It has been close to two years since Malaysian Boeing MH17 being downed over the disputed territory of eastern Ukraine. In the early hours and days of the tragedy, the media of most world countries, whether print, online, or television, seemed to be trying nothing else other than to cover the continuous story. While journalists are not tripping over each other in a bid to publish the sensational materials presently, the interest in the story has not ceased completely, neither has the investigation that is still to name the guilty party. Until it has, media will continue their coverage of the developments, be it fair or otherwise. Russia Today and BBC are most notable media machines breaking news to their readers. As seen from the Boeing coverage, aspects like cultures, regulations, ideology, ownership, commerce, and history determine the transparency and news partiality. While RT represents a party of the conflict, it cannot be claimed to be guilty of misrepresentation and unethical coverage until proved otherwise; thus, the project aims to prove the ethicality and validity of journalists practices of both media addressing the same topical development.
Conversely, RT has been at pains to associate the Boeing tragedy with Ukraine in viewers’ perception. According to Goble (2014), the Russian media acted differently than they would have in the Soviet era. In the wake of shooting down KAL Flight 007 in 1983, the media machine explained the context in great detail while, following the 2014 downing, the journalists preloaded the plane flowing on autopilot with rotten corpses, planted a bomb inside, and concocted other versions. According to Marcinkowski (2014), claiming the information war to be at its finest, the pro-Kremlin RT reported local residents as having seen a Ukrainian military aircraft zipping in the sky moments before the lethal crash, as did other Russian outlets. RT’s Ukrainian Su-25 fighter (2015) speculated on the likelihood of plane downing through a flying-by Ukrainian air jet Su-25 or the Ukraine-owned Buk missile systems, with the Boeing presumably within their reach. While there is a scant mention of Ukraine’s version, the article looks dominated by Kremlin’s own versions getting readers to believe in rebel’s false accusation by Ukraine forces to have transported the artillery system in immediate proximity to the insurgent-controlled area. To lend a measure of credibility to the Ukraine guilt version filling the majority of article space, RT has provided visuals in the shape of satellite shots supposedly made by the American space equipment.
Russia Today published Kiev sabotaging probe (2014), an article, in which it lambasted the Ukrainian authorities for its attempts to derail probes into the Malaysian plane. The article did not shun presenting the opinion of self-professed leaders of rebels like the prime minister and of the People’s Republic of Donetsk and his deputy. One of the rebel leaders appeared to have given interview to RT. Then followed a derisive story of OSCE and Malaysian officials’ having been attacked by a Ukrainian Su-25 jet aircraft. Officials from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe were described as fired upon by the jet. To reinforce the impression, the article slamming the Ukraine side for what they believed a cease fire violation used emotionally strong military terms like “to shower” to demonstrate the intensity of an alleged attack of the Ukraine heavy “Grad” system battery against the civilian city of Torez, which is 20 kilometers from where the downing took place. The report was emphasized rebels’ not owning the hard weaponry need to shoot down the plane this caliber. The article insisted that the international observers had not been able to access the place until after four days later due to Ukraine shelling (Kiev sabotaging probe 2014).
All the while giving the story a high profile, RT builds largely on evidence given by the primary suspects, Russia-backed rebels. However, what happened in reality was that pro-Russians were keeping access to what remained of the Boing barred to international observers and tampering with critical evidence (Buncombe 2014). Rebels seized at least 38 bodies retrieved from the place of the crash. The foreign delegation was kept unable to access the crash area for a number of days, with shots fired in the air by insurgents to deter journalists from entering (Dorman 2014). Since RT claimed as if Ukraine had bombed the area of downing while it, apparently, had not, RT acted as a tool of terrorists playing into the hands of the rebel blackballed quasi-state that has yet to be named terrorist internationally. Seeing that “Russia-backed insurgents” is a concept integral in the international journalist discourse, Kremlin’s lapdog RT is a tool of the terrorists, albeit wielded by the Russian Establishment. RT never descended to particulars as to rebels’ blockade of the site or evidence looting, even less mentioned the fact. Instead, it aired the version fitting the mold of the rebel and Kremlin’s agenda.
Society of Professional Journalists (2014) described the verification of information prior to releasing, the inexcusability of inaccuracy, diversity, the avoidance of fact distortion, and the need to be a watchdog over government and public affairs as the bricks of the truth seeking and reporting principle of journalist ethical practices. From what one can deduce, RT has successfully violated the mentioned tenets to varying degrees, unlike BBC. Russia Today sides with the Kremlin and rebels blanching them over by garbling the reality of the investigation group experience in attempts to add credibility to the version linking the tragedy to the Ukrainian jets. Ethic.Net (n.d.) enumerated people’s right to veracious information, dedication to objective reality, social responsibility, professional integrity, respect for values, cultural diversity, human dignity, privacy, and public interest, including public morals, war elimination as international principles of professional ethics in journalism. The Boeing crash is expected to spark military action (Bloomberg Business 2014). Far from eliminating the hostility, the media further reignites the conflict in part considered ethnic, as it presents the Ukrainian authorities as such that downed the plane and blocked the investigation thereby contributing to hatred buildup and deeper escalation in the east instead of helping slacken off tensions. Mind games obviously played with the audience or materialized Kremlin’s wishful thinking of Ukraine’s role in the downing testify to the distortion of the objective reality and the denial of people’s right to truthful factual information.
