“This story happened the day before yesterday… In the morning, news agencies reported that over 400 Ukrainian servicemen addressed Russian border guards asking for asylum.
Understanding the importance for journalists, especially the foreign ones, of the opportunity to communicate with the representatives of Ukrainian armed forces, to find out straight from the source about the real combat situation, about the motivation of Ukrainian soldiers, the real causes of their act, we decided on the same day to invite a group of foreign correspondents to the Rostov region. Luckily, a plane of Russia’s Defense Ministry was heading there and was able to take 30 to 40 journalists. We started to call everyone immediately. About forty people gathered within an hour,” Zakharova wrote. However, there were hardly any reporters representing top US-based media outlets among those who wanted to get to the Russian-Ukrainian border.
- “Aside from Bloomberg agency journalists, there was none from American media,” Zakharova wrote. She added that the invitation to meet with Ukrainian servicemen that passed to the Russian territory was declined by representatives of leading US media: CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor. “Then on what are based the stories of these journalists, if they refuse to meet with the sources?!” “The funniest behavior was shown by Reuters: they signed up, set out to the airport, halfway changed their minds and didn’t fly,” Zakharova said. “We are reproached for having little communication with western media, and this is supposed to be the reason for Russia’s information blockade. But the fact remains a fact: we speak, and they don’t want to listen, or they are not allowed,” the Foreign Ministry’s spokesperson stressed.
6/8/14
---------------------------------------------
- Lavrov warns against intentionally hushing up events in southeast of Ukraine...
UST KAMENOGORSK, August 06. /ITAR-TASS/. Russia Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Wednesday warned against attempts to intentionally hush up events in the south-eastern regions of Ukraine.
“When events in the south-east of Ukraine are hushed up intentionally, this misleads society and … distorts information,” he said.
Lavrov regretted that Western journalists had refused to meet with the Ukrainian soldiers, who had crossed into Russia earlier this week, talk to them and find out “what they experienced in the area of the ‘counter-terrorism operation’ which in reality is a civil war”.
“Western journalists are showing no enthusiasm in going there and talking with the witnesses of the events,” he added.
“A couple of days ago … we invited foreign journalists to use the Defence Ministry’s flight to Rostov on Don so that they could fly over there in one day, without the need to stay there overnight, talk with refugees and the Ukrainian servicemen who had crossed the border the day before and who were getting medical attention,” Lavrov said.
Many journalists accepted the invitation but “practically none of the Western mass media” did. “Bloomberg sent its correspondent over there, while all the others refused. Reuters also sent a reporter and he was on his way to the airport but then changed his mind and returned. Apparently, he had received instructions from his superiors, an independent and well known news agency. This is a situation that is quite clear to all honest people,” the minister said.
“We do hope that journalists will not have to face the need to betray the freedom of speech,” Lavrov said.
http://en.itar-tass.com/russia/743815
6/8/14
--
-
Related:
GR
FR
DE
ES
IT
RU
EU
No comments :
Post a Comment
Only News