[FPSPACE] Russia and the American Media on The Connection for Oct. 2

[Larry Klaes]

Russia and the American Media 

October 2, 2000 

Can you believe what you read about Russia? Despite the sinking subs, 
burning TV towers, and subway bombings of recent months, most Western 
news coverage still pictures Russia wending is slow stoical way 
toward a market democracy something like ours. 

All wrong, says the NYU historian Stephen Cohen, who sees a human 
catastrophe in Russia going almost unnoticed in the Western press.

In the decade since the bad old Soviet Union died, Cohen says, our
professional Russia-watchers have committed malpractice. Instead 
of revealing epidemic poverty, pain, emigration, big dips in life 
expectancy, dire deficits and a riot of corruption, our media have 
passed along the Yeltsin myths of shock therapy that works, 
entrepreneurship and a burgeoning civil society. 

Cohen names names and indicts the best in journalism: the New York 
Times on down, for a party-line betrayal of reality.

To listen to the program, go to this URL:

http://www.theconnection.org/archive/2000/10/1002a.shtml