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Why do some of the “moral leaders” of the West get so excited about the Russian media not agreeing with them?
Edward Lucas, the senior
editor at The Economist magazine, made in fact a self-defeating
confession in his speech at the Munich security conference: “Why do people watch
RT so avidly? Because they think that the mainstream media is not
telling them the truth and they are fed up with the political
elite in our countries.”
Sorry, Mr. Lucas, but in what way is this situation in the West
different from the state of affairs in Brezhnev’s Soviet Union,
where people no less avidly tuned in to the BBC and Radio Free
Europe? People in the USSR did it for the same reasons – because
they thought that the “mainstream” Soviet media was not
telling them the truth and because they were fed up with the
political elite in their country (which now became 15+ different
countries).
RT responds to ‘ostracism’
calls by Economist editor at Munich conference
Of course, in the view of Mr. Lucas, this is an unbearable
situation. History knows two ways to remedy it. One was tried by
Mr. Gorbachev who stopped jamming Western stations in 1987-1988
and allowed internships of Western journalists in Russia and of
Soviet journalists – in Western publications. The other one had
been tried before Gorbachev by Brezhnev and many others, who
jammed the foreign radio and arrested the locals who dared to
work for it. Now Mr. Lucas is actually proposing to use
Brezhnev’s tactics, temporarily replacing arrests with ostracism:
“I think we could do a bit more ostracism,” Mr. Lucas
said at the Munich conference. “I’m quite happy to say that
if anyone puts a CV on my desk, and on that CV I see they worked
at RT or Sputnik or one of these things, that CV is going into
the bin and not into the in-tray. We would not have accepted it
during the Cold War that people could move from working for
Pravda, or Izvestia, or TASS, and then into jobs in Western
media. Far too many people see a job at RT as the first stage on
a career ladder. It’s not. It’s the last stage on a career
ladder.”
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How is this thinking different from the thinking of the KGB
generals (whom Mr. Lucas likes to condemn so much), who made sure
a job with Radio Free Europe would be the last stage on a career
ladder for a young Soviet citizen in the early 1980s? (I have
some acquaintances who had to go through such an ordeal.) Mr.
Lucas should also take note that even in the early 1990s, still
under the Soviet Union; journalists from some Soviet media were
offered jobs and internships in Western media. Now Mr. Lucas
wants to return to the preceding epoch, obviously.
How does all of this jive with Western values?
“The kind of language which some of the Western “leaders of
opinion” use against their Russian opponents is detrimental to
the Western values in the first place. Sanctions against Russia
contradict the principle of free economic activity, the Magnitsky
list was against the presumption of innocence, since some Russian
citizens were declared criminals without a trial,” comments
Ben Aris, chief editor of the Business New Europe internet news
outlet.
One could add – certain words and actions of Edward Lucas and his
comrade-in-arms, author of several fiery anti-Putin books, Ben
Judah – some of these words and actions breach the rules of
debate.
Since I took part in several radio discussions on the BBC World
Service and Sky News with Lucas and Judah, I can testify that
they never object to the essence of the opponent’s arguments.
Instead, they prefer personal attacks. “There is no sense in
listening to HIM,” Ben Judah said in a recent debate with me
on Sky News. I had to retort that, when arguing with Mr. Judah, I
criticized his line of argumentation and language (“Putin’s
cleptocracy”, “Russia’s aggression”), and not his
persona.
“This is a new low in the argumentation of Mr. Lucas,”
Charles Bausman, Moscow-based American CEO of the Russia Insider
internet resource commented. “In fact, whenever Mr. Lucas
opens his mouth he becomes a great asset for the so called
Russian propaganda that he likes so much to talk about.”
Indeed, the best propaganda you can do against Edward Lucas is
just to quote him in full. His words speak for themselves.
Dmitry Babich,
Political analyst, for RT.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.