Russia: The revolution that isn’t getting televised
June 24, 2023
Leading historian Simon Schama noticed something interesting about the news coverage coming out of Russia:
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US broadsheet media lumberingly slow on the uptake w Russia
— Simon Schama (@simon_schama) June 24, 2023
He’s right.
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Just take a look at the front page of Saturday’s RealClearPolitics … and blanch.
I see one tiny reference to the less-read gray right column of the page, regarding the goings on in Russia, which involves a mercenary takeover of Russia’s top military command in Rostov and a march on Moscow, with a link to the official reaction of Vladimir Putin.
That’s not because RCP is unaware of what’s going on, but most likely, because they have next to nothing to work with.
There’s actually very little coverage of this Russia implosion in the mainstream press, with those of us who really want to know what’s going on having to turn to foreign sources, social media posts, real-time news strings, and blogs, some of which can be dubious or propaganda efforts.
It’s eerie. A story this huge is … not being covered by the press.
Compare and contrast with the wall-to-wall coverage of other big events, such as the Iraq invasion of Kuwait.
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Compare and contrast with the Russia-Russia-Russia collusion lies that the press couldn’t get enough of in its bid to Get Trump. Oh, Russia was important back then.
Part of the problem now for this weird lack of Russia coverage on a very newsworthy event is that there’s plenty of important news in the states surrounding the massive corruption of the Biden family that is also newsworthy.
Part of it is that it’s a complex story that is rapidly unfolding and easy to get wrong, easy to be victim to disinformation on, easy to be misled on, very hard to verify.
But the part that leaps out at me is that Russia, a huge country of more than 100 million people, no longer has any significant base of foreign correspondents covering events in that country.
That’s likely an effect of what happened earlier this year, when Russian security forces seized young Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and charged him with being a spy, which odds are very high he was not.
His prospects for getting out in some kind of spy exchange are very grim indeed, and the Biden administration is unusually feckless in securing that exit. In recent days, the Russians have delayed the trial for months now, likely hoping for an even bigger exchange of spoils to secure Gershkovich’s release. That may serve their interests, but it’s terrible for young Gershkovich and the rest of us, too.
Not surprisingly, the State Department has ordered all U.S.-based foreign correspondents, and pretty much anyone who can be nabbed as another potential hostage out of that country.
They’ve obliged.
That’s put a crimp on all news from Russia and pretty well shut the news stream down. Oh, there are efforts by most of the same mainstream news outlets, often with secondhand and foreign reporting based sources, but essentially, it’s cut the coverage from Russia, as if maintaining a base of foreign correspondents in Russia isn’t already monstrously expensive for news outlets as it is. With less news being reported, the U.S. public and probably the U.S. intelligence agencies, too, are forced to rely on fewer mainstream news stories, and more on things like Twitter Spaces, which amalgamates experts talking, working with the social media scraps that are out there.
That’s a new thing, in this age of mass media, wall-to-wall-coverage, big CNN spectaculars, and the internet in general. A bona fide insurrection is happening in Russia which could have momentous consequences if it succeeds (and even if it doesn’t succeed), and there’s barely any coverage.
Image: Twitter screen shot
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