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In my recent comments, I expressed astonishment how US and Western media plus ‘progressive’ bloggers participate in pure propaganda on global issues foregoing independent reporting and historical facts. It appears I’m not alone and watched some issues at CNN and read the following articles …

Christiane Amanpour goes after Wolf Blitzer on CNN

During a discussion on CNN about the situation in Ukraine, Christiane Amanpour went after Wolf Blitzer for making what Amanpour thought was a blanket statement:

    CNN hosts Christiane Amanpour and Wolf Blitzer sparred with one another on Monday after Blitzer quoted a Russian official who said pro-European Ukrainians are anti-Semites and fascists.

    “You have to be really careful by putting that across as a fact,” Amanpour said after Blitzer quoted Vitaly Churkin, the Russian Ambassador to the U.N. Security Council who said earlier today that “fascists and anti-Semites” were to blame for the unrest in Ukraine.

    “That’s what Vitaly Churkin said,” Blitzer countered.

Christiane Amanpour goes after Wolf Blitzer on CNN

We hope Blitzer enjoyed his lecture in responsible reporting from the “journalist” who referred to Raúl Castro as a “freedom fighter.”

Russia’s UN envoy Churkin replies to CNN anchor Amanpour

(RT) – Russian ambassador to the United Nations Vitaly Churkin has issued a response to Christiane Amanpour after the CNN anchor lashed out at the diplomat over his inability to appear on her show and brought his daughter into the equation.

In her Thursday show, Amanpour said:

“So you see all these worries from Europe and the United States, NATO, about possible future military moves.

And meantime, still we ask, who are these masked men? Russian President Putin says they’re not his troops, but nobody believes that. And as this photo shows, armed men in balaclavas surround a Ukrainian naval officer after the takeover of naval — takeover of naval headquarters in Sevastopol.

Continued below the fold …

These masked militia or whoever they are have now been made into the famous matryoshka dolls. And one more note: we continue to reach out to the Russian government for their comment, including officials such as UN Ambassador, Vitaly Churkin. We haven’t had much luck, but perhaps people like Churkin feel they don’t really have to leave their comfort zone.”

“Churkin’s own daughter is the US-based reporter for `Russia Today’ in New York. She’s shown here, quizzing US State Department spokesman, Jen Psaki, over this whole Ukraine crisis. And in the past, she’s even reported on her own father.”  

    —————————————————————————————————-

    —
    Dear Ms. Amanpour,

    I am taken aback by the personal attacks you resorted to in your show on March 20. I have known you for many years (including through a number of on-the-air interviews) and used to respect you professionally. So it was somewhat startling that my inability to give another interview provoked such an outburst.

    [Read on …]

Demonizing Putin Endangers America’s Security  by Stephen F. Cohen

(The Nation) Sept. 16, 2013 – Nonetheless, Putin-bashing on the right and the left, featuring mostly irrelevant, baseless or hyperbolic allegations about his political record, continues unabated with scarcely any countervailing voices in the mainstream media. It ranges from characterizing Putin as “a KGB thug” whose policies at home are akin to those of Saddam, Stalin and Hitler to claiming that his entire foreign policy, past and present, consists of the “restoration of the Russian empire” and “poking America in the eye.”

Do these commentators know that Putin did more to assist the US ground war in Afghanistan   after 9/11 than did any other head of state and continues to facilitate the supplying of American and NATO forces still fighting there? That he backed harsher sanctions against Iran’s nuclear ambitions and refused to sell Teheran a highly effective air-defense system? Or that his agencies shared with Washington counter-terrorism information that might have prevented the Boston bombings in April.

There are other Putinophobic follies — a Democratic senior senator tells CNN he “almost wanted to vomit” when he read Putin’s New York Times op-ed explaining his peace proposal. Republican John McCain was equally contemptuous of the article, dismissing it as “Orwellian” and Putin as a “mammoth ego.” And a liberal magazine’s Russia expert assured viewers that Putin really doesn’t care what happens in Syria, only about his own self-aggrandizement.

On Iranian New Year, Russia hints it May Swing Support to Tehran over Crimea Sanctions

(Informed Comment) – On Wednesday, the day before Norouz, another round of negotiations was concluded in Vienna, with some optimism that progress is being made.

As the meeting was breaking up with a sense of accomplishment, however,  Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov unloaded a bombshell: Russia may cease complying with economic and financial sanctions on Iran over its nuclear enrichment program.

    “We wouldn’t like to use these talks as an element of the game of raising the stakes taking into account the sentiments in some European capitals, Brussels and Washington… But if they force us into that, we will take retaliatory measures here as well. The historic importance of what happened in the last weeks and days regarding the restoration of historical justice and reunification of Crimea with Russia is incomparable to what we are dealing with in the Iranian issue.”

Distorting Russia

(The Nation) March 3, 2014 – The degradation of mainstream American press coverage of Russia, a country still vital to US national security, has been under way for many years. If the recent tsunami of shamefully unprofessional and politically inflammatory articles in leading newspapers and magazines–particularly about the Sochi Olympics, Ukraine and, unfailingly, President Vladimir Putin–is an indication, this media malpractice is now pervasive and the new norm.

There are notable exceptions, but a general pattern has developed. Even in the venerable New York Times and Washington Post, news reports, editorials and commentaries no longer adhere rigorously to traditional journalistic standards, often failing to provide essential facts and context; to make a clear distinction between reporting and analysis; to require at least two different political or “expert” views on major developments; or to publish opposing opinions on their op-ed pages. As a result, American media on Russia today are less objective, less balanced, more conformist and scarcely less ideological than when they covered Soviet Russia during the Cold War.

The history of this degradation is also clear. It began in the early 1990s, following the end of the Soviet Union, when the US media adopted Washington’s narrative that almost everything President Boris Yeltsin did was a “transition from communism to democracy” and thus in America’s best interests.

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