Charles Ganske has an interesting post about the war and the overheated anti-Russian reactions in the English-language  media, echoing my complaints about predictable Western commentary on Russia:

CNN briefly portrayed Russia as the big red USSR while showing Americans where South Ossetia and Georgia are on the world map. Hugh Hewitt, one of the most popular conservative talk radio show hosts in America, cited a report on the air from Austin-based Strategic Forecasting Inc. asserting that Russia was using the Georgia campaign to intimidate all of the former Soviet republics. The report, Hewitt seemed to imply, suggested a master plan by the Kremlin to revive the at least a rump Soviet Union through military might. Hugh Hewitt’s guest, Larry Kudlow, a popular conservative commentator who hosts the highly watched “Kudlow and Company” TV show on CNBC, called Russian leaders “war criminals”. A news announcer on the same national talk radio network said that Russian forces had reportedly killed 1,400 people in the region, even though this was actually the number claimed by the South Ossetians as victims of Georgian shelling and bombs. Headlines on AOL news said, “Russia Invades Small Neighbor”, which makes for a more dog bites man headline than, “Russia puts troops into small region invaded by former Soviet republic asserting sovereignty over disputed territory”. The U.S. taxpayer funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty website published a ridiculous article by Echo Moskvy radio’s Yulia Latynina, calling South Ossetia a “terrorist state” and comparing the region to the PLO or Hezbollah statelets in southern Lebanon — as if the South Ossetians were sending suicide bombers and rockets into Georgia.

Ganske then asks an important question:

…why do so many Americans, conservatives especially, who normally proclaim their distrust the media, accept it so unquestioningly on the subject of Russia? After all, it isn’t as if the same biases that lead many Americans to confess to pollsters that they have Obama fatigue from so many puff profiles of the Democratic presidential candidate do not also affect coverage of foreign affairs in the U.S. In other words, a media tendency to focus on compelling personalities, like Vladimir Putin, rather than report on a complex country like Russia from the bottom up. 

Ganske asks several questions that drive home just how persistent the anti-Russian bias in our media coverage is by the simple fact that virtually no one in the West ever asks them:

The question never seems to be raised: what if Russia’s neighbors are occasionally in the wrong? Were Ukraine and Belarus entitled to subsidized Russian gas at a quarter of the European price indefinitely? Is Georgia justified in forcing the issue of a separatist region with arms rather than negotiations? Should Poland host an American radar, supposedly designed to counter the Iranian missile threat, that can track anything in Russian airspace all the way to the Urals? Is Russia always doomed to be a nasty Bear roaming the woods looking for trouble?

The question about subsidized gas supplies is particularly important, since you will frequently hear about how Russia wields its energy supplies as an instrument of policy.  First of all, this is not all that incredible or even all that sinister, since the energy companies are state-run industries that are going to be used to give the government leverage overseas.  But even then the coverage of the change in subsidy levels was misleading, since it emphasized that the price was going up and neglected to note that Ukraine was still receiving the supplies at a heavily discounted rate.  Even so, what would normally have been greeted as a welcome reduction in government distortion of the market price was seen as a dastardly ploy to punish neighboring states.  

Ganske also addresses the important, if obvious point about double standards.  Missing from the discussion of double standards, however, is the extent to which Russian problems with Chechen terrorism have been treated very differently from the way our government has responded to domestic terrorist threats in other countries. 

Update: Greg Djerejian has a good post that covers a lot of ground.  Alex Massie also has a useful round-up of links along with his own comments from yesterday.

Filed under: foreign policy, politics