51吃瓜

Last Thursday, the front page of Le Monde featured a headline in its running on the war in Ukraine: 鈥淰ladimir Putin assures that Russia is ready for negotiations with Kiev on the basis of the spring 2022 talks.鈥� India鈥檚 similarly relayed the Russian president鈥檚 remarks at Russia鈥檚 Eastern Economic Forum in the city of Vladivostok. 鈥淩ussian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday he was ready for talks with Ukraine, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Kyiv’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing.鈥�

Is anyone at The New York Times interested in or even curious about peace? Putin鈥檚 declaration should have caught the attention of anyone even vaguely aware of the way the war has been evolving. Russia鈥檚 advance in the east of Ukraine is clearly gaining momentum while the Ukrainians have launched a daring but perilous, possibly suicidal incursion into the Kursk region of Russia. Putin鈥檚 evoking a prospect for a negotiated peace should have been treated as major news.

At the same precise moment, sole mention of Russia on the NYT鈥檚 main page appeared in an with the title, 鈥淯.S. Announces Plan to Counter Russian Influence Ahead of 2024 Election.鈥� That headline should have had a familiar ring. The newspaper of record did publish another the same day, by Marc Santora and Anton Troianovski, on Putin鈥檚 speech in Vladivostok: 鈥淧utin Drives Home a Perilous Point: Ukraine鈥檚 East Is Russia鈥檚 Main Goal.鈥� Nowhere in the article is there a mention of Putin鈥檚 allusion to negotiations. For these serious journalists, war is news. Peace is a childish fantasy.

罢辞诲补测鈥檚 Weekly Devil鈥檚 Dictionary definition:

Russian Influence:

The presumed source of every objective observation made by informed Americans that deviates even slightly from official US government policy.

Contextual note

At least the NYT has recently begun to report a few unvarnished facts from the battlefield that are both true and, more surprisingly, at odds both with official state department talking points the paper usually prefers to repeat. Since February 2022, the NYT鈥檚 journalists have gotten into the habit of celebrating Ukrainian successes and ignoring, dismissing or seriously underreporting Russian advances. Its interpretation of the state of play consistently echoed White House assessments.

The paper took seriously Biden鈥檚 last year in Finland that 鈥淩ussia has already lost the war.鈥� In February of this year, as things had become even worse for Ukraine, it featured an op-ed piece that 鈥淧utin Has Already Lost.鈥� This was, of course, consistent with the rest of the mainstream media in the US, who long ago decided which team to root for. Newsweek, for example, at the beginning of Ukraine鈥檚 invasion of the Kursk region, just a month ago, featured the same tired: 鈥淩ussia Has Already Lost in Ukraine.鈥�

The NYT鈥檚 journalists nevertheless had the honesty to admit in their article on Putin鈥檚 speech that the 鈥渟ituation in the Donbas has now become increasingly difficult for Ukraine, even acknowledging that the besieged city of Pokrovsk is likely to fall.鈥� But even there, their reporting was incomplete. The authors never troubled to explain that Pokrovsk is a major strategic hub, whose fall will provoke serious logistical headaches for all Ukraine鈥檚 defensive operations. The BBC, usually as reticent as the NYT to report the naked truth about the war, provides precisely the the New Yorkers have so studiously avoided. It even quotes the assessment of a Ukrainian military expert: 鈥淚f we lose Pokrovsk, the entire front line will crumble.鈥� That sounds more like a lobotomy than a headache.

For the NYT, an article about a possible negotiated peace could never rival 鈥減olitical importance鈥� with breaking news about what everyone has been encouraged for years to fear as an existential threat: Russian influence on the coming United States election. That will attract its readers鈥� attention far more surely than intimations of peace in Ukraine. Russia is our existential enemy. If ever we forget that, we may begin to question the massive continuing investment in the means of waging war, which is especially painless when we know it鈥檚 our good friends who wage those wars for us and sacrifice their lives, not ours. When reviewing 鈥渁ll the news that鈥檚 fit to print,鈥� peace will inevitably end up in the dustbin.

