Post by Odin of Ossetia on Sept 14, 2004 17:54:13 GMT -5
Bieslan and the Media
By Robert Bruce Ware
Published on September 14, 2004
It is important for the Ossetians, Ingush, Chechens, and Russians to come to an understanding of what happened in Beslan, and it is important for the Anglo-phone media to report on their efforts to do so.
Eventually, as their efforts progress, or fail to do so, there will also be a need for critical Western commentary, since it is also important that people in the West should come to their own understanding of these events. Yet this is very far from the role that has been taken been taken by much of the American and British media during the Beslan tragedy and its aftermath. Instead nearly all reporting has indulged in a disjointed, hysterical, and grotesque frenzy of sanctimony, complacency, and condescending didacticism in articles that drip saliva all over their revelation’s of President Putin’s weakness.
I have often felt frustrated over the imbalanced and misleading American and British reporting of events in the North Caucasus. But this is the first time that I’ve felt ashamed. I remember how Russian officials and ordinary Russian citizens responded after 9/11, with many words of sympathy and kindness, with flowers and candles, and long empathetic vigils outside the American embassy in Moscow. Last weekend President Bush joined Russian tennis players in their assurance that Americans and Russians will stand “shoulder to shoulder”. But our media have made us look so small as to seem that our shoulders would not reach those of our Russian friends.
There is much to be said for the view that President Putin is making mistakes in the North Caucasus, and that his mistakes, and those of his subordinates all the way down to the troops in the field, are partly responsible for the troubles in the region. But clearly the last week has not been the time to say it. All of these recriminations over Russian mistakes have been stated, restated, and grossly overstated ad infinitum in the past. The deaths of the children of Beslan should not have been used as an excuse to restate them yet again. Western journalists and commentators have exploited this tragedy for the sake of their personal, professional, and ideological agendas, and have disgraced us all by doing so.
Some of the West’s better moments in the past week have included: the unreservedly empathetic and supportive statements of US Ambassador Vershbow and President Bush; US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher’s sustained resistance to persistent efforts by American journalists to badger him into criticism of Russian actions; American humanitarian aid for Beslan; and a scattering of articles that were primarily empathetic or constructive by writers such as John Helmer, Fiona Hill, Peter Lavelle, Anatol Lieven, and Ira Straus.
The West’s worst moments defy enumeration, but here are a few that washed in on this morning’s tide: The claim by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser in this morning’s Washington Post that: “In 1999, (Putin) promised Russians a two-week war that would crush the separatist enemy.” (Washington Post, September 13, 2004, “Chechnya War a Deepening Trap for Putin In Confronting Separatists”, Russia Relies on Force By Susan B. Glasser and Peter Baker) The statement about “two weeks” has more to do with Yeltsin in the first war than Putin in the second. And how could the second war have been an effort to “crush the separatist enemy”? The war began when Russia defended its Dagestani citizens against a series of bloody and devastating invasions from Chechnya? Prior to those invasions, Russia had tolerated Chechen independence despite daily provocations for three long and horrific years. This statement by the Washington Post reporters is not only factually inaccurate, but grossly misleading.
Or take the New York Times article titled “Chechen Rebels Mainly Driven by Nationalism”, by C.J. Chivers and Steven Lee Myers (September 12, 2004). This article is largely devoted to the substantiation of connections between Chechen militants and international Islamist organizations, though readers who glance at its headline and opening sentence would be forgiven for concluding the opposite.
Then there’s the latest strange affair involving Anna Politkovskaya. On September 9, in a Guardian article that was helpfully titled “Poisoned by Putin”, Ms. Politkovskaya provided her readers with the following innuendo: “Then followed a long evening at Vnukovo airport. Crowds of journalists were trying to get on a plane south, just as flights were being postponed. Obviously, there are some people who would like to delay our departure.”<br>
I have flown from Vnukovo airport to the North Caucasus several times. On every occasion my flight was delayed. On average, my flights out of Vnukovo have been delayed by about three hours. On one occasion my flight was delayed by more than ten hours. Yet on none of those occasions did I, or any of the North Caucasians with whom I was traveling, or anyone else with whom I had contact on any of those flights, pass our time in that stale and airless terminal by contemplating conspiracy theories. As far as I could tell, we all simply concluded that our flights were delayed because of general incompetence. Anyone who flies to the North Caucasus knows that one reason flights are routinely delayed is because flights from the North Caucasian cities to Moscow are routinely overbooked. Usually it takes a while to determine who is actually entitled to a seat. So the plane arrives late to Vnukovo, and then the delay is compounded while the plane is being prepared for the return trip. I know lots of people who fly regularly between Vnukovo and the North Caucasus and all of them are generally satisfied if the plane departs on the same day that it was scheduled and they eventually find a seat on it. Anna Politkovskaya knows all of this, and she should not have led her readers to believe anything to the contrary.
In the same article Ms. Politkovskaya claims that she was poisoned by a toxic substance that was deliberately placed in her tea during the flight. Maybe she was. Her claim is supported by the facts that she lost consciousness, required hospitalization, a nurse whispered something about poison, and medical records relating to the incident were unavailable. Certainly, it is up to Ms. Politkovskaya to interpret her own experience. Evidently, she is comfortable leaping to the claim that security agents "neutralized me because they knew I was going there to set up talks" (as quoted in the Time article below). It seems that she is also comfortable with the Guardian’s claim that she was “Poisoned by Putin”.
Yet it might have been helpful to consider other hypotheses before numerous Western media began uncritically repeating her claim (e.g. Time Europe, September 20, 2004, Communication Breakdown Could the Kremlin have talked its way out of the massacre at School No. 1?” by J.F.O. MCALLISTER). For example, I have never visited the North Caucasus without getting sick. In some cases, the cause was food poisoning connected with inadequacies of food storage and preparation, such as those which sometimes occurs in some of the food concessions at Vnukovo airport, and on some of the regional flights to the North Caucasus. Yet I never concluded from any of my bouts with illness in the North Caucasus that someone was deliberately trying to prevent me from accomplishing my work. I concluded that I came into contact with bad food, or that I suffered any of the other problems that constantly plague travelers in far flung regions. Conversely, I have hosted North Caucasians who have become ill as a consequence of their travels to the United States. Moreover, there is nothing unusual about documents and records being unavailable in the North Caucasus.
Now, everyone who travels to the North Caucasus knows that everyone who travels to the North Caucasus frequently gets sick, and that documents are frequently unavailable. So why are so many reporters uncritically repeating Politkovskaya’s claim. It appears that either they have never traveled to the North Caucasus, or that they are deliberately choosing to ignore these simple possibilities. Yet if either of these is the case, then such reporters have no business writing such articles.
Finally, there are the endless comparisons in the Western media of Beslan with the Dubrovka hostage crisis in 2002. Who can forget that more than 800 hostages were held by Chechen terrorists in a Moscow theater? Who can forget that more than 120 hostages died when, in a flawed and risky attempt to immobilize the terrorists, Russian authorities pumped gas into the theater, and then failed to provide adequately for their treatment? All of those journalists and commentators who have mentioned these events in recent weeks have done so in order to illustrate their insinuations that Russian authorities are fundamentally immoral and incompetent. Perhaps someday, when we’ve allowed time for the facts to come forward, and for the Russians themselves to review them, our commentators might be justified in claims such as these. But that certainly is not the case today. Meanwhile, I can’t help but think that if American authorities or Israeli authorities had managed to rescue 80 percent of the hostages in a situation such as Dubrovka, the same media would have hailed it as a brilliant triumph.