_http://en.ria.ru/analysis/20140405/189054528/Dmitry-Kiselev-Western-behavior-borders-on-schizophrenia.html said:
Dmitry Kiselev: “Western behavior borders on schizophrenia”
13:13 05/04/2014
Director General of the Rossiya Segodnya International Information Agency Dmitry Kiselev, host of the popular television program Vesti Nedeli (News of the Week), is the only journalist in the world to be targeted by political sanctions. The European Union included the prominent TV journalist on a list of Russians barred from travelling, owning property or banking in the EU. The World Press Freedom Committee, one of the leading organizations on the rights of journalists, has come to his defense.
In an interview with Izvestia, Kiselev said that the sanctions against him threaten the rights of all journalists in the world. He also explained that Russia and the West have switched roles and now Russia has become the main defender of democratic principles and freedom of speech.
You are the only journalist in the world to be sanctioned. Does that make you the Yury Gagarin of modern journalism? Did you expect this?
This affects all journalists. In my memory this is the first time international sanctions have been imposed on a journalist. I’m just journalist X. It is telling that the sanctions were initiated by Europe, which shows how EU officials openly disregard freedom of speech. This sets an unwelcome and dangerous precedent. It is in effect a betrayal of European values. If this precedent is normalized, if the journalistic community in Europe, America or any other country does not respond, it would mean that journalists consider this legal. This represents a dramatic turning point in Western civilization – to say that we no longer need freedom of speech or believe it is a core value. Moreover, the EU is not alone; it has the backing of the Norwegian parliament.
Even Norway, a country you have a special affection for since you have a degree in Scandinavian philology, has supported these sanctions…
Yes, I studied it at Leningrad State University and broadcasted in Norwegian for ten years at Moscow Radio. So, a man who is 100% a friend of Norway is being targeted by Norwegian sanctions that seek to restrict freedom of speech. Incredible, isn’t it? While I believe they aren’t fully aware of what they are doing, it still represents a turning point in Western civilization.
I’m accused of producing propaganda, of being a propagandist. The word “propaganda” in Greek means dissemination of information, ideas and concepts. For some reason the West is using this word as an insult… But propaganda is not a certified category of international law and the constitutions of all countries, unlike freedom of speech. These are formalized, state, interstate, supranational bureaucratic sanctions that are legal in the sense that they were passed into law, rather than lawful. They target freedom of speech.
[...]
You know gay people. How would you characterize your relationship with them?
I do have gay colleagues. Most of them are very calm and quiet people who keep to themselves. They do not flaunt their sexuality. They have never been unfriendly to me personally. And I am not a homophobe. The West is simply not happy about Russia being on the upswing. This is the core of the problem. There is a clear upward trajectory even though the Russian economy is not as surefooted as we would like. But its progress is cyclical. Every valley is followed by a peak. But when a TV program supports Russia’s progress and helps it recover from its 20th-century injuries, the West is quick to sanction the host. Moreover, they were quick to label me a homophobe and an anti-Semite who wants to see America burn. This does not sound like a good style.
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If the United States and the EU are in fact ignorant and yet powerful statesmen have been included on this list, perhaps someone advised them to blacklist these people, including you?
I know who exactly advised them. Sergei Parkhomenko and Alexei Navalny made these lists. They don’t hide it. But if Europe is going to rely on the opinion of a vanishing minority in Russia, it will find it hard to make sensible decisions in this world, especially when it comes to Russia. There are too many issues in the world that would be hard to resolve without Russia, including issues of war and peace in different regions.
Western behavior has bordered on schizophrenia. There’s that word again. Schizophrenia is a split in consciousness. It means living in parallel worlds and being guided by secondary things. When we are guided by trivial things that we’ve made important, when we follow the opinions of insignificant people, and even cultivate and inflate their opinions, we’re entering a hall of crooked mirrors.
I believe great powers that form the backbone of the EU cannot afford acting like this, because their status demands a certain level of responsibility. Otherwise they get themselves into stupid situations that eventually harm their own citizens. What does freedom of speech mean in European countries now that they have imposed sanctions on a journalist? Will they legalize taboo subjects or put limits on the work of journalists? If they adopt a certain position toward a foreign journalist, why not apply the same standards inside the EU?
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Russia’s Foreign Ministry said it is not planning to limit the entry of Western journalists. So we are not mirroring their policies.
Of course not. Russia is above this. We have been through periods when freedom of speech was violated in the Soviet Union. Under Stalin, for example. We have lived through the iron curtain. Strange as it might seem, we have now switched roles. Russia has turned into a beacon of freedom. Anyone can choose to ridicule everything like Ksenia Larina, and do so freely on the radio, without fearing sanctions from the government or from the European Union, for that matter. In Russia, one can fully exercise and even abuse freedom of speech in a way that hurts the government and the country. Therefore, Europe’s sanctions have not really harmed me or anyone else in Russia; they have harmed Europe’s own values. The EU has declared that freedom of speech is no longer valued there. That’s what has happened.
Are you planning to visit Europe in the near future?
