The British media and especially the BBC are anti-Russian.
The language they use is always purposely misleading. The Russian point of view is never considered. The western media on the whole start from an assumed point that Russia is always in the wrong, always the aggressor, and every item reported is in the same vein. British media is like a mouthpiece for America.
The BBC even has its own propoganda channel in Russian: http://www.bbc.co.uk/russian/
Take turning the gas off to Ukraine: That has always been framed as nasty Russia spitefully turning the gas off on poor little helpless Ukraine. Very little is mentioned of the debts owed, that Ukraine steals the gas and prefers not to pay for it. “Corrupt country doesn’t pay its gas bill” is not a headline. “Evil Putin makes Ukrainian pensioners freeze in winter” is. You see?
What kind of unbiased media runs demonstrably untrue headlines like this?
Each week the Sunday Times, without fail, runs an anti-Russia story and has done for years. Sometimes two or three. Always the key is in the language.
For example: “Russia builds up troops on the border” – they don’t mention that these troops are inside Russia so are there quite legitimately.
“Russia turns off Ukraine’s gas” – well, they wouldn’t if they got paid for it.
“Kremlin-backed separatists” – well, how do we define “backed”? Morally? In spirit? Financially? They don’t say.
The western media declines to report on the Ukrainian government killing civilians. That is always glossed over. They will however gleefully repeat numbers killed by “Kremlin-backed separatists” or “pro-Russian gunmen”. Not “pro-independence gunmen” you will note.
I am all in favour of balance, but very few in the western media are balanced. Russia is always assumed to be in the wrong and the aggressor in the majority of the British media at least. When they start from that assumption, its not hard to see why balanced journalism becomes harder.
When a journalist takes his own prejudices and writes from that standpoint (which most of us do, but journos are supposedly trained to avoid doing so) what he writes will always contain the slant that his opinion dictates.
Remember, many of these people filing copy for the media have never been to Eastern Europe, let alone Russia. They are simply recycling and rewording stuff they find elsewhere. We saw silliness written about Putin “wanting to invade Poland” as evidence of that.
In recent days, I have noticed an overall change of tone in the American media, actually. Some of what I am reading in the American media is reasonably balanced. More so than I see over here. I am sensing a gradual shift in standpoint in the American media. Perhaps that is indicative of the administration taking a step back for a change and not wanting to become too deeply embroiled?
Over here in the UK, some of the weekend broadsheet editorials especially [that middle England reads to get a synopsis], are pretty mind blowing in that it shines through that the writer has a zero grasp of the history and the politics of the region. When one looks at the writers who understand the region, and who have spent time there, blokes like Peter Hitchens writes content that is hard to argue with for example, one gets a clearer picture.
Instead of reading and believing how the media chooses to demonise Putin unquestioningly, if people took the trouble (as I have) to actually go to the Kremlin’s website and read what the bloke actually says, rather than read an interpretation of it through media spin, he makes many valid points that the media never address; he has been requesting talks with anyone and everyone for months, but that is never reported.
What some call Russian propaganda is actually needed in order to balance out what everyone else writes in order that those who might form an opinion on their own, can do so having read both sides rather than several regurgitated versions of the same thing they *think* are different sources.