Frontline, "Putin's Way"

[BainsBane]

Chronicles Putin's rise to power, from KGB to Deputy Mayor of St. Petersberg, where he enriched himself as he sold off state property to private corporations and funneled the proceeds to himself and his cronies. Shows how he emerged as Yeltzin's choice for President as the old man was stepping down because Yeltsin could count on Putin to cover up Yeltzin's corruption--since Putin had done the same for the Mayor of Petersberg. He came to power through an election that was postponed following a Moscow apartment bombing that Putin blamed on Chechnyans and used it as a pretext for a new military campaign in Chechnya, whereas recent evidence suggests it was likely the FSB, the intelligence agency that took the place of the KGB (which Putin headed for a time), that was responsible for the bombing. Discusses the fact he exercise complete control over the press, with journalists as well as political opponents winding up dead or imprisoned. Putin is now one of the richest men in the world, wealth he gained stealing from the Russian people while in office. Some in Russia, even his allies, refer to him as a czar.

The author of a recent book on Putin's Cleptocracy suggests that rather than looking at Russia as a democracy that is failing, it should be concerned an authoritarian system that is succeeding.

[newthinking]

1. Hatchet job on Putin only demonstrates the conformist spirit permeating US journalism -OpEd News

OpEdNews Op Eds 1/25/2015 at 15:30:48
Et Tu, Frontline?
By Patrice Greanville


Putin by DonkeyHotey (via flickr)


Hatchet job on Putin only demonstrates the conformist spirit permeating US journalism
______________________________

Frontline sees itself as an implacable observer of political and social reality, an uncompromising witness to contemporary history. The truth is often a lot less flattering.

As a legendary liberal franchise, Frontline has frequently produced interesting and even controversial reports on a variety of topics, including the NRA's intransigence to gun control, the abortion wars, JFK's assassination, the modern KKK, "Bush's War" (somewhat critical of the Iraq War's genesis as something of a botched, incompetent affair, but not scandalized by its sheer immorality, arrogance, systemic roots or broader purposes), and a host of other issues, but when it comes to foreign policy questions in which the American empire is again competing with some invidiously designated foe (these days the villains are again Russia and China), it behaves, conceits aside, like the rest of the conformist pack, as little more than an stenographer to power.


Given that thinly-veiled script, it doesn't take long for the show to deliver an unrelenting cascade of innuendo against Putin. Apparently the show's producers could not refrain from vacuuming up and regurgitating just about every negative cliche disseminated by the Western media since the official demonization of the Russian leader began, except that in this case, Frontline being Frontline, the closest equivalent to the New York Times on television, the weapon of choice is not so much the bludgeon favored by Fox News' crude propagandists, but the scalpel and the stiletto, the half-truths and omissions of truth, and the decapitation of context, in short the far more subtle, insidious and highly effective natural tools of the centrist corporatist liberal.

The first few minutes set the tone:

ANDREY ZYKOV, Former Police Investigator: [through interpreter] Well, of course, there has always been corruption in Russia, but building it into such a meticulous system was something only Mr. Putin has managed to do. Could Putin be held criminally responsible based on the evidence that has already been gathered? Absolutely, yes.

From that point on, it only gets worse.

Students of American propaganda usually have a problem: not the scarcity of items to prove their case, but precisely the opposite, the overabundance of material. Practically everything said or shown on mainstream media that concerns American foreign policy, especially on television, is riddled with so much bias and outright falsehood that codifying and answering such outrages on a case by case basis is simply an impossible, gargantuan task, a fact that --besides their monopolizing the mainstream media--prevents any meaningful or timely response by genuinely impartial observers.

Full story, links, and transcript:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Et-Tu-Frontline-by-Patrice-Greanville-Condemnation_Journalism_Media_Propaganda-150125-684.html

[BainsBane]

2. Do you not care he's a thief and an autocrat?

Do you admire the fact he is a thief or an autocrat? Or are you one of those people who chooses to believe only what you want, and for some reason you have decided Putin himself has greater credibility than the evidence supporting the points made in the film and Frontline's decades long history as a first-rate documentary program?

Is there some reason you can't watch the program yourself and offer your own critique? I watched the program. Just become someone else puts their opinion in writing doesn't mean it substitutes for my own, and it certainly doesn't substitute for the fact you can't bother to offer one yourself.

