The Pot & the Kettle

O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us
To see oursels as others see us
It wad frae monie a blunder free us
An’ foolish notion
What airs in dress an’ gait wad lea’e us
An’ ev’n Devotion

-- Robert Burns "To A Louse"


(Bobby Burns’ famous poem about a lowly louse he saw creeping on a lady’s bonnet at church)

A more modern version might put it this way:

Oh, that God would give us the small gift
To be able to see ourselves as others see us
It would save us from many mistakes
And foolish thoughts
We'd be more humble about displaying our supposed status
And to what and how we apply our time and attention.

Hey Folks,

Ol' Bobby Burns knew what to wish for; too bad we so rarely get it. Yep, we're much better at seeing the dust speck in our neighbor's eye than the telephone pole in our own. The story below is a good example.

Now, don't get me wrong. I don't wish to defend capitalist, repressive Russia; I simply wish to point out capitalist, repressive America's hypocrisy.

My comments are in blue.

Ghosts of Soviet propaganda machine haunt Russian media
by Sebastian Smith Wed Jul 12

MOSCOW (AFP) - Dead bodies, striptease quiz shows, gala concerts for the secret services: nothing is off limits on Russian television (is that different here? or are they not counting cable?) -- except objective news coverage ("Foxxx News"?),say critics of media freedom under President Vladimir Putin (We have plenty of similar critics here too, but they aren't granted access to mainstream media outlets as often as stories like this one are).

Russian television today is light years from its drab Soviet incarnation, full of brash, sometimes stomach-churning programmes, as well as slick dramas.

But the ghosts of Soviet propaganda haunt the hourly state news broadcasts (propaganda? Remember Armstrong Williams, Jeff Gannon, and government produced TV "news" "reports" by actor/"reporters"?) dominated by dreary footage of Putin and his ministers at work, patriotic features on army life (Seen any patriotic shows on US TV in the last few years?), or alarming reports about the pro-Western governments in Georgia and Ukraine (heard any alarming reports about "lefty" governments in OUR neighborhood or in the Middle East lately?) .

Putin, who hosts the G8 summit in Saint Petersburg later this week, is accused of destroying media freedoms won in the 1990s by monopolising television and marginalising the few remaining independent newspaper journalists (Kkkarl Rove & W & others haven't worked their asses off to restrain and intimidate critical media outlets???) .

Russia ranks below countries like Egypt and Haiti in terms of journalists' freedom, the US-based organisation Freedom House says (I wonder how Russian-based organizations rank American journalists' freedom?) .

A study released in April by the Centre for Journalism in Extreme Situations, which defends journalists' rights in Russia, found that 91 percent of political news on the national television channel ORT was devoted to Putin and his "ruling powers." (I wonder how that works out on the state-lapdog Foxxx channel?)

Almost three quarters of that coverage was positive and the rest neutral, while opposition voices barely got a look in, the study found (hmmmm... sounds like Foxxx to me) .

"There's not censorship as there was in the Soviet Union," said the centre's director Oleg Panfilov, "but there is self-censorship, there's internal editorial censorship, when editors are too scared to give information, and there's censorship by owners." Hott damn!!! That's EXACTLY like it is here!!

The Kremlin has also come under fire in Washington and other Western capitals, but insists there is nothing to apologise for. Have you ever heard Dubya and the Neo-Coneheads apologise about anything?

Putin told a gathering of world media executives in June that Russia's media law "is recognised as one of the most liberal in the world" (It probably is, probably almost as liberal as our practices here, but that doesn't prove anything. Richard Nixon was liberal compared to Bush). And last week, his close advisor Vladislav Surkov dismissed allegations of anti-opposition bias on state-run television as "a matter of taste."

Nikolai Svanidze, a presenter on state-owned Rossiya channel, even suggests that Russians actually demand one-sided news (We say that the "sponsors" demand it) .

"Our guests from the United States and European countries may not understand what I'm talking about, but the classic Soviet viewer is not used to alternatives," he said. "It's tiring to have a choice because you have to think." (Sounds like what conservatives might assert about American viewers. To some extent, are they correct [e.g. Foxxx viewers] ?) .

The Kremlin's defenders also point to the lively Internet scene in Russia and several high-quality newspapers which frequently publish criticism of the authorities. Our own freedom-loving government is presently working to make the internet more efficient for wealthy profit-oriented corporations and less efficient and effective for regular folks who might have independent ideas but not a lot of money.

But experts said newspapers and Internet sites have a puny impact compared to the three national television channels, which reach almost all this vast country's 143 million people. Serious newspapers rarely have circulations of much more than 100,000. Similar situation here.

"There are still media outlets that are not controlled, but those voices are almost totally irrelevant in Russian politics and with the Russian people," said Maria Lipman, an expert on Russian politics with the Carnegie Moscow Center think tank. How much effect does Air America have?

"Free voices are for all practical purposes dissident voices." Ahhhh-ha!!!!

A free media was seen by many as one of the biggest achievements of former president Boris Yeltsin's rule, reversing abruptly from 2000 when Putin took over.

Putin accused media barons of trying to undermine the state (an American corporation would ALWAYS think of America and her people FIRST!! Halliburton? Enron? GE? Pfiser? Sure!!) and in 2001, state-run gas company Gazprom took over the trailblazing television channel NTV. Several leading publications were shut down.

Gazprom has since gone on to buy Ekho Moskvy radio and the once highly authoritative daily Izvestia, while other Kremlin-linked businesses have also moved into the media sector (following Rupert's lead).

But Margarita Simonyan, head of the new English-language 24-hour channel Russia Today and a rising media star, says that press freedom under Yeltsin is a myth.

"Television was as much an instrument for corporate aims (sponsors) as any other," she said. "The idea that television was free in the 1990s is hilarious." Does anyone seriously believe it is "free" here?

Simonyan also defended the blanket coverage given to the Kremlin on the main channels.

"The state channels show the president of Russia," she said. "State television should tell the people what the state is doing."

Sergei Parkhomenko, who lost his job as editor of the Itogi news magazine under Putin, blamed Russian society.

"Freedom of speech came as a gift. It fell from the sky. But people quietly let it go. Now they struggle to remember why it is they need it," he said. If this last comment doesn't fit the good ol' US of A, nothing does!!!!

- Uke Man