The Reason Behind the Report.

I should imagine there must be at least hundreds of thousands of images of Vladimir Putin on the files of the world’s picture libraries, all available for a rights issue in return for a fee. This is where most of the world’s media get the pictures of him to illustrate relevant features. The pictures we’ve grown used to seeing in the British media since the Russian invasion of Ukraine have usually been one of two types: they’ve either shown him looking dour, dangerous and demonic, or they’ve shown him looking worried because the war hasn’t been going as well as he expected. Some have even shown him with his head in his hands as though he is feeling desperate and defeated.

That was why I was surprised this morning when the BBC World News page headlined a shot of Putin in which he appears smug and cheerful. The accompanying text headline was all about him claiming that western sanctions are causing more economic difficulty for the west than they are for Russia. Whether that’s true or not we have no way of knowing, but what intrigues me is why the BBC has suddenly changed tack in the way it is promoting Putin’s image and pronouncements. I have two theories:

1. There is clearly some concern in Ukraine, and possibly in the security-conscious west, that war fatigue might be taking hold in the minds of the British public. The fear is that we are becoming bored with the whole issue and would rather give up supporting Ukraine and concentrate on our difficult domestic issues instead. The image of Putin looking smug might, therefore, be an attempt to galvanise a feeling of indignation so as to stop our support wavering.

2. On the other hand, it might be the opposite. It might be a veiled attempt to lead us to the view that support for Ukraine is a lost cause – and one which is causing us even more difficulties than we’ve already got – in order to encourage the view that we should give up on them.

The problem here is that we ordinary citizens don’t know what view the Establishment, in all its forms, wants us to take. We also don’t know what influence the Establishment really has over our media. What we do know is that the media all over the world – in the west, in Russia, and everywhere else – is prone to taking sides. They filter the facts, emphasising some, downplaying others, and even hiding certain important ones altogether on occasion. I’ve known a few issues over the years which have strongly suggested that the BBC is not quite as impartial as it would have us believe, whether because they are in cahoots with the Establishment or are simply being pressured by them is impossible to say.

And so it is naïve to take news reports entirely at face value. We need to know what sort of agenda they’re trying to promote in order to have a fuller picture. Unfortunately, we don’t.