Commenting on the latest avatar of Russiagate so eagerly featured by the NYT, independent journalist Ken Klippenstein pithily it up: 鈥淩ussia鈥檚 influence operations are a joke.鈥� He鈥檚 right. It鈥檚 a running punchline the NYT has been repeating since 2016. Klippenstein even highlights a truly comic twist: 鈥淭he paradox of the government鈥檚 very public obsession with election security is that the more attention paid to these supposed threats, the more likely people are to question the legitimacy of the outcome. In fact, this is an effect foreign adversaries undertaking influence operations hope for.鈥�

Historical note

Glenn Greenwald is more direct when he the highly mediatized legal case as 鈥測et another act of standard Democratic Party reflex to scream Russia whenever they feel endangered.鈥� This is a pattern that regularly plays out in the months before an election. Intelligence directors, past or present, government officials and 鈥渞espectable鈥� media have, since 2016, refined the art of launching terrifying accusations whose vacuity will only be revealed after the election. The now infamous case of the 51 intelligence directors who, weeks before the 2020 election, that the story of Hunter Biden鈥檚 laptop had 鈥渁ll the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation鈥� stands as the obvious precedent. They spoke out. Biden was elected. It worked in 2020, there鈥檚 every reason to think it could work again.

This new version of an old routine, as described by the three reporters from the NYT, contains a telling echo that made me in particular laugh. 鈥淭he United States,鈥� they explain, 鈥渨as caught flat-footed in 2016 as its spy agencies learned about Russian efforts to influence the vote on behalf of Mr. Trump and were late in warning the public.鈥�

Were they late? If so, they were late in announcing something that turned out to be false. Everyone curious about historical truth should know by now that the thesis we refer to as Russiagate was debunked by the special investigator, Robert Mueller, on whom the breathless anti-Trump media were counting as the inevitable prelude to a president鈥檚 impeachment. They eventually did muster up support for the impeachment, but, for lack of evidence, that too failed.

The deeper irony here harks back to something our Devil鈥檚 Dictionary revealed on August 26, 2019, when we glossed the precise term 鈥渇lat-footed.鈥� It came from a quote by NYT鈥檚 executive editor, Dean Baquet, in the context of a private meeting of his news desk. On that occasion, Baquet admitted that the paper had gone overboard with its Russiagate obsession. 鈥淲e鈥檙e a little tiny bit flat-footed,鈥� he confessed. 鈥淚 mean, that鈥檚 what happens when a story looks a certain way for two years. Right?鈥�

When a serious journalist can say a story 鈥渓ooked鈥� a certain way, it鈥檚 the clearest indication that the journal, even if we call it a 鈥渘ewspaper of record,鈥� was looking in only one direction. That simple fact invites us, in turn, to have another 鈥渓ook鈥� at the story to understand who was directing the NYT鈥檚 gaze.

Now, four years later, instead of apologizing for their own faulty reporting concerning the Hunter Biden laptop, the self-described 鈥渇lat-footed鈥� NYT complains that the clearly overeager spy agencies in 2016 weren鈥檛 over-eager enough. Just as the NYT did with the Havana Syndrome 鈥� another nothingburger no one ever apologized for, even after the CIA admitted it had no substance 鈥� its journalists have retained their habit of trotting out discredited stories from the past, with precisely the aim of instilling doubt about the fact that they have been definitively discredited.

Whether it鈥檚 Russiagate or the Havana Syndrome, or the JFK assassination 60 years after the fact, they can always appeal to the perception that nothing has been definitively proven either way. It鈥檚 the good old 鈥渢here鈥檚 no smoking gun鈥� defense. In reality, it鈥檚 just sloppy and sadly dishonest journalism.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil鈥檚 Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51吃瓜 Devil鈥檚 Dictionary.]

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The views expressed in this article are the author鈥檚 own and do not necessarily reflect 51吃瓜鈥檚 editorial policy.