Paul
Goble
Staunton, March 28 – Instead of
dropping the disinformation campaign about the coronavirus that it began in
January with suggestions that NATO had invented the virus and used it as a
weapon against China and the world (euvsdisinfo.eu/disinformation-can-kill/), Moscow has refined and expanded it in equally dangerous ways,
Russian journalists say.
If some of the
grossest ideologue tropes have largely disappeared, journalists and experts
surveyed by the Ekho Rossii portal say, the new messages for both
foreign and domestic audiences are being pushed hard by Moscow outlets with
deadly and politically deleterious results (ehorussia.com/new/node/20509).
That conclusion is suggested by the
responses of six Russian experts and commentators to the question Ekho
Rossii posed to them: Has Moscow’s disinformation campaign regarding the
coronavirus changed and is it likely to evolve further in the coming weeks both
domestically and internationally?
Aleksandr Morozov
a political scientist at Prague’s Nemtsov Academic Center, says that Moscow is
currently pushing two notions: the first with which it began is to blame the US
for the appearance of the virus and its spread, and the second which calls for “global
solidarity” in the face of the pandemic.
At times, he says, these things are
mixed together, with the message to Europeans that they and Russia can join together
to fight what is America’s fault. Domestically, the Kremlin’s message is constant:
the superiority of the West and the hopelessness and antagonism of the West
against Russia.
Pavel Kanygin of Moscow’s Novaya
gazeta says that government-controlled media in Russia are pushing the idea
that all other countries are in disastrous shape while “we are prepared the best
of all.” But because of what people can
see around them or hear from friends, they are becoming ever more suspicious of
the Kremlin’s message.
Konstantin Eggert, a journalist who
writes frequently for Russian-language outlets in Germany, says that Moscow began
its coverage in the traditional way with the message being “’There are no
problems in Russia but the West is full of them.’” Now, there is more objective
reporting, but the anti-Ukrainian line continues with the insistence Kyiv is
near collapse.
Kirill Rogov, vice president of the Liberal
Mission Foundation, says that “initially, the authorities tried to use the
threat of the epidemic for political goals.” But they, “like the governments of
other countries, have found themselves under serious pressure from public
opinion and the threat of the collapse of the medical assistance system.”
Because ever more Russians are turning
to alternative sources of information, Rogov continues, the Kremlin’s ability
to control the media agenda is limited on coronavirus as well as on everything
else.
Denis Korotkov, a Novaya gazeta
journalist, says that Moscow began by playing up empty streets and empty stores
in the US and saying that Russia was doing ever so much better than the West.
When it became obvious that the epidemic would hit Russia too, government media
have been compelled to cover it, although no criticism of the regime is allowed.
And Andrey Arkhangelsky, the
cultural affairs editor of Ogonyek, says the spread of the coronavirus
in Russia has forced the government media to shift from saying everything is
bad in the west and good in Russia to suggesting everyone is in this together,
although these outlets still say democracy and multilateral organizations are
powerless to stop the plague.
Russian propaganda “has laughed over the
Europeans who ‘in a panic bought toilet paper,” but that stopped when the same
thing happened in Russia. As a result, “stories about ‘the panic in Europe’ have
become a little less,” he continues. And
stories about “panic and rumors” in Russia have become more frequent. Thus, “the
information boomerang has come back.”
No comments:
Post a Comment