(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
We in Fred and Justice (FOR) and other opponents of Norwegian arms deliveries to the war in Ukraine have always claimed that the war could have been avoided if NATO had agreed to Russia's demand to stop further expansion into Ukraine in December 2021. At the same time, we believe that it even now it is much better to go to peace negotiations than to continue the hostilities.
But Russian Foreign Minister Sergej Lavrov says that "Russia has the right to rule over its neighbour", we could read on 19 April in a news notice on NRK.no.
The quote confirms what supporters of arms deliveries to Ukraine have been saying all along: Russia's warfare is about not about NATO expansion, it was just a pretext. The war is a classic imperialist war of conquest where Russia simply wants to subjugate its neighboring country.
We have come to believe that such small news notices from NTB, which is reproduced by, among others NRK, are concise objective renderings of the facts. Few will ask "Where did NTB get this from?". But isn't it a little strange that Russia's driven top diplomat makes such a statement that so clearly confirms the West's new narrative and directly undermines it Russia previously said about the causes of the conflict?
The NTB notice is not correct
I therefore thought that there is something wrong here, so I began to investigate where the statement came from. In the version of the NTB article that was reproduced by NRK, nothing is said about where Lavrov is said to have made the statement. The daily newspaper, which reproduces the same message, however also lists the German DPA as the source. And if we go to DPA, we find an article with the same main content, which refers to statements Lavrov made in an interview with several Russian broadcasters.
We can find a transcript of this interview at the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The interview is long and contains much that is neither included in NTB's article nor in DPA's original article. In the interview, however, we find No statements that support the NTB article's formulation that "Russia has the right to rule over its neighbour". We find the opposite. To quote Lavrov verbatim:
“Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson openly said that letting Russia win would mean the loss of Western hegemony. […] Similar attitudes are reflected in other declarations, such as 'we will lose our influence' and 'Russia will reshape the world together with China, Iran, North Korea, Syria'. These statements [...] refer to a 'struggle' to maintain hegemony, which is opposed to the establishment of a new multipolar world order. [Something] we [can] reformulate [into …] a just and democratic world order where all nations adhere to the principles of the UN Charter.”
Systematic media criticism is one of the most important things we war opponents have to work on.
In the same way that we must be critical of Western leaders rhetoric, we should be critical of Lavrov's description that Russia's goal is a world order that is based on that countries follow the UN Charter. But the NTB notice is not a critical analysis of what Lavrov says. It is a false paraphrase of what he is supposed to have said, into something he did not say at all.
Krigspanganda
An important part of war propaganda is to portray one's own side as completely innocent, and the opposing side as unilaterally evil. In that way, the strategic enemy of the war propagandists can be weakened. This is not the physical enemy on the battlefield, but those of us agitating for peace and negotiations. Failing to reproduce key arguments from the other party is a natural part of this. Paraphrasing, which makes it possible for the journalist to weed out formulations and insert their own interpretations in such a way that the other party's arguments are weakened, is another method.
Direct citation cheating, as we see in this NTB report, involves a further escalation. It can be effective if it is not detected, but it is also risky. If it is revealed, and it happens several times, such media will lose credibility, and thus will war propagandaa losing effect. For the same reason is systematic media criticism one of the most important things we war opponents have to work with.
Leraand is a former deputy in Rødt,
and leader of the upcoming party Fred and Justice (FOR).
