RT “Covers” the Shooting Down of MH17 (Updated)
RT “Covers” the Shooting Down of MH17 by Adam Holland, The Interpreter, Institute of Modern Russia
Operating a fake news channel to promote state propaganda comes with considerable intrinsic problems and contradictions. Propaganda and news reporting have contrary purposes that propagandists carefully work to obscure by various means. That’s the art of propaganda: blurring the line between reality and BS, creating false equivalencies between the two, and implicitly arguing that the BS is superior. That’s easy for the propagandist when he can cherry-pick what he covers and restrict the information that enters into the conversation. But occasionally events overtake the propagandist’s ability to control the message. The mask slips, and he is revealed as being what he was all along: a craftsman of untruths.
That’s exactly what’s happened very suddenly and clearly yesterday at Russia’s RT news agency. As the wreckage of MH17 burned in the streets and yards of a small town in Donetsk Region in Ukraine, and as the bodies of its 298 passengers and crew lay where they were strewn, unburied and still warm, the people at RT and other Russian propaganda outlets rushed to fill the void between rapidly unfolding reality and the needs of those in power in Russia…
Also see:
Russia Today London Correspondent Resigns in Protest at 'Disrespect for Facts' Over Malaysian Plane Crash by William Turvill, Press Gazette
A Tweetbot Caught the Russian Gov't Editing Flight MH17 Wikipedia Info by Robert Sorokanich, Gizmodo
Hat Tip to Matt Armstrong and Crispin Burke.
