Voice of Russia
December 13, 2013
Russian media has provided an outlet for the censored – Rick Rozoff
John Robles
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On December 9 Russian President Vladimir Putin issued a decree covering major changes in Russian state run media including the Voice of Russia. Regular VoR contributor Rick Rozoff discussed his reaction to the changes with the VoR’s John Robles and stated that the VoR and Russian media have been very important, especially in the last five years, in bringing the world real news and alternative to western media which is either under US White House control or act as mere echo chambers parroting US Government lines and does not allow important political figures, academicians and others to have their voices heard.
Hello, this is John Robles, I am speaking with Rick Rozoff, the Owner and Manager of the Stop NATO website and international mailing list.
Robles: Hello Rick, how are you this evening?
Rozoff: Very good John. It’s good to be with you again
Robles: You had some interesting things you wanted to say about the Voice of Russia, a station that has been dear, of course to myself, and I think to yourself as well.
Rozoff: Yes, I woke up yesterday morning, as did I think some of the more news conscious people throughout the world and saw the article originally on the Novosti site announcing the fact that Russian information agency Novosti and Voice of Russia would be effectively closed and either folded into a broader media outlet, medium outlet, to be called Russia Today, and I was … we were all shocked of course to see that, me particularly because…
Robles: Well it’s a little bit unclear about the name because in Russian it is supposed to be Russia Segodnya, and it is going to be a new organization that is going to include the Voice of Russia, I believe, and elements of RIA Novosti and some other media organizations. So, whether it is related to RT, or Russia Today, that’s just in the direct translation for it, as far as I know. But anyway, go ahead.
Rozoff: No, thanks for the clarification. But I was particularly concerned, because it is no secret, but I think it is far past time that the world recognizes it, is that for the past decade, I would say definitely the last 5 years, let’s date it from that point, is that the Russian news media has presented the world with an opportunity to hear an alternative to the control of news emanating from, say, the US White House and State Department, and basically nothing other than echo chamber responses from the rest of the western world, and the mass media from the west that is.
So, almost slavishly, dutifully, obedient to the demands of the western governments, so that, we look at the last 5 years, it’s been sites like Voice of Russia, RT and others that have presented not only alternative news to the world – and this is not simply in international affairs; it’s on incidents like the Occupy Movement here in the United States. You’ve interviewed several leading members of the Occupy Movement. You know, Julian Assange and Wikileaks, again Voice of Russia, RT and other Russian sites have given an unbelievable outlet to dozens, scores, maybe hundreds of American academicians, political officials. You’ve interviewed leading members, including the presidential candidate of the US Green Party for example, that could never have dreamt of getting that kind of media exposure in their own country, surely.
One is reminded of the Biblical line about “no prophet is without honor except in his own land”, but in any other national media could pinpoint many cases we are talking … you interviewed people like retired professor of economics Edward Herman, people like Stephen Cohen or Noam Chomsky, and others have been on Russian media or television and radio regularly over the past 5 years and would never appear, not only on the corporate media in this country, but even on so-called public television or radio, that simply wouldn’t be an opportunity available to them.
So, what happens with the Russian news media is an issue, not only of concern to Russian people, and we are talking about foreign language media here. English in the first place because surely in the age on the Internet English is the universal language, and unless there is an outlet countering what’s been put out there by Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, major commercial media like Washington Post, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal and so forth, and people aren’t going to hear anything, and they’re going to believe that that very limited perspective is the only one that exists. That is why the role of the Russian news media, foreign language, English language in the first place, is just vital. There is no way I can overestimate how important it is to the world right now.
Robles: In what international situations or what international events would you say in the last 5 years or so that the Russian media has played a key role in informing and maybe influencing events?
Rozoff: I would almost turn that around, and I am not trying to be paradoxical here in saying in what area or event have they not played that role. But surely, if we are just talking about last 5 years, and we are talking about the Syrian crisis, which in large part has been resolved through Russian intervention, diplomatic in the first instance.
But let’s talk about something going on right now. The spokesman for the US State Department, Victoria Nuland, who under current President Obama’s predecessor George W. Bush was US permanent envoy, that is Ambassador to NATO, met with her for 2 hours today reportedly with Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovich, and the western media is full of – and this kind of resonates here in Chicago – stating “the whole world is watching” according to Nuland – many of your listeners are maybe old enough to remember that slogan in 1968, it was used by the protesters outside the democratic nominating convention here in Chicago.
But the fact is the world is watching, and what we see in, particularly in the internet age, in the worldwide web – the age of the worldwide web – is that the battle of ideas, the battle of news, who has accurate information, who has alternative perspectives is more important I would argue than it’s ever been prior to this in history. It was certainly important during the Cold War, it was important during World War II, but in this era right now what has happened with the weakening and ultimately the demise of the Soviet Union starting in the late 1980s was that a vision emerged, an American vision of the world, and not that of the American people but that of the American elite, and the American government, Wall Street and the Pentagon and the White House and it has been allowed, it has been permitted to hold sway pretty much uncontested for 25 years.
And it is only with the emergence of serious rivals within the world news community that we can begin to have anything like a balanced perspective on events internationally or for that matter within the United States where there is media, and there is news control that narrowly constricts the range of topics and perspectives that’s permitted to emerge so that again the world … the people can talk about Al Jazeera, they can talk about other outlets but there is nothing comparable to the role that’s been assumed by the Russian news media in the last 5 years. It has simply revolutionized the perspective.
