Information War During The 2008 South Ossetian War - Escalation

Escalation

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin accused foreign media of pro-Georgian bias in their coverage of the conflict between Georgia and Russia over breakaway South Ossetia. "We want television screens in the West to be showing not only Russian tanks, and texts saying Russia is at war in South Ossetia and with Georgia, but also to be showing the suffering of the Ossetian people, the murdered elderly people and children, the destroyed towns of South Ossetia, and Tskhinvali. This would be an objective way of presenting the material," he said in a statement to Russian news agencies. Western media coverage of the events in the separatist republic is "a politically motivated version" in the eyes of government officials. Many Western media editors disagreed. however, The Washington Post, for example, argued that Moscow was engaging in "mythmaking".

On August 11, 2008, Russia Today TV accused CNN of presenting video footage of destruction in Tskhinvali in South Ossetia, shot by a Russia Today cameraman, as pictures of destruction in Gori. CNN has not denied the accusation. Western media has defended its coverage, with Chris Birkett, executive editor of Sky News saying: "I don't think there’s been a bias. Accusations of media bias are normal in times of war. We’ve been so busy with the task of newsgathering and deployment that the idea we've managed to come up with a conspiratorial line in our reporting is bananas." CNN has also defended its coverage.

William Dunbar, a reporter for Russia Today TV in Georgia, resigned in protest of alleged bias in the Russian media. He "claimed he had not been on air since he mentioned Russian bombing of targets inside Georgia.... He told The Moscow Times: "The real news, the real facts of the matter, didn't conform to what they were trying to report, and therefore, they wouldn't let me report it. I felt that I had no choice but to resign."" However one senior journalist from Russia Today TV called Dunbar's allegations of bias "nonsense". "The Russian coverage I have seen has been much better than much of the Western coverage," he said, adding, "My view is that Russia Today is not particularly biased at all. When you look at the Western media, there is a lot of genuflection towards the powers that be. Russian news coverage is largely pro-Russia, but that is to be expected."