, provided he has access to a broad auditory.
There are funds reserved for PR in budgets of nearly all major companies. So they are in politics.
If you want to raise some cash, you just need to publish such things as ads or biased articles in favour of those who pays you.
In order to bring people's attention to some fact, some journalist is provided with some information and he creates a sensation. People's interest gets warmer and they demand more facts. Each new publication leads readers away from some other "inconvenient" fact.

At that, the "facts" that were published could fail to pass any close examination but that doesn't matter because the harm has already been done which had been the initial goal right from the beginning. Public opinion has already been formed up and people who read tabloids don't bother themselves with checking whether the facts they read about are true or false.

Originally Posted by Ramil

Well. It's a magic circle, in a way.

You made a point that the press just makes money. Thus, to get more money, they have to publish facts and comments as close as possible to the opinions of their readers. But where do readers' opinion come from?
I'd say from the press and media.
I've studied PR techniques and know what one can juggle the public opinion in any way he wants, provided he has access to a broad auditory.
There are funds reserved for PR in budgets of nearly all major companies. So they are in politics.
If you want to raise some cash, you just need to publish such things as ads or biased articles in favour of those who pays you.
In order to bring people's attention to some fact, some journalist is provided with some information and he creates a sensation. People's interest gets warmer and they demand more facts. Each new publication leads readers away from some other "inconvenient" fact.

At that, the "facts" that were published could fail to pass any close examination but that doesn't matter because the harm has already been done which had been the initial goal right from the beginning. Public opinion has already been formed up and people who read tabloids don't bother themselves with checking whether the facts they read about are true or false.

Yes, that is absolutely the case, but so long as no one point of view or set of interests comes to dominate the whole range of mass media, it doesn't matter.

You don't need to cover the whole range of mass media. There are so called 'target goups' - the groups of people whose opinion will dominate the minds of the rest (in a business world, advertisements of, say, cars are targeted at males 30-40 years old (just for an example), some ads are targeted at children, some - at the lower classes, some luxury goods are for the rich, etc.
The same mechanisms work in the mass media too regarding the coverage of the international policy for example, or some inner matters such as taxation or legislation.
People are organized in groups (co-workers, classmates, etc) and every group has a leader (the boss, some charismatic person, etc) whose views dominate the whole group. If you win the leaders - the rest will follow.
So to the point - you don't need to cover the whole population. You just need to capture the attention of the leaders and it's not such a great task if you have money.

That's only true up to a point, because if you are doing it, then your opponents are doing the same. The only way that you can guarantee a monoploised market is to do what your government has done; take control of the whole lot.

But, yes, as I keep saying, all media contains bias, even if it just systemic bias. That categorically does not mean that it is not "free" though.

You seem to think that a lack of pro-Russian articles in the western press proves that the western press is not free. It does not, it just proves that it is not unbiased or faultlessly objective, which no-one has ever claimed. There is nothing stopping anyone from publishing an article extoling the virtues of Russia in general or any aspect of Russia in particular. Nothing. The reason few such articles get published is simply that hardly anyone believes there are any virtues to extol.

This situation is compounded by the fact that the vast, vast majority of people could not care less about Russia if they tried. So long as you still have plenty of gas and aren't actively targeting our cities with your nukes any more, you don't even show up on most people's radar. In terms of interest in international affairs in Blighty, news from Russia rates below the US, the rest of the EU, the Middle East, then China, Japan and India, roughly in that order. Russian news is down there with the likes of Brazil; you might get a mention if it's a particularly slow news day, or you have a particularly big event going on. In that sort of situation, it is very easy for any vested interests to dominate any debate.

Well, I'm not talking about the news from Russia only.
I know, that many europeans can vaguely point somewhere to the East when they asked and many Americans can hardly find it on the map

Take the Middle East, Far East, as well. Nothing changes. I think I've finally isolated the problem - the general attitude of the West-European media highlights seldom deviates from the one of the US. That baffles me, because given all ties and bonds existing between the US and the Western Europe they simply cannot have so much in common, especially when matters discussed concern the international politics. I can agree that they can argue about some relations between Europe and the US but they become surprisingly agreeable when they're publishing something about 'the third world' (heh, including Russia).

Hey, if your country is getting bad press, deal with it. And lets get one thing straight. When you want news about Turkmenistan, you don't go looking for articles in Ashkhabad newspapers. Let's think about how that works for us and Russia now.

Originally Posted by Ramil

Well, I'm not talking about the news from Russia only.
I know, that many europeans can vaguely point somewhere to the East when they asked and many Americans can hardly find it on the map

Take the Middle East, Far East, as well. Nothing changes. I think I've finally isolated the problem - the general attitude of the West-European media highlights seldom deviates from the one of the US. That baffles me, because given all ties and bonds existing between the US and the Western Europe they simply cannot have so much in common, especially when matters discussed concern the international politics. I can agree that they can argue about some relations between Europe and the US but they become surprisingly agreeable when they're publishing something about 'the third world' (heh, including Russia).

You think?

I don't think you could point at a single view you could call a consensus inside most of the countries in Europe on any of the subjects of the Middle East, never mind one that extends across the Atlantic. Certainly when it comes to Palestine in the UK there is a full range of sympathies. Traditionally it was a right/ left thing. Those on the right unswervingly support brave Israel standing alone in a sea of fanatical terrorist muslims, while those on the left unswerving support the poor downtrodden and dispossessed Palestinian freedom fighters waging their just war against an occupying power, and absolutely everything in between. Sometimes you'll get two opposing views in the same newspaper or on the same radio station, never mind the same country. I don't know whether the same plurality exists in the US media, but I doubt it, based on the numbers of times I've seen mainstream US op-ed pieces outright accuse Europeans of being anti-semetic for refusing to blindly support Israel (maybe 'cos the US doesn't have a left in the European sense, just a right and a... slightly further right).

And that's to say nothing of the Iraq invasion issue and the ill-feeling bordering on outright hatred that generated and continues to generate, both within European countries and between them and the US.

Frankly speaking, if you think the media in France, or Germany, or even the UK, never deviate from the US media's line (even if there is such a thing) on any subject of the Middle East, then you either need to do a lot more reading, or stop smoking whatever it is that's imparing your judgement.

Well, you've cornered me so I have to take your word on it. That's why I just love this forum - because I can get a voice from a real man from within, not just ravings of some journalist.

What Ramil is trying to say is that Western attitude towards Russia doesn't differ much from the US baseline, which might be true. I know Norway and USA are pretty much just as skeptical towards Russia. What'd you expect after 70 years of animosity? But that doesn't mean media is not free! It's just as biased as the population is