CCTV FOLLIES 3.26 CHINA WHITEWASHES PUTIN'S DIRTY LAUNDRY
Putin's unhinged and twisted speech blaming Crocus City terror on Ukraine and its backers (despite all arrows pointing to ISIS) is prettified and normalized by Chinese state TV.
CCTV’s editorial treatment of Putin’s crazed and accusative speech blaming Ukraine for an attack that Russia’s roughshod system of justice has already attributed to four Tajik men (and has already been claimed, with gruesome corraborative video evidence by ISIS) is whitewashed and prettified for Chinese viewers.
CCTV consistently portrays Putin in a statesman-like manner, it’s an editorial requirement. It escapes no one’s attention that Putin, as cruel and odious as he may be, just happens to be a great pal and ideological partner of CCTV’s boss of bosses, namely the exalted leader Xi Jinping.
The “no-limits” friendship proclaimed by Xi and Putin is ridiculous in many ways and it remains a serious obstacle to the coverage of developments in Russia worthy of the word journalism.
CCTV not only airs Russian Defense Ministry footage daily, and gives Putin more airtime than any other leader, but observes Russian media protocol in refusing to call a war a war, an invasion an invasion and steadfastly avoids criticizing Putin’s ill-concieved and disastrously-executed “special military operation” in Ukraine.
From time to time CCTV will also repeat and amplify spurious Russian claims and outright dezinformatsiya such as the proliferation of US bio-labs in every corner of Ukraine, and blame US and NATO for fueling the flames and causing destruction and ruining the world economy and causing Africans to starve and forcing Russia to defend itself by taking Ukraine territory to counter NATO’s relentless eastern expansion. CCTV also consistently refuses to show Ukraine’s actual borders on any maps aired in conjunction with the news.
When the four Tajik immigrant workers were arrested, Russian TV viewers were given grim television footage indicative of torture and vigilante justice. CCTV showed none of that, just a few images outside the building to say the men were being arraigned. Likewise, when Putin speaks stinking hatred and bile, it comes out like smelling like perfume on Chinese state TV.
Chinese state TV has generally followed Russia’s lead on the Moscow terror story but it has been considerably less coarse and accusative than Russian TV reports, and considerably less quick to pin blame on Ukraine.
Perhaps China is deliberately editing the crazed and demented Putin for his own good, or for the optics of Sino-Russian relations. Maybe it’s necessary to cover up Putin at his worst lest Xi, his best friend in China, be tainted by association.
Perhaps the editors are looking ahead, picking up on a new mood, and beginning to play both sides of the fence. Then again, maybe China’s censors and news distributors are just content to play a more subtle mind game. While Russian propaganda is generally more accomplished than that of China, on this story at least, China has produced a much more palatable narrative.
So here now to the CCTV foreign news segment of Xinwen Lianbo on March 26, 2024 starring China’s forever friend, Vladimir Putin.
The CCTV voice-over keeps it simple. The reportage is courteous and riddled with euphemistic omissions and gaping holes big enough to drive a tank through:
“Russian President Vladimir Putin held at security meeting to discuss the music hall terror attack. He posed the question about who benefits from the terror attack and insists that Russia’s investigation is professional and objective without any political preconceptions. He concludes that many questions still remain.”
Compare the anodyne words and images viewers as presented to viewers in China with some of the actual words used by Putin in his hateful televised announcement.
(not on CCTV)
(back to CCTV)
Crocus City in Cyrillic:
The voice-over narration mentions the death toll and ongoing investigation.
CCTV’s most credible footage is of flowers and mourners on a street in Moscow.
CCTV re-ups footage from Russian sources taken from the March 22 attack. This footage is tacked onto this rather lengthy segment heralding Putin’s speech for editorial reasons that remain obscure, but it does serve to portray Russia as a victim nation.
As on previous days, Russian news moves seamlessly from the terror attack in Moscow to Russia’s ongoing attack on Ukraine, which in itself is a kind of visual eliding of the two topics that, according to the best information to date, have absolutely no known links.
Inadvertently, or perhaps with intent, CCTV visually reifies and strengthens Putin’s dubious conflation of these two very different topics.