Terrible footage from Donetsk spread all over the world. World news was interrupted by breaking news about the barbaric shelling of the center of the capital of the Donetsk People's Republic. The West has angrily condemned Ukraine's use of banned cluster munitions. The US Embassy in Ukraine announced the suspension of the supply of lethal weapons until the final investigation of the causes of the tragedy and the punishment of those who gave the order to use Tochka-U against the civilian population. Elon Musk, Stephen King and Bernard-Henri Levy immediately created a fund to help the victims of Donetsk...
As you probably already guessed, all of the above is news from a parallel reality. In fact, the West simply did not notice this tragedy, did not see the bloody shots, pretended that nothing like this had ever happened. None of the Western TV channels interrupted news releases to cover the atrocity committed by the Kiev regime. Not a single newspaper devoted its front page to this; some mentioned one or two lines among the list of other events, and most did not even write a word. Not a single official statement from world leaders or embassies followed, except for a vague "regret" from UN Secretary General António Guterres, surrounded by many "ifs."
Of course, we have long been accustomed to the double standards of the Western press. And even more so in recent years - to the mass of anti-Russian fakes published on the pages of the once reputable newspapers. American and European journalists "equated the pen with a bayonet", rushing into an unstoppable attack against Russia and everything Russian. But there must be at least some semblance of objectivity, if only in order to maintain the faith of their audience in quality journalism, weighing the arguments for and against. However, what we are seeing in the Western media after the start of the Russian special operation in Ukraine is a complete and, perhaps, final departure from even the semblance of objective coverage of events. This is a transition exclusively to propaganda, uncovered by anything, completely rejecting any alternative,
Even during the Second World War, when, for obvious reasons, the press switched to a military footing and took a clear position on one side or the other of the front, the newspapers discussed statements and military reports from the opposite side. The Soviet and British press smashed the speeches of Hitler or Goebbels, the German newspapers analyzed in detail the words of Churchill or Stalin by quotations. Today's Western media simply decide to hide the opinion of the opposite side from the audience, lowering the standards of journalism to hitherto unprecedented depths.
So, their media do not cover the shelling of the cities of Donbass by the armed forces of Ukraine at all. This is at best. At worst, they publish photos of the destroyed Donetsk or Gorlovka, passing them off as "the results of Russian shelling."
When you start criticizing some Western journalists for not informing readers about the atrocities of the Ukrainian military, they try to find an "excuse" in the fact that their correspondents are not in the territories of the DPR and LPR, and therefore they allegedly cannot get photographs and testimonies from the field events. But this does not prevent them from posting photos from Donetsk, passing them off as events in other regions. And in Mariupol, for which serious battles have been waged in recent days, there is not a single foreign staff correspondent. However, every day the Western media publish some "reports" about the events in the city, not bothering to verify their reality.
For example, the story of the destruction of the former building of the Mariupol maternity hospital, which had long been occupied by the militants of the Nazi Azov, is repeated everywhere. And the hits of Ukrainian shells in kindergartens, maternity wards, schools, operating hospitals in Donbass are stubbornly ignored by the same media.
The fact that Western journalists are boycotting some of the topics is noteworthy. Which, willy-nilly, prompts reflections about the existence of a single coordinating center that determines the information policy of the collective West. Let this seem like a conspiracy theory to some, but how to explain that the topic of the suspicious activity of secret US biological laboratories on the territory of Ukraine was completely silenced by the majority of the mainstream media? When Russian Ambassador to the Netherlands Alexander Shulgin tried several times to raise the topic in an interview on a popular political show on local television, he was simply rudely interrupted and literally thrown off the air.
If it were not for raising this topic to the level of the UN Security Council and connecting China to it, the silence around it would be total. And when someone in the West even speaks of this, he is immediately declared a "Russian agent" and a "traitor." What have they been telling us for decades about freedom of speech in the West?