The charges against Putin are based on documents from Russian police investigations. Do they have the same conformist spirit? Is that why the investigators have been exiled, imprisoned, or killed?

[newthinking]

3. I care about false / distorted narratives in the media; especially ones that try to push us to war

hatred of other cultures. And there has been a clear progression of poor, innacurate, biased, and some flat out propagandized reporting around the region and of course Putin.

Our own media manipulation and bias makes it very difficult for people in the west to understand other cultures, systems, politics, etc, and in particular the narratives around Russia are designed to continue neocon/neoliberal wars.

I don't see Putin as a "good guy". And I certainly don't know everything about him. But knowing the region myself well, I caught on fairly early on and in particular the last year has opened my eyes to the disturbing fact that western media is heavily distorted and manipulated.

I have spent significant research time checking on claims propagated in the media and all too often they have turned out to be untrue or complete speculation.

Much of the propaganda about Russia is built to create a hatred (an enemy) and that particularly bothers me, because it shorts the mind and closes what really should be open doors and allows warmakers to manufacture unecessary war and sufferring. While the truth can often bring peace from war. The opposite.

Since last year I will never trust the media with any war reporting.

I would suggest checking out the "Project Censored" site. Modern censorship is not easy to distinguish, but is epic. Our media is not "free", and that includes the old standby's such as pbs.

http://www.projectcensored.org/censorship/

WHAT IS MODERN CENSORSHIP?

At Project Censored, we examine the coverage of news and information important to the maintenance of a healthy and functioning democracy. We define Modern Censorship as the subtle yet constant and sophisticated manipulation of reality in our mass media outlets. On a daily basis, censorship refers to the intentional non-inclusion of a news story – or piece of a news story – based on anything other than a desire to tell the truth. Such manipulation can take the form of political pressure (from government officials and powerful individuals), economic pressure (from advertisers and funders), and legal pressure (the threat of lawsuits from deep-pocket individuals, corporations, and institutions).

[snappyturtle]

4. Thank you. There is no doubt that some think if they keep putting out the same

video over and over that it will gain credence.

Of course that's all been legalized for us to see such propaganda that at one time was targeted for foreign consumption. If this is transparency, I am sickened by it. Well, tptb want war and will use even childish methods to help acheive it.

[BainsBane]

15. "They" is me, one person

and this is the first time I have posted this video because I only watched it a couple of days ago. Now, since you are so impressed by the material newthinking cited, why don't you tell me how events in Moscow in 1996 explains away Putin's actions in St. Petersburg five years earlier?

Then to see you and he agree with a position that planting bombs in an apartment complex that killed dozens of people in order to justify a military war in Chechnya was okay because Chechnya is part of Russia. Does that mean you will also be advocating declaring war on part of the US?

What precisely in the documentary is not true? It's pretty clear none of you have actually watched it. You don't even seem to know the events, location, and time period it covers. That it is critical of Putin is all you need to know. The facts and evidence are entirely irrelevant to you, and no one here has sited or even discussed anything actually in the video.

[BainsBane]

5. The program is not propaganda about Russia or "other cultures"

It is about Putin's rise to power. Putin and Russia are not synonymous, as much as a megalomaniac like him might think they are. There is nothing subtle. It is a question of fact: Did Putin steal millions of dollars; does he suppress, imprison, and order his rivals to be killed? Frontline is a well-respected program. I have never seen anyone here criticize it until they did this program on Putin.

You site no evidence for your complete dismissal of the program merely because it is critical of Putin. You make a weak defense about other cultures, as though Putin represented the entire world. This is not about "other cultures" or the media in general. The sole basis of the critique offered is that it is critical of Putin. No evidence, no effort to counter specific points in the film. That it criticizes Putin is enough for you to lump Frontline in with the rest of "the media," as though they were all the same. Yet you can't bother to dispute a single point in the program or present alternative evidence. That you do not like a position doesn't make it wrong, and that alone certainly doesn't make a thoughtful critique.

