Western media's credibility has been severely eroded

The Russian invasion of Ukraine, reminiscent of the German invasion of Poland in 1939, has brought to light the inherent biases, prejudices and hypocrisy of Western media.

There is an old Salman Khan song which goes “Sabhi karte hai raas leela, par main karoon toh saala character dheela hai”. 

After 42 years in the Indian print media, I am still unable to come to terms with the way many Western journalists, especially the American and British ones, arrogate to themselves the right to portray everyone else from their private viewpoint, and thereby judge them. Even Gandhi ji was deeply annoyed by this behaviour. 

Nowhere does this become more apparent than when the West goes to war, which is far too often, once every ten years, more or less. Its media is always or mostly complicit. 

But this predisposition to distort is beginning to have its consequences and western media, at least the Anglo-Saxon part of it, has become what the Americans call ‘collateral damage’. The war in Ukraine could well eliminate its influence or reduce it to near zero. It is unlikely to recover from the damage to its credibility. 

The Russian invasion of that hapless country, reminiscent of the German invasion of Poland in 1939, has brought to light the inherent biases, prejudices and hypocrisy of Western media. 

Though it’s been apparent for a while now, the contrast between how the conflict in Ukraine is being coveted — as opposed to other conflicts — has made western media look like any garden variety state media. Morality is Anglo-Saxon. 

For example, in the last few days we have seen American news channels broadcasting detailed videos of how Ukrainian ‘freedom fighters’ are arming themselves with guns and Molotov cocktails to fight the advancing Russian army. 

The videos are quite explicit about how the Molotov cocktails are being made, serving almost as video workshops. There’s a note of implicit approval and admiration in the coverage. 

Contrast this with the way the same news media continues to refer to Palestinian fighters, also similarly trying to liberate their cities from occupying Israeli forces. 

Invariably, the Palestinian fighters, most often armed with only rocks against tanks, are referred to as ‘terrorists’ and a threat, meant only to be put down, never encouraged.

These examples can be multiplied many times. It’s always the same story. 

Social media is no better. Facebook, Instagram and Twitter have been flooded with images of everyday Ukrainians posing with guns, ready to do violence on the Russian troops. 

These posts have been allowed to remain, whereas similar images of Palestinian fighters were not only taken down, but were used as evidence to justify the Israel Defence Forces specifically targeting these people.

If posts that advocate or instigate violence go against the rules of the social media giants, then those rules must surely be applied universally, not selectively? 

Western media’s  hypocrisy extends to actual state policy. What other than hypocrisy is it when countries like Poland extend an open invitation to Ukrainian refugees (including their pets) while closing their borders to refugees streaming in from Syria? It begs the basic but uncomfortable question, what if Syrians were white?

This also, of course, leads to the most blatant hypocrisy of them all, of the US condemning Russia for interfering with the internal functioning of another sovereign nation to ensure its own best interests. Memory must indeed be short in the US if it can conveniently forget the 20-year and incidentally futile war it waged in Afghanistan, and the full-blown invasion of Iraq it launched on manufactured pretexts. 

Nor can anyone ignore the Monroe Doctrine and the resulting repeated interventions in Latin America because America felt its security was being compromised. 

Each episode has been portrayed by the western media as a noble and even brave action by mainstream western journalists whose hunger for easy bylines makes them forget the basic principles of journalism: report objectively.