Non-Reporting on Ukraine in the Mainstream Media

The big Ukrainian counteroffensive began! – so said the Austrian national TV (ORF), in its report from Ukraine today. That is: that was the report No. 4 in the evening news, right after reports about much more important topics, like the government realising it hasn’t taken care about our health system for years, about another corruption affair in the governing party, and the handling of refugees from Africa and the Middle East…

Don’t worry: the catastrophe caused by the Russians blowing up the Kakhovka Dam was not mentioned with a single word.

Ah yes and: the report about the counteroffensive was supported by the prominent ORF ‘super-journo’ in question (widely praised here as ‘ultra-authoritative expert for all matters of Eastern Europe, from Russia to Northern Macedonia’) who went on listing diverse of three-days old claims spread by Putin’s PRBS-machinery, he’s collected on his smartphone…

Why am I even mentioning this?

Because one of readers asked something like, how can it be the whole world is silently watching Russia savaging Ukrainian economy, environment, and killing people?

….and because just thinking about the answer ashamed me, deeply.

Dear N.,

you can’t expect the media controlled (or even owned) by the very same people that were filling their pockets with billions from Pudding’s ‘black cash’ for 20+ years, to now start turning against him.

Take the honorable Dr. Heinz Fischer, former President of the Republic of Austria, as example. Sure, he’s no president any more, and he had only minimal executive powers while he still was (Austria is a parliamentary- not a presidential republic), but here you can see him together with Dr. Christoph Leitl (it’s extremely important in Austria to name any kind of titles, academic or else), the then President of the Austrian Chamber of Commerce, and Pudding, and all the possible ‘grandees’ of the Austrian economy and policy – at a conference of the Austrian Chamber of Commerce, in Vienna, in early 2015:

That was Putin’s first public appearance ‘in the West’ after the invasion of Ukraine in 2014: the way for him to ‘break the isolation’….and the way that eventually led to his military intervention in Syria, and then the Nord Stream 2, in which the Austrian state-owned OMV company was the biggest foreign investor (and, to make things even more ‘absurd’, if you like: the mass of OMV’s free shares are owned by US-American citizens).

Should that not be enough, here also Putin’s TV-conference during the same visit to Vienna:

Like Fischer, Leitl is meanwhile in retirement, but the last I’ve heard of him in this regards….that was sometimes in March of the last year….he was still crying crocodile tears about the losses for the Austrian economy caused by Western sanctions against Russia, and was still insistent on the necessity to maintain relations and remain - politically and economically - involved with Pu….erm…. in Russia.

Now, for - I hope - understandable, well-known reasons, in Austria we have very strict anti-Nazism laws. Some are describing them as the ‘most-strict, World-wide’. No idea if the latter is truth but, If I’m to ask, we should have similar laws about cooperation with Pudding: laws that would prescribe the prosecution of ‘enablers’ – whether diverse of our oligarchs or politicians (including multiple former chancellors of Austria and Germany, plus who-knows-how-many of talkingheads from our economies), or those in the social media.

But, who am I to say?

The way things are, too much money is involved and thus that’s never going to happen. And thus, in Austria, the media has ‘much more important things to do’ but to report about the Kakhovka Catastrophe. ….by sheer accident, of course, the media in Germany and in France has more important things to do, too….and in Italy and the UK, and the USA anyway…

And if the owners of the media have better things to do (whether it’s the state or private- and corporate interests; they call them ‘elites’ here, I call them ‘oligarchy’), why should then the politicians – de-facto ‘owned’ by the same oligarchy (i.e. ‘their elections campaigns are supported’ by the same people…. :rolleyes:) – trouble themselves with such a ‘touchy’ topic like accusing Putin of ecocide and mass-murder through the mining of the Kakhovka Dam?

That’s the world in which we’re living here in the West, and why I’m avoiding the daily shiploads of idiotic rubbish unleashed by the mainstream media so much, that it was a sheer accident I caught that news show on the ORF this evening.

…and so, I’ll remain ashamed: really, sorry for this…