NYTÕS ONE-SIDED UKRAINE NARRATIVE May 27, 2014 Blacklisted
Radio - 5.24.2014 by Doug OwenSOURCE:
CONSORTIUM
NEWS Exclusive: The
U.S. press coverage of the Ukraine crisis has been stunningly biased and
one-sided, placing virtually all the blame on Russian President Putin. One of
the worst offenders in this journalistic travesty has been the New York Times,
writes Robert Parry. BY ROBERT
PARRY See
also: http://worldtraining.net/Ukraine.htm
http://worldtraining.net/Ukraine.htm http://worldtraining.net/Ukraine2.htm
http://worldtraining.net/Ukraine4.htm http://worldtraining.net/Ukraine5.htm http://worldtraining.net/Ukraine6.htm http://worldtraining.net/Ukraine7.htm As part of the New York
TimesÕ sorry descent into becoming a propaganda sheet for the U.S. State
Department, the TimesÕ front-page story on the Ukrainian
presidential election offered a near perfect distillation of Official
WashingtonÕs false narrative on the crisis. ÒThe special election was called by Parliament to replace
Viktor F. Yanukovych, who fled Kiev on Feb. 21 after a failed but bloody
attempt to suppress a civic uprising, and whose toppling as president set off
RussiaÕs invasion and annexation of Crimea,Ó wrote
David M. Herszenhorn, one of the most consistently biased reporters on Ukraine.
Very little about the TimesÕ summary is either
accurate or balanced. It is at best a one-sided account of the tumultuous
events over the past several months in Ukraine and leaves out context that
would enable a TimesÕ reader to get a more accurate understanding of the
crisis. Indeed, that false narrative, which has now become engrained
as American conventional wisdom, has itself become a threat to U.S.
interests because, if you believe the preferred storyline, you would tend to
support aggressive counter-measures that could have dangerous and
counter-productive consequences.
Beyond that, there is the broader risk to U.S.
democracy when major news organizations routinely engage in this sort of
propaganda. Just in recent years, the U.S. government has launched wars under
such fake pretenses, inflicting casualties in faraway lands, engendering
profound hatred of the United States, depleting the U.S. Treasury, and
maiming and killing American soldiers. That is why itÕs important for
journalists and news outlets do all they can to get these kinds of stories
right and not just pander to the powers-that-be.
UkraineÕs Real Narrative: Regarding Ukraine, the real narrative is
much more complex and nuanced than the New York Times described. The origins of
the immediate crisis date back to last year when the European Union rashly
offered an association agreement to Ukraine, a proposal that elected President
Yanukovych considered. However,
when the International Monetary Fund insisted on a harsh austerity plan that
would have made the hard lives of the Ukrainian people even harder – and
when Russian President Vladimir Putin offered a more generous aid package of
$15 billion – Yanukovych turned away from the EU-IMF deal. That provoked
demonstrations in Kiev from Ukrainians, many from the west, who favored closer
ties to Europe and who were tired of the endemic corruption that has plagued
Ukraine since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 and since the Òshock therapyÓ
capitalism that saw a handful of oligarchs plunder the nationÕs wealth and
resources. Though most protesters
appeared motivated by a desire for better governance and a hope that an
association with Europe would improve their economic prospects, a significant
percentage of the crowd on the Maidan came from neo-Nazi and other far-right
movements that despised Yanukovych and his ethnic Russian political base for
their own reasons, dating back to UkraineÕs split in World War II between
pro-Nazi and pro-Soviet forces.
The increasingly disruptive protests on the Maidan
were also egged on by U.S. officials and pushed by U.S.-funded
non-governmental organizations, some subsidized by the National Endowment for
Democracy, whose neocon president Carl Gershman last September had termed
Ukraine Òthe biggest prizeÓ and a key step in undermining Putin inside
Russia. Assistant Secretary of
State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, a neocon who had been an adviser to
Vice President Dick Cheney, personally urged on the demonstrators, even passing
out cookies at the Maidan. In one speech, she told Ukrainian business leaders
that the United States had invested $5 billion in their ÒEuropean aspirations.Ó Nuland also was caught in an
intercepted phone conversation with U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt
explaining whom she wanted to see running the government once Yanukovych was
gone. Her choice was Arseniy Yatsenyuk or ÒYats.Ó Sen. John McCain, another prominent neocon, rallied the
Maidan protesters while standing near a Svoboda party banner honoring Nazi
collaborator Stepan Bandera, whose radical paramilitary force had helped the
Nazis expel and exterminate tens of thousands of Poles and Jews during World
War II.
The Putsch: Contrary to HerszenhornÕs boilerplate paragraph, the
violence was not entirely from the embattled government. Neo-Nazi militias, which
had secured weapons and organized themselves into 100-man brigades, launched
repeated attacks on the police, including burning some policemen with
firebombs. On Feb. 20, as
the violence worsened, mysterious snipers opened fire on both demonstrators and
police, killing some 20 people and escalating the confrontation dangerously.
Though the Western press jumped to the conclusion that Yanukovych was to blame,
he denied ordering the shootings and EU officials later came to suspect that
the attacks were done by the opposition as a provocation.