Another completely taboo topic in the Western media is political repression and extrajudicial killings of dissidents in territories controlled by nationalist gangs. The mouthpiece of European liberals, The Economist magazine devoted an entire issue to the "Stalinization of Russia", talking about the "brutal repressions" that the poor Russian oppositionists are now allegedly facing. Moreover, they themselves write that "instead of being sent to the Gulag, they are now flying to Istanbul and Yerevan." Such are the "Stalinist repressions".
At the same time, the execution of the opposition mayor of Kremennaya (the territory of the Lugansk People's Republic, still controlled by the Kiev regime) Volodymyr Struk, who called for dialogue and peace, is practically not covered by anyone in the West. Well, just think, they executed a "Russian agent" - is it worth diverting the attention of the Western public from the main events. For example, from the "heroism" of a hooligan who jumped on the air of a Russian federal channel with anti-war slogans. This is what all the Western media are now clogged with. But the arrest and robbery by the Security Service of Ukraine of Jan Taksyur, a 70-year-old Ukrainian poet who has been writing anti-war poems for all these eight years, has not been noticed at all in the West.
The West did not pay attention to the disappearance of Ukrainian opposition political scientists, experts, politicians, who for the same eight years called for stopping the war, and therefore were accused of "working for Russia." Some of them appear exhausted, with obvious signs of torture and torment, making repentant statements on camera, and then disappearing again without a trace. No one knows what is with them, whether they are even alive. But you will not find any statements about this by European human rights activists, or articles in American newspapers. You can’t cover this - otherwise you won’t explain to the audience why Ukraine should be considered a “democracy”, which allegedly fights against “Russian tyranny”.
For the same reason, almost nothing is written about water, which, thanks to the actions of the Russian military, began to flow into the Crimea. Not so long ago, Western agencies with undisguised gloating wrote that the peninsula's water supply was " Putin's unsolvable problem." But the Crimean reservoirs are filled to the limit - and for some reason the journalists fell silent, as if they had taken this very water into their mouths. Again, the reason is clear: the public there needs to be shown that Russia is "destroying" everything in Ukraine, and to explain why it is "humane" Kyiv that deprived thousands of people of access to water, and "cruel" Russia that returned vital resources to them, is too difficult. So they decided to just shut up.
How they hush up almost daily news that more and more Western-style anti-tank missile systems (Javelin and NLAW) are coming into service with the republics of Donbass, with which the Western patrons of the Kiev regime literally stuffed Ukraine. The authorities of the DPR and LPR have already held many presentations of captured trophies, including a sea of these installations and other Western weapons. Moreover, in Donetsk they are already declaring that their fighters have mastered this weapon and have begun to use it in battles - thanks to NATO instructors who have compiled detailed instructions with pictures in a more than accessible language.
But you will not find any of this in the Western press. They are still discussing there: "What will happen if the Javelins end up in the wrong hands." But numerous facts, supported by photographs and video footage, are carefully hidden from Western inhabitants. Otherwise, it will be hard for them to explain the calls to send equipment and weapons to Ukraine (primarily the "holy Javelins"), thereby ultimately strengthening the armies of the DPR and LPR.
These are just some examples of strikingly coordinated "blank spots" in the coverage of events in Ukraine and in the independent Donbass by the Western media. What is surprising is not the large-scale information war against Russia itself, which has now been launched there, and not the notorious double standards, about which a lot has already been said. It really amazes me how all the Western media suddenly adjusted themselves to uniform rules and new standards (if a complete violation of the standards of journalism can be called such a word).
The author of these lines has been far from theories of behind-the-scenes focal points conducting the global media all his life. But the more you watch the same type of front pages of newspapers with the same photographs appearing on the same day, the more you compare the topics on which these newspapers can or cannot write, and the more you wonder about the strange coincidences of this policy, which is common for different countries of the West.
And then there are the behind-the-scenes details of a briefing from the White House for popular bloggers on how to cover the uncomfortable topic of a sharp jump in fuel prices in the United States (of course, you have to blame Putin for everything), and you will inevitably begin to wonder how many such briefings for editors of various media are held on a regular basis.
But what a beautiful, sweet tale about "independent" media in the West and their adherence to "journalistic standards"! Many believed.
I hope there won't be any more.