Masha Gessen Is A Fact-Challenged "State Propaganda Agent"
UPDATED below
Anti-Russia propagandist Marsha Gessen is a pet of neolibcons with regular space in Fred Hiatt's funny pages. Whenever she writes about Russia she gets, like the U.S. president, nearly every fact wrong. It is almost as if she has opinions and then creates facts to argue that her opinions are right and the only possible ones to have.
Ohh - the paragraph above is prejudice and slander?
But Gessen now confirms that she, in her own words, is not a journalist but a "state propaganda agent". She also confirms (again) that the facts she uses never cross the realm of reality.
Yesterday Mahsa Gessen stormed out of the taping of a radio show as she was upset about the professional background of one of the participants of the show. Explaining herself Gessen wrote:
The reason was that after a detailed preliminary discussion on topics and possible guests, the lineup had nothing in common with what was discussed and included a woman who was identified as a "Russian-American journalist." Neither the host nor the producers seemed to know anything about her - except that until earlier this yea she had worked for the Kremlin propaganda holding Russia Today and now is flogging a book supposedly critical of Putin. I have not read the book, but I do know that people who work for Russia Today are not journalists.
...
I tried to explain to [the producer] that my problem is not with a difference of opinion - it's with the misrepresentation inherent in calling state propaganda agents journalists.
So if people who work for state sponsored media, like Russia Today, are not journalists but "state propaganda agents" what then is Masha Gessen?
In September 2012, Gessen was appointed as director of the Russian Service for Radio Liberty, a U.S. government funded broadcaster based in Prague.
Besides her obviously total lack of self awareness Gessen, who did not name the person she ranted against but used slander like "that woman", was completely wrong about the facts. Anna Arutunyan, the journalist with whom state propaganda agent Masha Gessen would not discuss, now responded:
Since Masha Gessen decided to bring this up, I need to clarify some of her incorrect claims: I have never worked for RT. I have never worked for Voice of Russia. The quotes about Pussy Riot that she ascribes to me actually belong to Anton Fedyashin (all of which can be Googled). I worked at The Moscow News for ten years, until Dmitry Kiselyov took over RIA Novosti and work there became impossible due to my critical reporting. As I understand, Gessen was informed of who would be on the show well in advance (my info was on the Open Source website).
So Masha Gessen, through her most recent hissy fit, proved what the first paragraph said. She acknowledges that she is no journalist but, as she worked for a U.S. government sponsored media outlet, is a state propaganda agent. She also proved again that she has no factual base for her opinions and seemingly does not even care enough about those to do some two minute research.
But let me assure you that U.S. media will continue to love and pay her for her anti-Russian nonsense and for her oh-so-democratic calls for a popular coup against an elected Russian president with a 88% public approval rate.
UPDATE:
Gessen now posted a response to criticism of her rant. In it he gets, as you might have guessed, the "facts" wrong:
A few facts. I said Anna Arutunyan worked for the holding Russia Today. This holding owns the newspaper Moscow News. The newspaper has lived through many incarnations - it was most recently reinvented by the state as a hip offshoot of the propaganda machine, one that would kill the independent city magazine Bolshoi Gorod. The independent magazine has since essentially stopped to exist. Arutunyan worked there until earlier this year. What I said about VoR is that Arutunyan hosted an unconscionable show on Pussy Riot there right around the time Nadya and Masha were being shipped off to prison colonies. Here is a transcript of that show. http://voiceofrussia.com/.../radio.../70924886/90978067/. There is a lot more where that came from, like an article accusing those of us who were calling Putin authoritarian a few years back hysterical. So no, I am not confusing her with anyone. And no, Alexey Kovalev, being a critic of the regime when/if it suits you does not make a journalist of someone who works or has worked for the Kremlin's propaganda machine. And yes, that goes for you too
The facts marked bold are completely wrong. I dod not check the other claims.
There was and is no holding named Russia Today. The Moscow News was since 2007 partially owned by RIA Novosty. At the end of 2013 RIA Novosty was merged with the international radio service Voice of Russia to create Rossiya Segodnya (which can be verbally translated as "Russia Today" but is a different organization than the well known TV station Russia Today). The Moscow News was killed in that process and Anna Arutunyan left. The TV station Russia Today was and is largely independent but is since a few month ago under the same top management as Rossiya Segodnya.
Arutunyan never "hosted" a show on Voice of Russia. As one can clearly see from the transcript Gessen herself linked the host of the show was one Dmitry Babich and Arutunyan was one of five guests on a panel about Pussy Riot. Arutunyan has a total of six sentences in that panel and those are mostly about the church and the state. It is nothing nefarious about Pussy Riot in those.
Gessen again is completely away from any reality. She is even wrong about the content of the transcript she herself links to. Then again - as she claimed herself she is no journalist but a "State Propaganda Agent" for the United States. Facts then don't matter.
Posted by b on November 14, 2014 at 09:43 AM | Permalink
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