Journalists have more responsibility now than ever
In an era of fake news and post-truth, it’s extremely hard to be a journalist. Anyone with a phone can claim to be a journalist and truth seeker these days. Propagandists use this chaos to their advantage, spouting nonsense so no one knows what’s real anymore and even when you call someone out on their nonsense, they are just going to keep peddling their narrative, cause people are going to forget what was real yesterday anyway.
Hamas terrorists were caught pretending to be dead and then filming it to elicit sympathy from the world. Russian propagandists were caught filming in a dark studio with loud bangs in the background and claiming they were somewhere in Donbass, hiding from Ukrainian bombardment. Well, as with so many things in Russia, something went wrong and the lights were on again. What did the female propagandist do? Sticking her tongue out, she laughed. My guess is she was laughing not so much at herself, but at a bunch of foreign fools who were about to watch her ”Donbass front line journalism.” Foreign fools, often men who just want a piece of Russian, pardon my French, ass.
Except, there is no such sentiment on the Russian side, I assure you. If you’re reading this and happen to be one of these men, you’re just a polezni durak (useful idiot) to be used as a prop and discarded. Sorry. Say whatever you want about propagandists, they are smart, even really smart. Not all of them, but calling them morons is a huge mistake. They aren’t morons.
In spite of its clownish-cartoonish moments, Russian propaganda takes brainwashing to another level. You could call it a perverted art form.
In that context, Tucker Carlson saying that he might have secured an interview with Volodymyr Zelenskyy is both good and bad news. Time will tell.
Zelenskyy is a smart man and he knows that Carlson could be setting up a trap. I don’t believe Tucker Carlson is going to be an impartial interviewer. He’s only a lapdog when it comes to Putin, Dugin and Russian regime cronies. Then again, who knows, it just might be that Calrson’s interview with Zelensky is going to be balanced and well-thought-out.
I like Carlson’s ”UFO stuff,” but he has lost any kind of appeal after spouting propaganda about the war in Ukraine. Mind you, there are people who are likely dead because of Carlson’s propaganda peddling. Yes, dead. Buried in the ground with a bullet between their eyes. Good job, Tucker. Good job.
Did he actually interview Putin? I don’t mean if it was an alleged Putin’s double. It just wasn’t an interview but a PR exercise for the Russian President. Even Putin complained that Carlson hadn’t asked hard questions. Then, there was Dugin. Again, cringe. No tough questions. I must be a good psychologist, because I knew that Carlson was gonna interview Dugin way before that interview got released. I knew Calrson wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity to interview the so-called Putin’s brain (God have mercy on our souls if Dugin has that much influence on Putin – we are doomed and I’m not being dramatic here).
Carlson started off with a claim/accusation that Darya Dugina was killed by the Ukrainian government. This, alone, disqualifies him as a journalist. How does he know that? Why say such things? Just, as the Brits say, bollocks. If Carlson was a real journalist, he would’ve asked Dugin – right there and then – ”Look, Sir, there are rumors swirling around that you might have orchestrated your daughter’s death. How do you respond to these claims?” or ”There are many who claim your daughter called for genocide of Ukrainians and that’s why she was targeted. How do you respnd to these accuasations?” Sure, Dugin would’ve been mad as hell, maybe even stormed out of the interview, but that’s real journalism. Dugin’s former students, if they are indeed his former students, claim Dugin is a schizophrenic and his erratic behavior during some of his lectures supports it. Apparently, when asked a question he didn’t like, he’d resort to personal attack and outbursts. He’s also constantly contradicting himself. As one commenter on YouTube wrote, paraphrasing, ”I’m trying to understand this Dugin. He claims Russia is peaceful and not expansionistic and must defend itself from the maniacal, expansionist West and then says that Russians are the most imperialistic people out there, the people of the empire. The very idea of imperialism means expansionism. It’s contradictory and makes zero sense.” Exactly. The guy is all over tha map. His so-called philosophy makes zero sense. Even a moron knows that AI is a threat. Dugin’s ”revelations” are a joke to anyone with an even modicum of brain power.
Journalists must ask tough, uncompromising, questions and if your guest is a princess who can’t handle tough questions, that’s his or her problem, not yours. As a journalist, your first job is to present a balanced view to the people, as balanced as possible, and let them make up their own minds. Carlson claims he’s doing just that. Nonsense. So no, no one wants to silence Tucker Calrson – millions of people are deeply disappointed that he chose the easy path. Yes, he has a lot of fans, his worshippers who would literally kill for him if he gave the order. Whatever Tucker says is true. If he said that Poland started world war 2 and Germany was merely defending itself, that’s what his worshippers (not even fans) would’ve accepted as fact and you’d have protests across the world condemning the proud Polish imperialists. Scary times.
Why no tough questions, then? Carlson can ask tough questions when he wants to and be courteous at the same time. Was he afraid the regime was going to target him? Well, if he’s such a fan of Russia, what’s the problem? Oh, right, he was in Moscow for a few days. Great. Does he speak Russian? No. My Russian’s pretty fluent and I’m no fan of Russia. I used to be neutral toward Russia until the whole Z-zombie-invasion. I find it ironic and amusing that so many of these right-wing Russia lovers can’t string a coherent sentence together in the language of their supposedly beloved country. If they really believe that Russia is the future, well, what are they waiting for? Clearly, they either don’t buy their own propaganda or they have a really, really warped understanding of Russia as a romanticized ballet-land. They claim to be against US imperialism, yet they don’t even learn Russian and insist on speaking English, thereby espousing the very imperialist mindset they claim to oppose. Heck, some likely think English is the official language of Russia!
It may as well be if Russia gets defeated…
Orwell and Kafka are laughing from beyond.