The ABC is receiving a lot of flak, particularly from Ukrainians, for on Monday airing a British documentary showing a journalist on or near the Russian side of the front lines.
The Ukrainian ambassador to Australia called the Four Corners episode “the journalistic equivalent of a bowl of vomit … It unquestioningly repeated and aired countless blatant lies, historical distortions, racist claims and propaganda narratives emanating from the Kremlin”.
A scene from the Sean Langan documentary Ukraine’s War: The Other Side, which was aired in Australia on the ABC’s Four Corners program.Credit: ABC
In response, an ABC spokesperson said The Ukraine War: the Other Side “adds to our understanding of this tragic conflict and shows the full, horrific impact of the war … Australian audiences have the right to watch it and make up their own minds”.
Indeed, you might ask, what is wrong with talking to Russian soldiers and people in the occupied Ukrainian city of Donetsk during a conflict that has frequently been shrouded in the fog of war?
If only the ABC wasn’t so extravagantly wide of the mark, both in its response and the decision to air the documentary.
Yes, it is rare for Western journalists who aren’t blatantly pro-Russian to report from the Russian side, due to extremely tight restrictions imposed by Russian authorities. And the program did show Russian soldiers’ and locals’ views on the war. But those views were unsurprisingly little different from those of many pro-regime or patriotic Russians interviewed in Moscow regularly, who have been fed the same propaganda diet by state-controlled media (the only ones remaining).
Journalist Sean Langan in a scene from his documentary.Credit: ABC
The film gave next to no sense of the real impact of the war on Russian soldiers. Their army and associated forces have seen perhaps 120,000 killed and 200,000 injured. Recent territorial gains lives have been won at the expense of sacrificing lives in human wave “meat grinder” tactics.
And the program completely ignored the impact of the war on Ukraine. It gave no account of the toll in human suffering and on the economy, of which I recently took stock.
The ABC’s Four Corners is spreading Russian propaganda
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20.03.2024
The ABC is receiving a lot of flak, particularly from Ukrainians, for on Monday airing a British documentary showing a journalist on or near the Russian side of the front lines.
The Ukrainian ambassador to Australia called the Four Corners episode “the journalistic equivalent of a bowl of vomit … It unquestioningly repeated and aired countless blatant lies, historical distortions, racist claims and propaganda narratives emanating from the Kremlin”.
A scene from the Sean Langan documentary Ukraine’s War: The Other Side, which........
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