Russian TV
A friend from Belarus who usually doesn’t watch much TV wrote this entry in his blog several days ago (in Belarusian):
I just watched evening news on Russian NTV. Well oh well… Russian TV is quickly catching up with its Belarusian counterpart [in terms of amount of lies and propaganda]. About 3/4 of news were not really news reports about Russia, but propaganda messages about “Russian interests” abroad.
• There was a news report about Crimea in Ukraine, with a conclusion that Crimea have always been a Russian region and must become Russian again, taken away from Ukraine.
• A news report about Abkhazia in Georgia: a Russian reporter describes how evil Georgians oppress freedom-loving Abkhaz people and destroy their lands, and that Abkhazia should be taken away from Georgia.
• A news report about Bush-Hu summit: a Russian journalist explained that Americans are scared of China, but they are behaving like a whore and are trying to flirt with a future world super-power.
P.S. And of course there was an NTV show “Odnako” where they reported that one of the chiefs of the Georgian security is planning assassination (!) of Alexander Milinkevich for a price of several thousand bucks because Milinkevich failed to organize a revolution in Belarus. This is the pinnacle of propaganda and anti-Georgian, anti-Belarusan hysteria. And I can hardly imagine that back in 1996 we used to turn to Russian NTV to see truthful (!) reports about Belarusian opposition rallies that took place in Minsk.
P.P.S. When I was studying in Munich I spent a whole year without a TV set in my apartment. I felt wonderful without a telly. My brain have been cleared from trash. When I came back to Belarus, I didn’t watch any TV for another six months, but then gradually I started watching it again from time to time, mostly EuroNews. I don’t have BT (state Belarusian TV) even in the list of available channels. Let masochists and freaks watch it.
My blogger friend Endrus also wrote about that Russian TV show “Odnako” (here).
April 24th, 2006 at 7:53 pm
Those reports are rather disturbing… such as the one about Crimea… is that a public statement on annexation? The report about Georgia I find typical… And the one about America just plain amuses me :D
The NTV show… should that even be taken serious? From my point of view Georgia doesnt have any interest in Belarusian politics whatsoever, let alone planning an assassination. And especially for such a poor reason!
I too rarely watch tv… not per se due to propaganda or the likes… mainly because of advertising. I’m tired of having to turn down the volume every 10 minutes because someone is (again) trying to talk people into buy the latest model car which looks exactly the same as the one from 5 years ago (and probably is). In the past year they’ve tried so many methods and experiments I wonder if the advertising agencies can come up with any new tricks to deceive the public.
News here is kept strictly national for some odd reason I cannot understand. Even if there is no national news whatsoever they just make some article up like “the nicest married couple of the countryside”… It makes me wonder if I was watching a kids show or the news. Mmm… I suppose you could place it in the category censorship? The rest of the world and the events happening are being ignored this way.
April 24th, 2006 at 11:00 pm
“Odnako” is a show on Channel 1 (ex-ORT), not on NTV. But this doesn’t make NTV less propagandist than the other Russian TV channels.
Belarus really has much better chances to recover from dictature than Russia.
PS I wrote you a small e-mail concerning podcasting.by
April 25th, 2006 at 1:07 pm
It’s much worse than you think.
All newspapers and TV companies that have any effect whatsoever on the electorate are moving to the goverment (Gazprom-Media buying them for example). With no free media in Russia and no competition, the official versions of events get more stupid as the time goes by.
If I was to recommend a paper in Russia it would be www.vedomosti.ru
It is a financial paper but it has less propaganda that ANY other media outlet in the country. That is the unfortunate truth.
April 28th, 2006 at 9:34 pm
Right on cue, for those who can read Russian:
http://www.vedomosti.ru/newspaper/article.shtml?2006/04/28/105934
September 29th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
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