Why We Must Stop Interviewing Russians
Granting the enemy access to our media demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of how the Russians manipulate the information space
The odious Andrey Kelin, Russia's ambassador to the UK, appeared on my telly-box yet again this past weekend, once more on BBC One's Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg.
Our public broadcaster amplifies Russian attempts to manipulate the British people. I pay for this
Kelin never seems to be off my screen (I admit, I do watch far too much television, though keeping up with news programming is part of my job). By my rough rushed estimates, Kelin has been granted at least 11 interviews by UK television channels in the last five months.
It is absolutely ridiculous and shameful that we should grant this man (word used liberally) our air time and access to our attentions.
And it is not just him. They are all over our media, penetrating, a pernicious perichoresis purely on their terms. CNN, for example, gave an interview last month to ‘Russian political philosopher’ and ‘Putin’s brain’ Aleksandr Dugin, parts of which were quickly shared around various other outlets, and social media.
That our media networks, including public broadcasters, court these people is shamefully indicative of our vulnerabilities, which the Russians are anxious strategically to exploit. It also underlines our lack of understanding of how the Russians approach and manipulate the information space.
Russia’s holistic approach
For Russia, the information domain is a key area of warfare. Media, including news, are not meant to inform: messaging is meant to persuade, manipulate, and over the long-term to change our comprehension of reality, enabling other forms of aggression.
The immediate, operational distortion of truth is one part of this, but a focus on disinformation risks diverting our attention from the longer deep-seated influences of their media, designed to alter our perceptions.
And as I have noted, the Russians are good at using a range of interlinked means to force us to watch and subscribe to their worldview. This is cognitive coercion, the forcing of a new reality. They tested this in Ukraine over decades, with varying success, and are using the same approach in the United States and in Europe.
The Russians understand this approach holistically. Their thinking includes the entirety of the information space: not just the news, but all media, documentaries, entertainment, cinema, music, billboards, sports.
This is not just me claiming that the Russians have weaponised information: this approach is formalised in their 2021 National Security Strategy and practised in many parts of their political and social life: all aspects of culture are national security issues, legitimising the state’s involvement in increasing aspects of Russian life.
It also guides how the Russians relate to other countries, and not just Ukraine. We open ourselves up to their manipulation. Sporting events are a classic example: people in the UK might claim that politics are separate from sports. However, in Russia sports are inextricably tied up in visions of national success and Russian exceptionalism.
We need better understanding the relationship between the whole spectrum of Russian messaging and their strategic intent. We also need better understanding of the connection between their messaging and kinetic operations, and of how this relationship is becoming more interlinked and complex. Much of our understanding of Russian information manipulation, in government and the nongovernment research space, appears based on old studies into ‘disinformation’ as an academic discipline. It is long time to update this knowledge and apply it to our current situation: because, like it or not, aspects of this war are already here, and we are already losing.
Have they not got news for us
In this regard, it is ridiculous to allow participants in this war additional resources to undermine us.
The BBC and other news organisations might argue that it is important to subject the Russians to robust questioning about their increasing aggression. However, this argument only works if the Russian interviewee engages with the media in a reasonable and honest fashion, and answers the questions in good faith and honestly.
BBC editorial guidelines state:
Contributors expressing contentious views, either through an interview or other means, must be challenged while being given a fair chance to set out their response to questions.
It is clear that the Russians invariably abuse this ‘fair chance’ to lie and use verbal aggression to try and force UK audiences to accept the Russian position. We are allowing our own media space to be exploited as a form of cognitive coercion.
The Russians are desperate to infiltrate our media space. And we let them. When CNN has headlines quoting Dugin as claiming that ‘Putinism has won in the US’, this submits to the key Russian strategy of shaping our understanding of the future, forcing us to accept the inevitable Russian victory.
We know this, because it is an approach that Moscow uses constantly in Ukraine: claiming that Russia has already won is crucial to it imposing a hostile future into our engagement with reality, legitimising the adversary’s version of the future in our thinking, coercing us to comply.
I recently put this to a BBC journalist friend of mine working on Ukrainian and Russian issues, after the latest BBC invitation to Sergey Markov to present Markov’s take on Putin and his policies in Ukraine. My journalist friend was in despair that his organisation allowed Markov blatantly to promote the Kremlin’s hostility, in the guise of an independent political commentator. This suggests that at least some in the BBC get it, though my mate is almost certainly a learned exception. This awareness must go further, and we must cut out all these adversaries from our vulnerable media space for good.
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