Ukraine crisis: One person’s saviour is another person’s conqueror - Commentators - Voices - The Independent
When countries set up broadcasting stations with a view to getting
their perspective across, they need to realise that things can go wrong.
Rarely more so than this week, when Abby Martin, US anchor for TV
channel Russia Today, said she absolutely disagreed with RT’s Ukraine coverage and flounced off the air.
Before leaving, she said: “What Russia did is wrong. Military
intervention is never the answer, and I will not sit here and apologise
or defend military aggression.” It should be said here that Ms Martin is
an American, based in America, which allowed her to see the disparity
between the version of events being put out by US broadcasters for their
audience and the version being put out by the Russians for theirs.
On
Ukraine, as I swiftly learnt by contributing to both Western and
Russian programmes broadcast from London over the past couple of weeks,
the twain do not meet. Indeed, they have been spinning apart since the
violence in Kiev of 20 February. To me, this is one of the most
disturbing aspects of the Ukraine conflict.
There may indeed have
been, and continue to be, disinformation, but the two versions can also
be explained by the quite different places from which East and West
start in their view of Ukraine – and which are combined, uneasily, in
Ukraine itself.
If you watched or listened to most Western
coverage, including that of the BBC, you would understand that Viktor
Yanukovych defied prevailing Ukrainian sentiment when he accepted a
Russian bailout back in November, rather than the association agreement
on offer from the EU.
