Mikhail Lesin, one of the founding fathers of Russia Today was found dead in a Washington D.C. Hotel and almost everyone knows the cause of death was blunt force trauma. As the US papers have said recently, that doesn't mean he was beaten to death. It could be a fall or other form of accident, but there is a lot of trauma to account for. He didn't fall out of bed. Nobody knows. Several papers also said Russia Today said he died of a heart attack. As it turns out that is true. In November, RT said just that, almost before the ink had dried on his death certificate. In a story yesterday they said the same thing everyone else is saying.
This reminds me of the Ukraine where stories appear and disappear with the pace of press reports. The Russians are always first to report, and they report what they want people to believe, not necessarily what actually happened. A significant number of people will continue to believe the first story they read, and never go back to new stories that follow.
The story here is credibility. How do we believe anything RT says, when it so blatantly distorts the news to fit what the Kremlin wants its own people to believe? There is some satisfaction in the knowledge that even the Russians do not believe what they read there.
No comments:
Post a Comment