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Guardian on Russia: None of the news that’s fit to print

by Kit

The Guardian’s coverage of Russia is, famously, rather petty these days. Petty and confusing and full of conflicting assertions from various people with differing sizes of axe to grind. On the one hand you have Luke Harding interviewing “entrepreneurial” oligarchs and believing every self-serving lie that comes out of their mouth, and on the other you have decreasing poverty statistics portrayed as (somehow) “a bad thing”.

And then you have this kind of thing. A non-story, writ large on the front page. Without merit, or analysis, or even sources (save the Guardian itself, you gotta love the way they do that).

Nobody really cares – save the half dozen lost souls who patrol BTL on Russia stories making jokes about vodka and polonium. But God fordbid you try and draw attention to the actual news, about Russia, Ukraine and the developments in the chaos out there. As this man did:

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That link is actually to our site – this story. Thanks for that Jeff, whoever you are – but be warned that links to our site are loca non grata these days. As you can see:

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Yup. There is no civil war in Ukraine anymore. It’s not worth discussing, reporting, or even acknowledging. But Russia is awful. And also vodka.

Those posters BTL who endeavoured to point out that GCHQ has been proven to carry out similar activities are met with a predictable response:

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For example, this story, about Government twitter accounts being used to spread propaganda – is tucked well away in the psychology section. There’s also this one from last year – which, again, was hardly front page news.

Feel free to scream “WHATABOUT!” in the comments.

UPDATE, 18/8/2015 13:06: After less than 10 hours on the front-page, the story was closed for comments and moved further back. A new story, gloriously lacking in irony, has opened in the New East Network. Feel free to troll away. Let’s all really earn that sweet Kremlin money.


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