I'm quite capable of looking at media with discernment and a critical eye. I have extensive academic training in critical evaluation of sources and have lived in other countries. I see a great deal of arrogance by Americans, including those on the left, most recently following the Paris bombings. I've gotten into a number of arguments with people on this site over what I saw as ethnocentrism on their part. That is not what this documentary does. It doesn't look down on a culture. It is about a single man and his rule, not "other cultures." I have observed with puzzlement the Putin defenders online. They display no capacity for critique. They full-scale reject anything critical of Putin (very much like your article above) and Russian foreign policy (which is directed by Putin) and repeat verbatim his excuses for invading the Ukraine. They don't critique. They don't think. They ape what propaganda they are fed. One even cited Lyndon Larouche as a source, which confirmed to me what at least some of them are about. There is something seriously wrong with people who claim to be leftist defending Russia's imperial enterprise, oppression of LGBT Russians, and Putin's imprisonment and murder of political rivals. One of those who investigated Putin's crimes was Alexander Litvinenko, the man killed with Polonium in London. PBS didn't feed him that Polonium. It was traced back to Russia. There are a lot of ways to kill someone and have it look like an accident. Litvinenko's killer(s) didn't choose any of those methods. By using Polonium, they sent a clear message: Screw with Putin and you will die.

Your weak effort at critique of Frontline doesn't speak well for your website. No website will turn me into someone who defends the oppression of LGBT Russians, the killing and imprisonment of political rivals, and the annexation of neighboring countries. If I defended actions by a foreign government that I oppose by my own, that would make me a hypocrite who stands for nothing, or worse someone who shares the values of someone like Putin.

[newthinking]

6. PBS-TV’s Frontline Misrepresents Russia’s Vladimir Putin

It is incredibly difficult to try and illuminate discussions on Russia and Putin because the media has been so saturated with escalating rhetoric and the general public is completley ignorant as a result, to what has really happened in that part of the world in the last 20 years.

I will leave it to this piece by Eric Zuess, who knows the truth of what went on in the 90s in Russia and how the west sent in some rather nasty neoliberal bankers along with Neo-cons, the Republican institute, conservative shysters wanting to get rich, etc. I was astonished the first time I went to that part of the world just in seeing the CRAP that was on the Televisions of the unsuspecting public of the former USSR. It was the most vile crap; all 3rd rate stuff, mostly from the US, that is so bad it doesn't even sell here.

We exported to them the **absolute worst** of modern neoliberal philosophy. Sold them on a form of parasitic libertarianism, and told them it was "Capitalism". That and the chaos of a changing system is the truth of what led to the dramatic banditry of that time.

Many westerners were at the front of it and some of these crooks have been interviewed in hit pieces like "Putin's Kleptocracy". Those people are not reporting facts. They are often upset that they lost their gravy train. Or embarrassed that they were exiled when their deeds became apparent.

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/01/pbs-tvs-frontlines-misrepresents-russias-vladimir-putin.html


PBS-TV’s Frontline Misrepresents Russia’s Vladimir Putin
Posted on January 17, 2015 by Eric Zuesse.

Eric Zuesse

On January 13th, the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) telecast the FRONTLINE documentary, “Putin’s Way,” which purported to be a biography of Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin.

The press release about this film states: “Drawing on firsthand accounts from exiled Russian business tycoons, writers and politicians, as well as the exhaustive research of scholar and best-selling Putin’s Kleptocracy author Karen Dawisha, the film examines troubling episodes in Putin’s past, from alleged money-laundering activities and ties to organized crime, to a secret personal fortune said to be in the billions. … These accounts portray a Russian leader who began by professing hope and democracy but now is stoking nationalism, conflict and authoritarianism.”

This documentary opens by describing the corruption that pervaded post-Soviet Russia and the Presidential Administration of Putin’s sponsor Boris Yeltsin during the transitional period of ending communism and starting capitalism, which was the period of privatization of the former Soviet Government’s assets. This film ignores the role that the U.S. and especially the then-World-Bank President Lawrence Summers and his protege Andrei Shleifer and other members of Harvard’s Economics Department played in planning and largely overseeing that entire process. Yeltsin brought that team in, to plan and oversee the process, because he figured that Harvard would know how to set up capitalism. On 10 February 2006, the Harvard Crimson headlined about the result, “‘Tawdry Shleifer Affair’ Stokes Faculty Anger Toward Summers,” and noted that the affair was such an embarrassment to the University that, “Shleifer, the Jones professor of economics, was found liable by a federal court in 2004 for conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government while leading a Harvard economic reform program in Russia as it transitioned to capitalism in the 1990s. Shleifer settled the case for $2 million.” An extensive article by David McClintick in Institutional Investor magazine described the sleazy details of this affair, under the banner of “How Harvard Lost Russia.” However, this FRONTLINE documentary ignores all of that history, and pretends that Yeltsin established Russia’s crony-capitalism with no help or guidance from the U.S., the World Bank, and Harvard’s economists. Putin is instead portrayed as having been, and as now being, just a continuation of Soviet-era corruption, not at all as functioning in what was, to a significant extent, actually a U.S.-headed transition into capitalism.

