A letter to the post-truth media
Dear ‘girls’ at
Washington Post, New York Times, CNN and other prominent and respected media-outlets. It is with our great sadness we have to aknowledge that Western media and all of its traditions of unbiased reporting and balanced coverage are no more. The ‘Smolenkov Case’ is a bright example.
Observing the coverage on Russian defector Oleg Smolenkov's case we cannot help but wonder how well orchestrated and one-angled it is. How your reporting which once was regarded as a gold standard of news has become nothing more than a blunt tool of mass propaganda. Looking at the coverage by different news outlets we kept on stumbling on the same narrative over and over and over again. We can now easily summarise the entire narrative into four simple bullet-points which were very likely fed to you by your contacts and/or operators from within some of the elements of US Intelligence apparatus:
1️⃣ US Intelligence community acting on its own risk and without presidential approval has executed an exfil op in Russia on an assumption that President Donald Trump is acting against core US national interests;
2️⃣ Oleg Smolenkov was a ‘jewel in the crown’ of CIA, therefore American intelligence has lost its eyes and ears in Kremlin for the foreseeable future. It will take tremendous amount of time to cultivate another successful asset. Trump has carelessly undermined decade-long effort of US intelligence.
3️⃣ Russian media (no doubt on the order from Mr.Putin himself) has launched a smear campaign against CIA’s prized asset to downplay his effectiveness.
4️⃣ The media attack, orchestrated by Kremlin’s masterminds has put the retired asset and a traitor Oleg Smolenkov and his entire family at life’s risk thus US Government had to urgently remove him from his $1m Washington suburbia real estate and put him under the protective custody.
Dear girls, please have a look at the mirror though we think you might not like what you see. You have ceased to be proper media outlets and transformed yourself into tools of primal anti-Trump 'anything goes' propaganda machine. It was actually your two-time Pulitzer winners who put your prized asset in the crosshairs by spilling the story. It took us very little effort to expand it beyond the suggested news. You and your operators from whatever acting in your very own and very narrow corporate interests, have initiated yet another propaganda and diffamation campaign that not only deteriorates US-Russian relations even further but puts another wedge into the fabric of US civil accord.
When Mr. Putin in his recent FT interview stated that the concept of Western Liberalism is dead, he meant exactly that — your very narrow understanding of interests of other nations drives the World and people’s relations further into disarray. Your propaganda machine, fuelled by your irrational hatred for your own kin, puts entire communities at risk. It is your appeal to the values you yourself no longer believe in (unbiased, careful, non-partisan and balanced news coverage, cold-hearted analysis and delivery of facts) has put your democracy to the very brink of collapse. Not some mythical Russian cyber-espionage effort.
As for Oleg Smolenkov, who was graciously rewarded for his defection, bear in mind that US national intelligence apparatus is feeding you with the sense of its own importance at whopping $17bln annual budget. This trash-material has little impact on understanding the mindset of desicion-makers they are sent to spy on. Keep it up, girls. Great job.
Yours,
The Ruthless PR Guy
