I support Ukrainians against colonization by Russia, but I'm not threatened by journalists who cover the facts from a different perspective from mine.

Can you demonstrate your claim? I did a perfunctory search, and the stories I found involving Russia seem informative and typically even-handed based on the standards of western journalism.

[–] PugJesus@lemmy.world 40 points 3 months ago (2 children)

I support Ukrainians against colonization by Russia, but I’m not threatened by journalists who cover the facts from a different perspective from mine.

Running interference for the Ukrainian genocide is a bit more than 'a different perspective'. Like media that claims Israel is still defending itself in Gaza.

https://thecradle.co/articles-id/23408

It goes on and on like that. I can dig up more if you like.

During my recent vertiginous journey in Donbass tracking Orthodox Christian battalions defending their land, Novorossiya, it became starkly evident that the resistance in these newly liberated Russian republics is fighting much the same battle as their counterparts in West Asia.

Nearly 10 years after Maidan in Kiev, and two years after the start of Russia's Special Military Operation (SMO) in Ukraine, the resolve of the resistance has only deepened.

It’s impossible to do full justice to the strength, resilience, and faith of the people of Donbass, who stand on the front line of a US proxy war against Russia. The battle they have been fighting since 2014 has now visibly shed its cover and revealed itself to be, at its core, a cosmic war of the collective West against Russian civilization.

As Russian President Vladimir Putin made very clear during his Tucker Carlson interview seen by one billion people worldwide, Ukraine is part of Russian civilization – even if it is not part of the Russian Federation. So shelling ethnic Russian civilians in Donbass – still ongoing – translates as attacks on Russia.

He shares the same reasoning as Yemen’s Ansarallah resistance movement, which describes the Israeli genocide in Gaza as one launched against “our people”: people of the lands of Islam.

Just as the rich black soil of Novorossiya is where the “rules-based international order” came to die; the Gaza Strip in West Asia – an ancestral land, Palestine – may ultimately be the site where Zionism will perish. Both the rules-based order and Zionism, after all, are essential constructs of the western unipolar world and key to advancing its global economic and military interests.

Today’s incandescent geopolitical fault lines are already configured: the collective west versus Islam, the collective west versus Russia, and soon a substantial part of the west, even reluctantly, versus China.

Yet a serious counterpunch is at play.

As much as the Axis of Resistance in West Asia will keep boosting their “swarm” strategy, those Orthodox Christian battalions in Donbass cannot but be regarded as the vanguard of the Slavic Axis of Resistance.

When mentioning this Shia–Orthodox Christianity connection to two top commanders in Donetsk, only 2 kilometers away from the front line, they smiled, bemused, but definitely got the message.

After all, more than anyone else in Europe, these soldiers are able to grasp this unifying theme: on the two top imperial fronts – Donbass and West Asia – the crisis of the western hegemon is deepening and fast accelerating collapse.

NATO’s cosmic humiliation-in-progress in the steppes of Novorossiya is mirrored by the Anglo–American–Zionist combo sleepwalking into a larger conflagration throughout West Asia – frantically insisting they don’t want war while bombing every Axis of Resistance vector except Iran (they can’t, because the Pentagon gamed all scenarios, and they all spell out doom).

Scratch the veneer of who’s in power in Kiev and Tel Aviv, and who pulls their strings, and you will find the same puppet masters controlling Ukraine, Israel, the US, the UK, and nearly all NATO members.

[–] ganksy@lemmy.world 17 points 3 months ago

Yikes! This is the first time I've come across The Cradle. It's the last time too.

[+] Five@slrpnk.net -15 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

I agree, Pepe Escobar's take in that opinion piece is complete garbage. It should be noted that it is an opinion piece with the sub text "The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle."

Shutting down the entire journal because one columnist is a Putin apologist isn't what the concept of a free press is about. I'd be less alarmed by mods shutting down a post of that columnist for genocide apology. It looks like it's only one featured columnist out of five occasionally posting garbage like that, and the bulk of their focus is on the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Alan Dershowitz, famous for his shit takes, has apologized for torture and genocide and continues to be frequently featured in The Boston Globe, Haaretz, and The Wall Street Journal. Since those sources are posted freely, it would be inconsistent to ban The Cradle over Pepe Escobar.

[–] PugJesus@lemmy.world 21 points 3 months ago (1 children)

How many articles by how many authors since the beginning of the war need to be posted before you would regard the site as knowingly pushing Russian propaganda?

[+] Five@slrpnk.net -13 points 3 months ago (1 children)

How do you distinguish between opinion and propaganda? Its entirely credible that Pepe Escobar sincerely believes the positions he holds.