Then, the film presents Putin as having first come to power in Russia on account of his attacking Chechnya after several apartment buildings in Moscow and other Russian cities were bombed and Chechens were blamed for the bombings. This film fails to mention that Chechnya was a part of Russia, rather than a foreign country, and that, as wikipedia summarizes the origin of the Chechen war:

[polly7]

9. Plus a million.

Never underestimate the power of well paid-for propaganda.

[BainsBane]

11. "The film fails to mention that Chechnya was part of Russia"

Last edited Sun Feb 15, 2015, 03:26 PM - Edit history (1)

Therefore planting bombs and blaming them as a pretext for war was totally fine. And somehow I think the average PBS viewer knows that Chechnya remains part of Russia. That the rebels are fighting for independence would be a big smacking clue to that.

While the information on the US bankers in Russia is interesting, it does not refute the allegations made against Putin by other Russians. Saying what the program doesn't cover about the transition from communism to capitalism does not refute the actual information in the documentary, which is not about that transition but about Putin himself. The clue to that is in the title, "Putin's Way." It doesn't pretend to be about anything else, as much as your linked author thinks it should be. Most importantly, The article you link to talks about later efforts by US bankers who went to Moscow in 1996. The documentary and Dewisha talk about events in the early 90s in St. Petersburg, where Putin was Deputy Mayor. I would say an inability to distinguish St. Petersburg from Moscow would be a sign of the very cultural ignorance of Russia you claim to dislike, whereas citing events from the late 90s as an excuse for actions in the early 90s makes no sense.


Nor does that piece tell me why you assume an accounting of allegations against Putin by other Russians amounts to disparaging Russia or "other cultures."

Once again, you cite another's text rather than offering your own opinion. You haven't watched the documentary and don't even know what it's about. The author of Putin's Cleptocracy is an academic, not a neoliberal banker. Her book passed academic pier review at Cambridge University Press, one of the most respected academic presses. You don't even seem to realize that many the events described in the film took place before the fall of the USSR.
I actually don't make a habit of passing judgement on leaders of foreign countries. The problem is the apologists for Putin's war in the Ukraine have bombarded this site with so much propaganda that it has pissed me off, particularly when they insist there is something leftist about justifying empire, suppression of LGBT rights, and the general right-wing authoritarianism of Russia under Putin.

[uhnope]

23. This is one of the best posts I've seen in a long time.

Thank you for all your contributions

[Red Knight]

7. Frontline makes a compelling case against Putin

The articles questioning it do not make a great case against Frontline.

[jakeXT]

8. Thank god for the Koch Brothers

..


Then there’s the reason why we’re seeing “Citizen Koch” in theaters more than a year after its debut. Originally to be titled “Citizen Corp” and focused on the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, which allowed virtually unlimited corporate spending on issue campaigns, Deal and Lessin’s movie was intended for PBS broadcast. But the independent production company ITVS, which is funded by public broadcasting money and supplies films for PBS’ “Independent Lens” series, pulled the plug on this project last year for reasons that remain murky. Or at least for reasons that those involved want to remain murky; as Jane Mayer’s New Yorker story about the whole affair suggested, if you follow the money it doesn’t look all that mysterious.

At some point, “Citizen Koch” acquired a new title to go along with its focus on the activities of right-wing energy billionaires Charles and David Koch, who bankrolled Walker and a host of other extremist anti-labor Republicans during the 2010 and 2012 election cycles. David Koch, interestingly enough, is a major donor to public television, and has given an estimated $23 million to PBS and its affiliates over the years. He’s a trustee of WGBH in Boston, and at the time of the “Citizen Koch” brouhaha also sat on the board of WNET in New York. (In fairness, Koch’s philanthropy is visible all over the place. On the day I wrote this story I walked past a New York subway ad for a performance at the David H. Koch Theater in Lincoln Center, home to the New York City Ballet.) WNET president Neal Shapiro had already gone to extraordinary lengths to placate David Koch after he was unfavorably portrayed in “Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream,” a film by Oscar-winning documentarian Alex Gibney that was broadcast in 2012.

