Editor’s Note: This feature separates Ukraine’s friends from its enemies. The Order of Yaroslav the Wise has been given since 1995 for distinguished service to the nation. It is named after the Kyivan Rus leader from 1019-1054, when the medieval empire reached its zenith. The Order of Lenin was the highest decoration bestowed by the Soviet Union, whose demise Russian President Vladimir Putin mourns. It is named after Vladimir Lenin, whose corpse still rots on the Kremlin’s Red Square, 100 years after the October Revolution he led.
Ukraine’s Friend of the Week: Jamal Khashoggi
The world has been shocked by the horrific details of the killing of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi on Oct. 2. Khashoggi disappeared after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, to obtain documents that would have allowed him to marry.
After his disappearance, gruesome details about his murder in the consulate began to be leaked to the Turkish press, presumably by the Turkish intelligence services.
The Saudis at first lied that Khashoggi had left the consulate, and only on Oct. 20 put out the absurd cover story that the 59-year-old journalist had been killed in a fistfight with 15 people while being interrogated. In fact, it appears the assassination was premeditated: Khashoggi was attacked, drugged and dismembered. A body double later wore his clothes and walked around Istanbul to provide “fake” CCTV footage to try to show that the journalist had left the consulate alive.
Khashoggi was a critic of the Saudi government, which is a monarchy, and therefore by definition autocratic.
Freedom of expression is not permitted in the kingdom, and Khashoggi was forced into exile for publishing articles critical of Saudi Arabia’s Islamic system of government, and for criticizing the actions of the Kingdom’s crown prince, Mohammad bin Salman, the powerful deputy prime minister of the kingdom (King Salman is the prime minister.)
Some of the 15 Saudis who turned up at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul just before Khashoggi arrived have since been identified as being bodyguards or associates of Prince Mohammad, and according to Sir John Sawers, a former head of the UK’s foreign intelligence service MI6, all the evidence points to Prince Mohammad being behind the murder of the journalist.
Ukraine has seen many murders of journalists over the years of its independence, including the abduction and beheading of Georgiy Gongadze in 2000 during the (semi-)autocratic rule of the country’s second president, Leonid Kuchma. The person who ordered Gongadze’s killing has never been brought to justice.
In Russia, already a full-blown autocratic state under its long-time leader President Vladimir Putin, journalists are regularly harassed and killed. In Turkey, which is descending into autocracy under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, more than 200 journalists have been jailed since a coup attempt on July 15, 2016.
Violence and repression of journalists can thus be seen as a barometer of pressure on freedom in a society – the more autocratic a country, the worse the persecution of journalists.
According to the United Kingdom news magazine, the Economist, the numbers of journalists jailed worldwide is at its highest since the 1990s, and only 61 countries in the world (less than a third) had a free press in 2017. In the Middle East, only Israel has a somewhat free press. The Economist says studies link a free press to a healthy democracy and decreased levels of corruption. The freedom barometer readings worldwide are bad and rising.
Some of the blame for that has to go to certain politicians in democratic countries, who are undermining public trust in the press by branding unfavorable reports “fake news” and pandering to blatantly partisan media. The practice recalls that used in Germany, where the term “Luegenpresse” or “lying press” was used by various political forces to discredit the liberal press from the mid-19th century to 1930s Nazi Germany.
The liberal democracies set the tone in respect for universal rights and freedoms in the world. If they fail to live up to their own principles, it only encourages autocracies like Saudi Arabia and Russia to become more abusive.
The countries of the civilized world, including Ukraine, should thus condemn the murder of Khashoggi in the firmest terms, and impose strict sanctions on Saudi Arabia, including refusing to sell it weapons (which Prince Mohammad has been using to prosecute a barbaric military campaign in neighboring Yemen.)
In solidarity with journalists around the world we posthumously honor Khashoggi as Ukraine’s Friend of the Week and winner of the Order of Yaroslav the Wise. Let his murder, and the murders of other journalists around the world in recent years, not go unpunished.