People wake up in the morning around the world and they don’t go to the New York Times because they know what they are going to get, and they may not go to Le Monde, they may not go to the London Times but I think they are increasingly turning to sites like Voice of Russia, Interfax, ITAR-TASS, and other Russian sites. That is why it is so indispensable to maintain and independent and principled position for the world, reading and listening and viewing public.
Robles: Now this is a particular concern to Russian officials, and to Russians as well, when discussing international media outlets and Russian media outlets. How do you think, or what is your opinion on how Russian media outlets have promoted Russian policies, Russian ideas and Russia as a country? Do you think it has been fair? Do you think it has been effective at all?
Rozoff: Effective, I would say, yes, keeping in mind that we have decades … there’s decades of catching up to do, and there is a fact that I think – I don’t want to say subconsciously – but intuitively or implicitly most of the world tends to take the New York Times view of the world, or the London Times view of the world, without even realizing perhaps that they do. They just are so inured or accustomed to reading that sort of news that they assume it is true without asking themselves if there is a different perspective to take.
But, so that the Russian news media internationally, even in terms of portraying its own country, and its own government’s behavior at home and abroad is fighting an uphill battle. There is just no question about it.
We also have to keep in mind, and this is a very serious issue, is that with the emergence of – it wasn’t called détente of course, but I had almost want to say détente too – during the Gorbachev-Reagan administrations and the former Soviet Union in Russia, where there was a thawing of the Cold War as it would have been described and ultimately the dissolution, and the fragmentation of the Soviet Union in 1991, there was a period in which people thought “well, we are entering into an age of tolerance and cooperation in the world, – and anything but that has occurred.
But I think what is extremely significant is that with the end of Soviet communism there was no end of Russophobia, that not only continued but I would argue in many ways it has been escalated. So that the Cold War era Russophobic hysteria that was … kept the respective populations of western countries terrified – the Russian bear ready to bounce on and devour them – far from having disappeared with the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, has been carefully cultivated. That fire has been stoked consistently by western, both government and media personnel, and it is necessary for the Russian media and another world media to counteract that, in particular.
There is a sort of assumed or unspoken Russophobic world view that unless it is taken pretty firmly, could lead to some very catastrophic international incidents. We don’t have to enumerate them but the so-called US missile shield in Europe comes to mind most immediately, US and allied NATO penetration of the Arctic circle with their militaries.
There are so many incidents where stirring up the … blowing on the embers of 60 or 80 years of Russophobic cultivation of unconscious thinking amongst the populace in the west could have dangerous consequences that has to be counteracted. I don’t know who other than the Russian media can do that.
Robles: I see, but do you think that our Russian media has been effective in countering for example NATO?
Rozoff: I think it’s been principled. Now one thing I’ll have to say compared to somebody, here we are talking about myself, who has been reading the American media for maybe 45 years pretty attentively, is that the Russian media is far more balanced. I simply have to say there is, even in government media, or government funded government-controlled media, there are negative statements made about the government I would not expect to see, in the corporate media in the United States, again the New York Times, or the Washington Post, or the Chicago Tribune, or the Los Angeles Times. And I think there is an effort to portray both sides of the story in a way that is conspicuously absent from the major western dailies and the western press agencies.
The fact that Interfax in particular is starting to be picked up by other sources is something I think is significant. I think that Russia needs their press agencies to be more effective than they’ve done. Up until now, let’s be honest about it, two American, one German and one French, maybe if you want to throw in BBC, one British wires, press services are just ruling the world – the Americans of course, are Reuters and Associated Press, the German is Deutsche Presse-Agentur, the French’s Agence France-Presse and then the BBC. Almost every online newspaper in the world is either running stories from those 5 agencies or is rewriting them under their own byline, but essentially that is where they get the news. You see it with the sort of bias in any situation from the current one in Ukraine to the recent one in Syria, you have the same world view projected, and it is a world view of a tiny percentage of the human race.
Robles: Right, I’ve taken … I’m sorry, if we could get into that in just a minute because that’s a very, very, very serious and a very important point and one that some people might not even notice exists there. A lot of people say, “Oh well it doesn’t matter, I am not political”, but when for example covering Syria and all the above news agencies you just mentioned, when the Syrian conflict was looking like it was going to turn into a hot war, of course they were all parroting words like “dictator”, and “oppression”, and “freedom fighters”, and things like that, and “regime”.
Rozoff: Yes, that stretches euphemism to the breaking point surely, and you are correct about that. These are intentionally loaded terms, they are not only biased but they are meant to evoke emotional responses rather than even a thinking one. And that they negatively portray targets of US foreign policy, positively promote as you are indicating what are little better than operatives, the criminal nature frequently, the terrorist nature frequently who are then routinely in the western press agencies and the newspapers that cover their material, you know referred to as the State Department wants them to referred to.
And we are seeing now what could be a major military altercation in the East China Sea where China’s announced an air zone over what China knows as the Diaoyu and the Japanese as Senkaku Islands. And it is the typical US press wire services where we refer to them 100% as Senkaku.
Read more: http://voiceofrussia.com/2013_12_13/Russian-media-has-provided-an-outlet-for-the-censored-Rick-Rozoff-0751/
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