Officials at ITVS have insisted that they pulled the funding for “Citizen Koch” essentially because they didn’t like the film, and not because they got leaned on by Shapiro or the Koch brothers or anybody else. Lessin and Deal saw it differently: “This wasn’t a failed negotiation or a divergence of visions; it was censorship, pure and simple. It’s the very thing our film is about – public servants bowing to pressures, direct or indirect, from high-dollar donors.” PBS ombudsman Michael Getler looked into the whole thing and threw up his hands: Who can know anything for certain amid the informational wilderness of our society? He did admit that “what we may be dealing with here may be a form of self-censorship in which officials at ITVS, and maybe at WNET and PBS itself, become wary of the impact of another PBS-distributed film critical of a hugely wealthy and politically active trustee,” one who was reportedly contemplating “a new, very large gift” to public broadcasting. (Emphasis in the original.) He did not pause to inquire what the term “public broadcasting” means when it depends on the generosity of wealthy private individuals. Reading between the lines, it sounds as if PBS and/or WNET lost a whole bunch of money after the Gibney film, and were anxious to stop the bleeding. (But that’s really just a guess.)

http://www.salon.com/2014/06/04/citizen_koch_the_movie_about_our_sick_democracy_pbs_tried_to_kill/

[BainsBane]

10. That is what you think constitutes evidence

that something about the documentary on Putin is untrue?

[jakeXT]

13. No, I wasn't commenting on it

It's just an observation that it's easier for a media structure in a country to criticize oligarchs in a foreign country.

[BainsBane]

14. You clearly don't watch Frontline

because they critique power at all levels, including the Obama administration and the NRA, who more than a few on this site stump for to ensure the gun lobby's profits are unfettered, all that while wailing about corporatism. It's kind of like the people who pretend to be anti-war while working assiduously to justify Russian war on the Ukraine.

[BainsBane]

12. No, they don't

There is a lot of "look over there" rather than any discussion of what they think is in error about the points actually made in the documentary.

[freshwest]

16. Yes, but some don't believe it's true:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=6231601

Attacks are being made on the guy reporting it, not the story itself. And just because that guy has a major axe to grind as his lawyer was beaten to death or something equally heinous for being his representative, does not discredit him. Take a look, Bain, if you will. Thanks for posting this one. I've seen it and it's a chilling situation.

[BainsBane]

17. I will

but that is also happening in this thread, with no interest in engaging in any of the points made in the film. I have never before seen Frontline trashed on this site, but that they dared to criticize a thieving, murdering autocrat is obviously unacceptable. Their numbers are growing. I find the position absolutely repulsive on every level because they are falling all over themselves to justify empire and war in the Ukraine. They justify imperialism and the take over of a sovereign nation. They claim to oppose it when by the US, but work tirelessly to justify it when Russia does so. Obviously they can't deal with the facts layed out in the film because thinking about something like that might prompt some critical thinking and interrupt an ideology based entirely on propoaganda. The irony is they denounce Clinton as being corporatist, all while brooking no criticism of Putin. What they think they stand for, I have no idea. What they are doing is working full time to ensure people lay down for Russian imperial expansionism.

Edit:

I went, I

When that is what passes for leftism, this country truly is in trouble. I don't think I can take more of this, Freshwest. There is very little worthwhile left on this site. I don't think my faith in humanity can survive being around such a complete absense of principle, values, and crtiical thought.

[freshwest]

18. Yes, it's disinformation central. Drop me a line if you get a chance.

And yeah, I hear you:

I don't think my faith in humanity can survive being around such a complete absense of principle, values, and crtiical thought.

[sheshe2]

19. I hear you Bains

A lot of threads being Hi-Jacked lately. They want to change the message. It makes me wonder why.

I don't understand the Putin support here and elsewhere. Is it denial or lack of information? Or is it something else?

[Cha]

20. Poor Homophobic Putin.. LOL @ the usual suspects coming to his rescue..

They love to blame the USA for everything and especially can't wait to blame President Obama but Putin?.. That ****** is Blameless.. LOLOLOLOLOL For Everything!!!!111111

Oh, that they could actually live there and reap the benefits of his benevolence!

[freshwest]

21. They enjoy those cold winters, huh? Mahalo, Cha!

Check out the love:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024596843

[Cha]

22. Thank you for the link, fresh! I posted your cross post and told napkinz we needed an update!