After Europe imposed sanctions against me, I got a call from Japan, and an invitation to visit. I was flattered. But actually, I had been planning to travel to northern Norway, driving from Murmansk with my kids. We booked a fishing cottage in Gjesvaer, the northernmost Viking village in Norway, home to just 150 people. I wanted to show them the never setting sun, bird colonies, northern fishing and seals. We even paid in advance. But our good landlord, Bjorn Jensen, and his wonderful family have been also hit by the sanctions. They may have trouble renting out the place now, as reservations are usually made up to a year in advance. Maybe they will still find new tenants, but it will be an unnecessary headache in any case. The whole story is really absurd. It’s a pity my children will not get to see Norway. But they can still see Japan.
The United States has not sanctioned you. What do you think this means?
No, the Americans haven’t. They would rather let the Europeans do the dirty work. It is all part of their policy to destroy Europe, same as tapping Angela Merkel’s phone and industrial espionage. Europe is America’s rival, everyone knows that.
What is journalism in your view? Is it propaganda? Some claim that journalism is dead.
Journalism is more than just a profession. It’s an entire environment within society. It’s an environment for circulating information, ideas, values, perceptions of good and evil, and it cannot die. Especially professional journalism. Do not confuse bloggers who tap at their keyboards in the comfort of their own homes with professional journalists. Professional journalists operate within accepted ethical norms. They never lie and always check the facts. Mistakes? There may be mistakes. How you feel about them is what matters. For example, on Vesti Nedeli, on the December 8 show, I mixed up the Ukrainian presidential administration building with the Ukrainian government building. So I mistakenly gave the impression that the first act of violence perpetrated by the militants involving broken helmets and bloodshed was during the assault on the administration, whereas in fact it was during the assault on the Government House on November 26. Now, in hindsight, we know this was the work of Right Sector (Kiselev holds up a damaged Berkut helmet). In the very next program, aired on December 15, I voluntarily apologized for the confusion, correctly laid out the course of events and arrived at the same conclusion that the Berkut police unit did not start the violence. Anyone can make a mistake. Last week, speaking at a US-EU summit in Brussels, Barack Obama said that Kosovo became an independent nation after holding a referendum. In reality, Kosovo never held a referendum on independence. I haven’t heard Obama ever apologize for this. It's about how you deal with your mistakes: you either recognize them or not. That's why professional editorial offices and professional media are more trusted. Their role will only grow. After all the injuries Russia suffered in the 20th century – reprisals, war, terror, the destruction of the Church, the collapse of our county, and the catastrophic annihilation of our nation – there’s an atmosphere of mistrust and an absence of values in the country. They must be restored. A vacuum of values is called an anomie. For a human being, this condition is considered pre-suicidal. We are living in a social anomie, out of which we are just beginning to emerge. However, we are being told to stay put.
To use your words, is Ukraine now living in an anomie?
Yes. Or the vacuum is filled with something poisonous. The mission of a journalist is to promote healthy values. This can also be done by the Church, the family, and education, but professional journalism bears enormous responsibility as well. After all, a professional editorial office always has a goal. And state-owned media is bound to have a constructive rather than a destructive goal. That's why journalism as a profession is in demand. I’m talking about normal journalism, the creative and meaningful kind of journalism where society is not undermined for sport.
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We live in a global world, and Russia should not isolate itself. We're not in favour of autarky, are we?
Many foreign journalists work for Russian channels. They realize that the dominance of the so-called Anglo-Saxon perspective in media is detrimental to their countries as well. Openly totalitarian states will emerge unless there is a counterweight, like Russia, to represent alternative viewpoint.
I have colleagues who have worked for the BBC for 25 years and now want to come to work with us because they can no longer take all the anti-Russian nonsense, hatred and censorship. I get calls from Paris telling me that there are stop lists for people who are banned from French TV – people who used to be frequent guests in the past and were prominent cultural figures in France.
Can you put them on the air?
Yes, of course. Western journalists often tell me that they work under real censorship. So, it's quite normal when people want to work in Russia, which they see as an alternative and a source of balance and parity – not just nuclear, but also information parity. That’s their way to defend their freedom. Total self-reliance and isolation is not an effective strategy for a country. Russia does not want this. We are an open country. For example, Russia says that it’s ready to switch to visa-free travel with the EU overnight, but the EU is not willing to reciprocate. We have switched roles. In the past, the Soviet people required exit visas. That was how the USSR protected itself. Now we realize that we live in the best country in the world.
And the other countries are jealous of us?
That may well be the case. Yes, we do have issues and problems, we don’t hide them. But our country is trending upward despite the economic downturn.
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Since Russians and Ukrainians, and people of other ethnicities, fought Nazism in WWII together, it is painful to see what’s happening in Kiev today...
We have won. We are proud of it. People who deprive themselves of this heroic past live in negativity. They turn into a nation of losers. They only remember the famine and the fact that their land was once occupied.
Many say they defend freedom, but aren’t people supposed to defend their families and countries first?
Of course. When we are asked to abandon the family by accepting untraditional values, we are essentially being asked to allow our country to be destroyed.