Ukraine’s Foe of the Week: Olga Skabeeva
While media are being undermined by their political leaders in the West, in Russia propagandists posing as journalists are helping political leaders undermine the media.
The Russian propaganda outlets RT and Sputnik, which masquerade as genuine news sources, are well-known in the West. Less known is that TV audiences in Russia are fed a very similar diet of propaganda on state TV.
Since Russian dictator Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000, Russian media have gradually come under Kremlin control, and the few remaining independent outlets, like TV Rain, have been forced off the airwaves or are available only on a subscription basis. The mass media faithfully toe the Kremlin line.
It’s not that they are under the direct control of the Kremlin, however. Rather, Winston Smith-like, they use their understanding of Kremlin political orthodoxy to guide their output. This can be clearly seen when a new or unusual event comes up, one on which the Kremlin has not yet expressed a position. State news simply does not report on the matter until the political orthodoxy has been set from above.
Russia’s propaganda journalists, such as Olga Skabeeva – Ukraine’s Foe of the Week and winner of the Order of Lenin – still compete for ratings and popularity. Skabeeva and her husband Evgeny Popov host the political talk show called 60 Minutes on state channel Rossiya-1 – one of the top three state channels in Russia.
Skabeeva and Popov’s show frequently bombards viewers with misinformation about Ukraine and the West. According to the European External Action Service East Stratcom Task Force, a unit set up by the European Union to counter Kremlin propaganda, recent lies told about Ukraine on 60 Minutes include:
* Oct. 4 – Glory to Ukraine is a carbon copy of the Nazi greeting “Heil Hitler”;
* Oct. 5 – Ukraine was “thought up by Austro-Hungarian intelligence agents at the end of the 19th century”;
* Oct. 9 – Ukraine is governed by a fascist elite, Crimean Tatar leader Mustafa Dzhemilev is a terrorist who calls for the killing of Crimeans, Russia is not waging war on Ukraine, Ukraine is a Nazi dictatorship, there is no elected parliament in Ukraine;
* Oct. 12 – Ukraine has started a war on its own nation, there is a civil war in Ukraine and Russia has no part in it.
However, Skabeeva and Popov don’t lie simply for propaganda effect, it appears – sometimes they do it just for show. For instance, on the Oct. 17 edition of 60 Minutes, the hosts interviewed by phone a witness of the horrific school shooting in Kerch, in Ukraine’s Russian-occupied Crimea, which had occurred that day.
The witness, named by the program as “Alina Kerova,” gave a description of the attack, including all the details that had already been reported earlier by other media. During the interview, studio cameras cut to the somber faces of the guests. Kerova’s voice was halting and emotional throughout.
It was all a lie.
Alina Kerova, born in 2002, had actually been among the 21 victims of the shooter. She was already dead.
Noticing this, journalists from TV Rain, one of the few remaining independent media in Russia, contacted a classmate of Kerova, Viktoria Zhukova, who confirmed that Kerova was dead and the person interviewed by 60 Minutes was not her.
“I’m sorry. Alina died,” Zhukova said. “Of course it’s not her, and not her voice. We don’t have anyone (else) with that last name at the college, and even more so in the second year. I’d know Alina’s voice anyway.”
When contacted on Oct. 22 by TV Rain for an explanation, Skabeeva advised journalists to contact the press service of Rossiya-1. The press service told TV Rain it would try to clarify the situation and get back to them.
It has not done so.
Skabeeva seemed nonplussed when contacted by TV Rain for comment about the deception, so it is possible that she hadn’t been in on the trick. It is possible the production team or researchers for the show were at fault, but we are still left with the disturbing question: why use the name of one of the shooting victims? Was someone ghoulishly trolling the Russian viewing public, blatantly lying simply because they could?
Whatever the answer, this case underlines the point that Skabeeva and her ilk are not journalists, but propagandists, creators of a political unreality show for their masters in the Kremlin. Moreover, they lie even when they don’t have to, just to put on a “good” show – Rossiya-1, like other state channels, still competes for viewers and advertising rubles.
Everything they claim, even the names of interviewees, should be questioned, more.
