When the dust settles, will the West’s media coverage get a passing grade, or will we find, at times, we allowed our sympathy for the Ukrainian cause to overlook matters we shouldn’t?
  • davel [he/him]@lemmy.mlEnglish
    103·
    2 months ago

    Are we getting caught in an information trap when it comes to Ukraine?

    A.K.A. a bubble.

    This wouldn’t be unusual — it’s what happened in the run-up to the post-9/11 Iraq war, when American and British media were arguably far too unquestioning of Western officials’ claims that Saddam Hussein was awfully close to having a nuclear bomb or had a huge stockpile of weapons of mass destruction.

    I wasn’t fooled twenty years ago, either.

    Unfortunately, it seems we’re now in danger of repeating this very same mistake, as we all too quickly dub those who question current Western strategy as defeatists or accuse them of advancing Russian propaganda.

    We’ve been called Russian bots relentlessly for the last 2.5 years.

    Problem is, we’re not hearing these counter-arguments enough in mainstream Western publications, or at the high-level conferences that bring Western and Ukrainian officials together — like last weekend’s annual Yalta European Strategy (YES) Conference held in Kyiv.

    And yet it’s the socialists who are told they’re living in a bubble.

    • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlOP
      73·
      2 months ago

      The funniest part of the article is this bit though

      There are certainly credible and cogent arguments to the contrary, such as those stating that a weakened Russia simply won’t have the wherewithal to attack NATO anytime soon, whether it wins or loses, and that Putin’s forces are clearly no match for sophisticated, well-equipped Western armies.

      It kind of makes the whole article self-referential. After two years of war it’s become crystal clear that NATO weapons and tactics have utterly failed against the Russian army. Yet, the article is still boldly proclaiming that Putin’s forces are clearly no match for sophisticated, well-equipped Western armies. The cognitive dissonance on display here is really amazing.

  • Amerikan Pharaoh@lemmygrad.ml
    2·
    2 months ago

    If it’s a primarily-English speaking outlet, then I can answer this question immediately for the crackers: no. They’re not. Ukraine was exactly how I knew there wouldn’t be a single cracker that had an issue with what Israel is doing to Palestine. As soon as I knew no one would stop the Banderites, I knew no one was invested in stopping the Zionists either.

    No hard questions were asked; all these crackers did was throw blurs over the insignias we called out before simply not taking photos if they couldn’t get around the nazi patches.

    • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlOP
      2·
      2 months ago

      What’s notable is that we now have mainstream western media effectively acknowledging that western media has been lying. Thing about material reality is that it always wins in the end. You can spin a narrative for a while, but sooner or later you have to reconcile it with what’s actually happening in the world.

      • AntiOutsideAktion [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
        2·
        2 months ago

        But of course the retraction is run on page 16 and only printed once. The eclipsing majority of libs will go to their graves thinking the Uyigurs were genocided.

      • CommunistCuddlefish [she/her]@hexbear.net
        1·
        2 months ago

        Thing about material reality is that it always wins in the end. You can spin a narrative for a while, but sooner or later you have to reconcile it with what’s actually happening in the world.

        Well said