<<< Today the story about Belarus and my family was finally published in the Style section of the Washington Post. Here is the link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/27/AR2005122701 325.html?sub=AR
>>>
The person who sent this message is a Hopkins student and works as a research assistant at out institute. She is basically an honest person, and does pretty much similar work I did when I lived in Poland - producing samizdats. She genuinely wants to change her country and make it a better place.
The same however cannot be said about the hack who wrote the piece for the Washington Post. Or perhaps he was honest in his own way, but he did not know any other way of doing journalism. After all, the US middle class is one of the most heavily brainwashed groups of people on Earth.
The piece is all familiar example of the cold-war style propaganda, that relies on the following tricks:
- use the darkest possible hues when describing a foreign country's reality that is deemed incompatible with the neo-liberal ideology favored by Washington elites; - turn that country into a caricature of government or bureaucratic inefficiency - portray Western lifestyles and consumer goods as object of desire of the native population there - use "native speakers" to convey authenticity of the story - cover up the fact that the criticized aspects of a foreign society also plague the US society to a similar or a larger extent
The goal here is to show with pictures that there is no alternative to US-style capitalism which is longed after by people who seemingly lack its benefits.
The difference between an independent journalist and a hack is that the former is criticizing her own society and its authorities whereas the latter is fundamentally incapable of such criticism and does his journalism mainly by criticizing others.
Wojtek