You may have noticed that the pattern of global government narrative becomes global media narrative becomes unquestionable collective opinion of the mainstream middle class has transferred seamlessly from COVID-19 to the war in Ukraine.
Let's state up front that more than one thing can be true at the same time. In this case, it's possible to vehemently condemn Vladimir Putin's invasion of his neighbour, denounce the suffering being inflicted on innocent civilians and still acknowledge that Ukraine isn't exactly a paragon of Western democratic virtue.
There is no reason that this conflict couldn't be reported in that context. Yet once again, journalists in legacy media are transparently shaping their coverage and commentary to conform with a generic, hyper-simplistic, black and white narrative that is indistinguishable from the position of the political elite.
It's difficult to think of a reason for the media in Canada and around the English speaking world to cover this conflict in anything other than a detached, objective manner.
So why are they actively whitewashing the more sketchy aspects of the government in Kiev, their military and the involvement of the US in Ukrainian affairs? Why the untempered enthusiasm for increasing Western engagement? Why partake in the obvious campaign to lionize President Zelensky beyond all proportion? Why the efforts to exclude and discredit any consideration of the geopolitical interests of Russia in all of this?
In other words, why is the media reporting a foreign war as if they have an interest in how it's perceived at home?
Journalists are supposed to hold the people who wield power over the rest of us to account. That means scrutinizing and challenging their political philosophies and policies. This role of the press is no more crucial than when the agenda of the elite involves fueling wars around the globe. But if we've learned anything over the past two years, it's that journalists now see their job as selling the agenda of the ruling class to the public rather than scrutinizing it on the public's behalf.
One of the most controversial and disturbing aspects of the situation in Ukraine is the presence of genuine, self-described Nazi militia groups in the country. These groups are apparently not only tolerated by the national government in Kiev, they have been officially folded into the armed forces.
Now stretch your memory all the way back to last month. Recall how journalists were willing to associate thousands of their fellow Canadians with a single swastika flag carried by some weirdo on the fringes of the trucker protest. Such is the media's moral sensitivity towards anything that can be even tangentially associated with Nazism.
And yet that same moral-posturing Canadian media establishment is now not only tiptoeing around the presence of real, fully armed, self-proclaimed Nazis in Ukraine - they will chastise you for making too big a deal about it if you even bring it up.
To again state what should be obvious, more than one thing can be true at the same time. You can realize that Ukraine has been unjustifiably invaded and that it isn't a Nazi state while also acknowledging there is a disturbing, active Nazi element in the country.
It's galling that we're expected to pretend we don't know the Canadian media would make this central to their coverage if the officially sanctioned narrative was opposing a cause or political entity rather than supporting it.
This week Tom Blackwell wrote a piece for the National Post about Canada's role in training the Ukrainian military starting in 2015. The last time this training program was newsworthy was just four months ago. That's when news outlets like The Ottawa Citizen (owned by Post Media by the way - the same company that owns the National Post) ran stories about Canadian troops "training neo-Nazis and war criminals" in Ukraine.
And yet this disturbing revelation recently reported by his own media company was omitted in Blackwell's piece about that very training program.
Here was my comment about this glaring omission:
To his credit, Tom responded:
It's commendable that he updated the story, although the information about training Nazis was downplayed and buried at the end of the piece. Basically he just parrots what the Department of National Defense said in defense of their actions. As far as Tom is concerned the DND said it was just a few Nazis so chill out.
"The mission faced bad press late last year when news emerged that members of small neo-Nazi militias had met with and been among the 30,000 troops trained by Canadians in Ukraine. Department of National Defense representatives said its policy has always been to not deal with such units and was investigating the incidents."
Now perhaps you're more generous than me, but Tom's excuse that the whole 'Nazi thing' slipped his mind due to the piece being "hastily written" doesn't cut it as far as I'm concerned.
I'm not a professional journalist getting paid to write for a national newspaper and it didn't slip my mind. It didn't slip the mind of everyone in the alternative press and on social media who have been drawing attention to the issue of Nazi groups like the Azov battalion since all of this began. This is a significant controversy with a direct connection to Canada. It was considered newsworthy by the mainstream press only four months ago.
For some reason it never crossed the mind of international politics reporter Tom Blackwell or the editorial staff at the National Post to mention it.
Conveniently, Tom tells us precisely why that is:
"Today story is Ukraine's amazing resistance - and Cda's small part in it."
Tom is acknowledging that his intention was never to report all of the relevant facts pertaining to Canada's role in training Ukrainians. It was to tell a story portraying the Ukrainian military in a positive light. They're "amazing". The intention was to portray Canada's involvement as nothing but positive too.
I pointed this out to Tom:
This was Tom's response:
As you see, the problem isn't that a reporter was so intent on constructing a flattering narrative about the Ukrainian military and Canada's involvement with them that he failed to report relevant facts that would detract from that narrative.
No, the problem here is that I am obsessed with a Nazi battalion in the Ukrainian military. How does he know I'm obsessed? Apparently because I'm questioning his obvious indifference to it.
In fact according to Tom, it's my criticism of omitting important information that smacks of propaganda. His stated intent to use his platform to construct a particular perception in the minds of Canadians about the Ukrainian military and Canada's role in their training has nothing to do with propaganda whatsoever.
I made that point in my follow up Tweet:
I wasn't surprised to receive no further response from Mr. Blackwell.
The most gob-smacking demonstration of the Canadian media's efforts to sanitize it's coverage of this issue came from CTV News Vancouver:
The unintended irony of this is jaw-dropping. It also tells you everything you need to know about the state of Canadian mainstream media.
Like I said, I'm no professional journalist. Far be it for me to tell people how to do their job. But it seems to me that when a news organization comes across photographs of soldiers from a military our government is supporting in a foreign conflict sporting symbols associated with Nazi militia... THAT'S THE STORY!
But nope. Not in Canada. In this country major news outlets remove the pictures and apologize for accidently showing you... THE NEWS!
And now for your viewing pleasure:
'Don't mention the war! I mentioned it once but I think I got away with it!'