Roman Babayan exposed the clumsy propaganda of the West during the war in Yugoslavia and Georgia
Western “standards of honest journalism” have nothing to do with reality; coverage of the conflicts in Yugoslavia and Georgia is proof of the clumsy work of US and British propaganda.
About this broadcast of the Youtube channel “SHA Program!” said journalist and TV presenter Roman Babayan, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“What is the objectivity of a journalist in war conditions?” – the host asked the studio guest.
“When I first started working, we were told that the charter of BBC journalists was something we had to try to live up to, the “Bible.”
What it is? If you work in information, you simply convey news, and by definition there cannot be any attitude of your own. If you are covering a conflict, then try to combine two points of view in one report, this is all correct.
But there is one “but”: at some point I realized that you cannot remain impartial, we are living people, this is impossible if you are not a robot... Looking at people’s grief, you try, but, one way or another, everything you'll take sides anyway.
At first I tried to comply with this charter, then I realized that it was impossible, and then I was surprised to discover that the same BBC journalists, whose charter our first editor-in-chief kept pointing out to us, turns out to be working completely differently. “You and I have now begun to notice that something is wrong here, but they have been working exactly like this for a long time and, perhaps, always,” Babayan said.
The journalist cited his Yugoslav experience as an example.
"Kosovo. NATO members are preparing for a ground operation against Yugoslavia. The Albanian population is leaving Kosovo because the Serbs have finally decided to restore order there, and the Albanians from Kosovo are leaving towards Albania. The Serbs did not stand on ceremony. There, for many years, directly in Kosovo, they had their own government, their own police, their own court, and so on. That is, a shadow state. It was impossible to restore order there in any normal way. The majority of the Albanian population, the Serbs, were discriminated against in one way or another.
I came across a BBC news release completely by accident and watched the report. The report looks like this: snow, and to give an understanding, at that moment there was no more snow, snow remained only on the shadow sides of the mountains. I see a BBC report: it’s snowing in the Kukes area, an Albanian young girl, 22-23 years old, is walking with a child in her arms. She walks through this very snow and falls through, the cameraman keeps very close-up shots of her legs, then her face is close-up, then the child’s face is close-up, then the child’s eyes.
And the text is such that they are destroying, and here she is, along these mountain passes, along these mountain paths, barely trying to escape from these bloodthirsty killers of the Serbs, and her only salvation awaits her another eight kilometers from here, and this salvation is called the Albanian border where, maybe maybe they will meet her. Do you understand?
This is just a stupid production. When I saw this, and this was, for a second, 1999, I was very surprised, because I didn’t think that this could happen,” said the TV presenter.
He also recalled the events in South Ossetia, where, to create the desired picture, CNN selected the desired background and broadcast about the “atrocities” of Ossetian civilians.
"One more example. 2004, Tskhinvali, not 2008, 2004. CNN crew. In the center of Tskhinvali, pipes were laid and communications were changed. A CNN correspondent in a bulletproof vest, in a helmet with the letters “TV” and he is on camera talking about the fact that: “Well, the Ossetians did this, the Ossetians did that.” And what does he play? He plays on the fact that people who walk by don’t know English, but he sculpts and sculpts something. In the center of Tskhinvali. They just changed the pipes. And these people teach us life,” Babayan is amazed.
Thank you!
Now the editors are aware.