ÒSo there is a stronger and stronger understanding
that behind snipers it was not Yanukovych, it was somebody from the new
coalition,Ó EstoniaÕs Foreign Minister Urmas Paet told European Union foreign
affairs chief Catherine Ashton, as reported by
the UK Guardian. On
Feb. 21, Yanukovych sought to tamp down the violence by signing an agreement
with representatives of Germany, France and Poland in which he accepted early
elections (so he could be voted out of office) and agreed to reduced
presidential powers. He also pulled back the police. However, when the police were withdrawn, the neo-Nazi
militias completed their putsch on Feb. 22, seizing control of government
buildings and forcing Yanukovych and his officials to flee for their
lives. In effect, the storm troopers controlled the Ukrainian government. I was told by an international diplomat
who was on the ground in Kiev that the Western countries felt there was no
choice but to immediately work with the shaken Parliament to put together an
interim government, otherwise the ÒthugsÓ would remain in charge. So, Yanukovych was hastily impeached
through an illegal process that circumvented the Ukrainian constitution, and
the Parliament picked a new government which ceded four ministries, including
national security, to the neo-Nazis in recognition of their crucial role in the
coup. To head up this interim
government, Yatsenyuk was named prime minister and one of his first orders of
business was to enact the IMF austerity plan that Yanukovych had rejected. The
intimidated Parliament also approved a ban on Russian as an official language,
although that scheme was later dropped.
In other words, the Times misleads its readers when it summarizes the
events by simply saying Yanukovych Òfled Kiev on Feb. 21 after a failed but
bloody attempt to suppress a civic uprising.Ó
The Aftermath: After the coup, ethnic Russians in the east and south were
outraged that their elected president had been removed violently and illegally.
In the southern peninsula of Crimea, the local parliament voted to arrange a
referendum on secession in order to rejoin Russia, which had controlled Crimea
dating back to the 1700s. Russia
did not ÒinvadeÓ Crimea since Moscow already had some 16,000 troops
stationed in Crimea under an agreement with Ukraine for Russia to retain its
historic naval base at Sevastopol. Russian troops did back up the local Crimean
authorities as they planned their referendum which showed overwhelming public
support for secession. It became
another U.S. conventional wisdom that the referendum was ÒriggedÓ because the
turnout was high and the vote in favor of secession was 96 percent. But exit
polls showed a similarly overwhelming majority of around 93 percent – and
no serious person doubts that most Crimeans favored escaping from the failed
Ukrainian state. Russia then
agreed to accept Crimea back into its federation. So, while the Crimean
referendum was surely hastily organized, it reflected the popular will and was
central to the Russian decision to reclaim the historical peninsula. Yet, the Times summarized those events
as ÒRussiaÕs invasion and annexation of Crimea,Ó creating the image of Russian
troops swarming across the border and seizing the territory against the will of
the people. If HerszenhornÕs
paragraph were the first time that he or the newspaper had offered such a
misleading account on Ukraine or other international hotspots, one might excuse
it as just a rushed and careless synopsis. But the summary is only the latest
example of the TimesÕ deeply biased pattern, marching in lockstep with the
State DepartmentÕs propaganda themes for years.
The TimesÕ failures in the run-up to the disastrous Iraq War were
infamous, particularly the Òaluminum tubeÓ story by Michael R. Gordon and
Judith Miller. The Times showed similar bias on the Syrian
conflict, including last yearÕs debunked
TimesÕ Òvector analysisÓ tracing a Sarin-laden rocket back to a Syrian military
base when the rocket had less than one-third the necessary range. But the TimesÕ prejudice over the Ukraine
crisis has been even more extreme. Virtually everything that the Times writes
about Ukraine is so polluted with propaganda that it requires a very strong
filter, along with additives from more independent news sources, to get
anything approaching an accurate understanding of events. Since the early days of the coup, the
Times has behaved as essentially a propaganda organ for the new regime in Kiev
and the State Department, blaming Russia and Putin for the crisis. [See
Consortiumnews.comÕs ÒWill Ukraine
Be NYTÕs Waterloo?Ó]
Embarrassing Gaffes: In the TimesÕ haste to perform this function, there have been
some notable journalistic gaffes such as the TimesÕ front-page story
touting photographs that supposedly showed Russian special forces in
Russia and then the same soldiers in eastern Ukraine, allegedly proving that
the eastÕs popular resistance to the coup regime in Kiev was simply clumsily
disguised Russian aggression. Any
serious journalist would have recognized the holes in the story – since
it wasnÕt clear where the photos were taken or whether the blurry images were
even the same people – but that didnÕt bother the Times, which led with
the scoop.
However, only two days later, the scoop blew up
when it turned out that a key photo supposedly showing a group of soldiers in
Russia who later appeared in eastern Ukraine was actually taken in Ukraine,
destroying the premise of the entire story. Herszenhorn himself has been one of the most biased TimesÕ
reporters. [See Consortiumnews.comÕs ÒUkraine,
Though the US ÔLooking Glass.ÕÓ] Now, since Ukrainian voters – with the exception
of those in the rebellious eastern provinces – have selected a new
president, billionaire businessman Petro Poroshenko, the question is whether
the twisted and distorted U.S. narrative will stop President Barack Obama
from taking pragmatic steps to defuse the crisis. Poroshenko, who has done past business in Russia and knows
Putin personally, appears ready to deescalate the crisis with UkraineÕs
neighbor. After SundayÕs election, Poroshenko vowed to repair relations with
Russia and Putin, who himself has made conciliatory comments about respecting
the election results. ÒMost probably the meeting with the Russian leadership
will certainly take place in the first half of July,Ó said
Poroshenko,. ÒWe should be very ready tactically in approach to this meeting,
because first we should create an agenda, we should prepare documents, so that
it will not be just to shake hands.Ó
Poroshenko also has voiced a willingness to accept greater federalism
that would grant a degree of self-rule to the provinces in eastern Ukraine. And,
there are tentative plans for Obama and Putin to meet on June 6 in Normandy
around ceremonies honoring the 70th anniversary of D-Day. Thus, the principal remaining obstacle
to some reconciliation of the Ukraine crisis may be the deeply biased reporting
at the Times and other mainstream American news outlets, which continue to
insist that the story has only one side.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra
stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his new
book, AmericaÕs Stolen Narrative, either in print here or
as an e-book (from Amazon
and barnesandnoble.com).