UKR-TAZ

Economist Paul Gregory has been keeping track of some very funny Russian media bloopers — funny except for the fact that they are intended to be true and serious.

Here he recounts three stories told by three Russian media outlets — Rossiya 1, NTV, and the National Independent News of Crimea — each about a very different character: an “ordinary citizen” protesting the Ukrainian “neo-Nazi government,” a German EU spy who hired a group of 50 European mercenaries (!), and a pediatric surgeon tending the victims of neo-Nazi gunmen.

The catch is that each is clearly the same guy lying (in both senses of the word) in the same hospital bed. These “news stories” are played by the same actor. The videos are below.

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While the source of this analysis, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, could be expected to be somewhat critical of Russia, the critique offered in “The World Through the Eyes of Russian State Television” is supported by several lengthy video segments from Russian state controlled news Channel 1.

As can be seen there, the news provided on Channel 1 is wildly at variance — frighteningly so — with what the rest of the world sees and knows about Ukraine. Either one state-controlled media industry (and a handful of western outlets) is correct and everyone else is in the dark, or there is a great deal of consent being manufactured here (as Noam Chomsky would likely say, if he lived there).

That does not mean there are no alternative views available in Russia.  Read the rest of this entry »