International understanding of the Crimea situation is still pretty poor. Belief in a divided Ukraine is there. Its partly because a standard representation of an ethnic conflict had been successfully played. It is easier to treat it as another ethnic conflict (weve been watching so many on TV), rather than figure out how to treat an imagined/created one. Yet, its true the division is there (is not it normal to have different views?). Yet, its possible to communicate the division in Ukraine in a different way: as the gap between the informed and the uninformed; the difference between those who apply critical thought and those who believe in state TV; between those who believe that truth exists and those who were convinced by the cynics that ‘there is no truth, they all lie, there are no laws, they all steal, everything is relevant’. It’s not just a question of the Kremlins propaganda, but the very nature of the media who need polarization. It just wasn’t easy for me to explain to Ukrainian editors that the ‘Muslim Brotherhood’ does not represent half the Egyptian population, but just 2.5 million out of 80 million; even if they did elect the president, the opposition did not mean just the opposition party, but actually all the various people who wanted the rule of law. Western journalism in Ukraine is challenged by the practice: ‘there are two points of view, and the truth is somewhere in between’. Weve just talked with a Salvadorian journalist and agreed the truth does not lie in the middle of different opinions, but where the facts and evidence are. Similarly, in case of Ukraine journalists (and their editors) did not have time to consider that it was not anymore coverage of the party politics (correspondingly reporting on ‘blue’ against ‘red’/conservatives against liberals). That the coverage of Ukraine became similar to reporting the war against drug cartels or mafia groups: there is a crime, and there are those who demand the observance of the law. And coming back to Crimea. Unfortunately, there arent any other data besides the so-called ‘referendum’ - there are just those percentages made up out of the blue. It seems like it doesn’t matter because they are still made up, but there are some other figures. At least some.
Posted on: Sat, 05 Apr 2014 19:33:08 +0000
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