However, according to Unverified tape released by Kiev (2014), RT came to present the evidence of the tape recorded by Ukrainian Security Service who caught rebel terrorists reacting to what they believed was the crash of a military plane. In the article, following the tape was the contestation of its validity, the accusations of alternative media sources and commentators, and a reference to rebels’ spokesperson (Unverified tape released by Kiev 2014). The clear identification of sources is a must so that a reader may form an evaluating judgement on source motivations and reliability. When granted, anonymity should be explained by truly ethical journalists, with motives carefully considered (Society of Professional Journalists 2014). RT uses generalized terms like “commentators” and “some alternative sources” leaving them unnamed. One cannot build a line of strong, nay, efficient counter-argumentation on unnamed, unreferenced sources.
The article provides no explanation as to why the sources wished to remain unnamed and whether they actually expressed such wish. A conclusion of the absence of alternative sources thereby suggests itself. RT wants there to be some opposing sources refuting or challenging the revealing content of the tape where there are none. In the article released online by BBC (2014), authors did not take either side. They did not go further than present a script of the taped conversation, without furnishing a reader with attendant speculations. As with RT, BBC did not confirm the validity of the tape, yet it left it for readers to decide who it might have been that reacted to the catastrophe in the minutes after. With its traditional, arguably historically based fashion of maximum neutrality, BBC performed an informative function, not the persuasive one that is to be discerned in RT’s article.
Russian media do not seem alien to publishing sensations, whether veracious or not. A sensation aura often makes for a stronger impact being a compelling story-telling device. Nor is BBC free from such aspirations. While it is to manipulate the public abroad and within Russia that RT uses sensational materials, BBC looks more profit-oriented rather than politically-influenced. So suggest figures provided by Statista (2015) putting the 2015 revenue at 3.74 billion British pounds. Thus, if sensational materials see print, it is because BBC is concerned with ratings and financial rewards. Sommers (2015) cited an unethical incident of broadcaster’s demonstration of a passport photograph of one of MH17 late passengers. The service went on to delete the footage featuring a woman who perished in the tragedy after the first claims of unethicality surfacing (Sommers 2015). Unfortunately, an otherwise credible and respectful service breached such ethicality principle as respect for human dignity and privacy by publishing the article rendered sensationalist by the identification documents of a perished passenger.
It is time logic were found behind such presentation of the same even by the media under analysis. Analyzing cultural influences on personality, Triandis and Suh (2002, p.144) noted that it was like collectivist societies to exploit and deceive when in contact with out-groups. Unsurprisingly, propagandistic RT oriented on foreign readership or out-group is unscrupulous about deceiving individualist societies like those of the UK or the USA. Furthermore, Tate (2014) noted that it was on the public influence that BBC independence had rested, not that exerted by politicians. The journalist voiced the opinion in the Guardian, the newspaper not affiliated with BBC. Lyons, Thompson, and Patel (2008) praised the fundamental values of the British broadcaster in line with impartiality principles.
So developed historically RT going from a defensive pro-power mouthpiece to becoming its offensive instrument. Although a product of the Soviet media legacy and the continuation of its media tradition, Russia Today departed from the Soviet tradition in the Boeing crash. Even so, the Soviet heritage appears to be living in the media breathing tradition of not providing a truthful picture of events with the only difference that there has been a shift from focus on contextual details to the denial campaign, yet the distortion information product has remained historically the same. BBC’s historic role seemingly remain unchanged, which shows British broadcaster’s lack of ideological burden shouldered by Russia Today. Ideology and the translation of Kremlin ideas seems an important function of RT that has state regulatory forces as it is a clear state-run media institution.
BBC Trust (2016) suggested that outside bodies regulated the British broadcaster, inclusive of the European Commission, the Office of Fair Trading, and Ofcom. Ofcom (2016) noted that it was an independent regulator and competition authority for the UK communications industries. An independent regulator, apparently, looks to it that there is no ideological component to news broadcast or bias. Obviously, the contrasting ownership and regulatory bodies behind the media in question make themselves seen in the polarity of the Boeing tragedy presentation by the media services of the respective countries. Of course, in the UK, there is an un-suffocated presence of democratic institutions, a strong democratic culture, autonomy from the pressure of state structures, and a rich history of media watchdog function performance. The commercial nature of BBC alone makes the broadcaster present events impartially, for it runs the risk of forfeiting its readership should it take a specific side in a matter, especially the one of an international scope.
Conclusions
Of course, never a month passes but a report emerges that links what happened to different sides of the conflict or even foreign forces. Of multiple international media, RT and BBC are arguably the most demonstrative, as the countries of their operation stand in sharp contrasts; thus, events of global proportions like MH17 Boeing downing show the contrasting approach the media belonging to states with different geopolitical orientations apply to presenting the event. With the Russian collectivist culture of lying to out-groups like foreign readers, state control or regulation, the history of event misrepresentation, and ideological function of media in view, Russia Today has mostly treated the tragedy in a partial way by giving more space to versions meeting the Kremlin position. RT has generalized terms to camouflage the absence of credible sources and satellite pictures to shape public opinion the way they see fit. Commercial BBC is mostly impartial due to the presence of strong independent regulators, the individualist culture intolerable of deception, and a traditionally credible presentation of events. However, its commerce-inspired sensation pursuit led it to show the ID of a late passenger. Other than that, BBC is close to being ideally neutral media resource.
References
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