Should the corpus of every news source that includes opinion pieces that serve the interests of a war criminal state be banned?

[–] PugJesus@lemmy.world 12 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

How do you distinguish between opinion and propaganda? Its entirely credible that Pepe Escobar sincerely believes the positions he holds.

Oh, so if he sincerely believes in genocide, it's fine.

Should the corpus of every news source that includes opinion pieces that serve the interests of a war criminal state be banned?

If they continuously make naked apologia for that war criminal state's war crimes, especially ongoing ones, and parrot the propaganda points pushed by that state which clearly and directly contradict reality, yes, absolutely.

[–] Shyfer@ttrpg.network -2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

By that logic, the NY Times should be banned as a source. They're opinion section is chocked full of basically the pro US point of view and defending Israel (including a memo advocating genocide denial). One-sided coverage, poorly sourced, nakedly biased, it all applies to them, too.

Allowing sources from all points of view, as long as the facts are true, seems better than picking and choosing due to bias. Even these "centrist" institutions have their own biases.

[–] Five@slrpnk.net -4 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Oh, so if he sincerely believes in genocide, it’s fine.

Regardless of our conflict, we can agree that Pepe Escobar is a shithead.

There's an old joke that goes:

Two people, a Hexbear and a Solarpunk were arguing. One said,

“On my server I can reply to an admin and say "I don't like how you're running things on this instance!"

"I can do that too!"

"Really?"

"Yes! I can reply to an admin and say, "I don't like how the SLRPNK admins are running things on their instance!"

My concern is that the criteria you are using to justify banning The Cradle would also ban most United States media as well. I value the principle of a free press, and what you're proposing is inconsistent with those values. It's easy to call for the ban of information that disagrees with us, but unless we develop a more nuanced approach to combating propaganda, we risk replicating the values of the authoritarian systems we oppose.

[–] PugJesus@lemmy.world 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

My point is just that banning The Cradle is not inherently an illegitimate move. You may not agree with it, and I honestly wouldn't see the point unless someone was spamming The Cradle's articles or editorials, but it is a legitimate point to consider that they carry water for Russian propaganda, and in allowing that source, misinformation multiplies and makes the mods' jobs harder.

[–] Five@slrpnk.net -4 points 3 months ago

A appreciate your work demonstrating The Cradle's support for the Russian state. It's the first time I can remember seeing The Cradle posted on here, and in between being subscribed to these communities and my contributions to LemmyWorldDefenseHQ, I have not seen The Cradle spam as a reported or observed problem.

I've read the article, and I find it valuable. I'm alarmed that the Lemmy World !politics and !news mods have failed to demonstrate the pressing need for the ham-fisted gatekeeping and censorship regime they've implemented.

Lemmy.World is the largest instance, and !politics and !news are flagship communities. I would like to see the Fediverse overtake corporate forums, and learning to approach the spectrum of journalistic credibility with nuance is an essential feature of a better version of social media.

[–] LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 24 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Here’s one: https://thecradle.co/articles/syrian-president-assures-russia-of-unwavering-support

I dunno, seems pretty biased to me. Even if it’s mostly quoting politicians, uncritically repeating their propaganda without any caveats is questionable at best.

[+] Five@slrpnk.net -6 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Yeah, that's not great, but it's not outside the bounds of what you'd typically find in the uncritical reporting of Western politicians in periodicals like Reuters.

The issue isn't that The Cradle is biased, all journalism is biased. The issue is that they're being treated with the tools that should only be reserved for conspiracy mills and AI fake news farms. I find that alarming.

[–] LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 10 points 3 months ago

I’m not sure I agree. For comparison, here’s a recent article on Gaza from Reuters: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/blinken-warns-israel-hamas-best-last-chance-end-gaza-war-2024-08-19/

Yes, it’s written from a western perspective, but there’s a clear attempt to include opposing perspectives including Hamas and ordinary Gazans. You see no such attempts from the Cradle’s reporting.

It’s true that all media is biased but that does not mean it’s equally biased. There is a big difference between the unavoidable bias of your own unconscious views on a topic and actively spreading misinformation. I am not very familiar with the cradle beyond these few articles but they appear to fit the latter category while Reuters and similar publications fit into the former.

Overall I think the assessment by the bias ranking seems fair, and the post removal even encouraged you to post another source on the same topic, so it’s not saying that this issue cannot be discussed. While I don’t necessarily agree with the mod’s action, it doesn’t seem like it’s an attempt to silence Palestinian voices either.