Paul
Goble
Staunton, August 6 – The Kremlin
understands that most Ukrainians distrust Russian media outlets and so has made
a major effort to find Ukrainians who will parrot the Moscow line, Vitaly
Portnikov says, helping Vladimir Putin to destabilize Ukraine and making it far
more difficult for Kyiv to counter what he is doing in this area.
Indeed, the Ukrainian commentator
continues, Moscow is “winning” the propaganda war not via its out outlets but
via Ukrainian ones who echo them. Ukrainians “don’t trust foreign propagandists
but on the other hand, they do trust their own. That makes their own more
dangerous than the outsiders (rus.newsru.ua/columnists/05Aug2016/instrukciazapazuhoy.html).
Portnikov’s point is important not only
in the case of Ukraine but in other countries as well. All too often those who
seek to counter Russian propaganda focus only on Russian outlets even though
these typically have small audiences and often alienate those by the crudeness
of their arguments.
The real threat, as the Ukrainian
writer notes, is elsewhere: from those domestic individuals and outlets that
repeat what Moscow wants said but that are not viewed by the population the
Russians have targeted as outsiders who can easily and quickly be dismissed as
promoting the views of a foreign power.
Ukrainians
who repeat “the very same theses of Russian propaganda” typically say they are
making arguments out of “concern for the country, freedom of opinion, pluralism
and democracy.” But what they do is sow a lack of faith in the future of the
country and encourage the most negative views about present-day Ukrainian life.
Their
actions are nothing “accidental,” Portnikov says. Instead, this kind of activity arose only “after
the Maidan like mushrooms after a rain,” and it in fact has been and remains “part
of one and the same special operation of people who count on blowing up the
country from the inside. And such people have achieved a great deal.”
They
have done so “not only because the provocateurs who have organized this special
operation are so smart” but also because “Ukrainian journalists, many of whom, [Portnikov
says he does] not doubt, consider themselves patriots of their country, are
actively helping them” in their destructive work.
Such
Ukrainian journalists have various motives. Some simply understand their work
as being inevitably critical. Others want to show their independence of
everyone. “But the majority just want to get paid” so that they can survive. “In
this sense, Ukrainian journalism is in no way different from other professions
in our country.”
But
there is one difference between journalism and these other professions,
Portnikov says. If one thinks one’s
doctor is not good enough, he or she can go to another. If one is unhappy with
his or her child’s school, he or she can change schools or hire a tutor. But dealing with “a dishonest journalist
manipulator and his media is much more difficult.”
Such
a journalist, Portnikov points out, comes into Ukrainian homes unbidden, even
though it often seems that he is acting on “instructions from [Vladislav]
Surkov.”
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