VERÖFFENTLICHT 11. MÄRZ 2022

Framing and Information warfare - are our journalists prepared for that?

The Ukraine War has brought the information warfare to a new level. However, up to now Russia is utterly unsuccessful in its efforts to frame the debate in the West and get its disinformation swallowed. But the Russian efforts continue and we must ask ourselves if we as a society and especially the journalists are prepared for what is still to come.

As with Covid-19 the disinformation virus spreads fast if somebody is not vaccinated against it. People who innocently share nice pictures or jokes which may not transport crude Russian propaganda but try to destabilize the sense of reality, to flatter resentment against „all politicians“, meaning the democratic system, to use legitimate fears that things may get out of control for undermining political resilience against the Russian aggression.

There is more than one vaccination necessary to increase resilience, full immunity cannot be guaranteed. Sometimes it is helpful when somebody is healed after having experienced Russian lies and disinformation. I will not push this metaphor to its limits – but the similarity is striking.

We had a first wave of a disinformation campaign from an unexpected direction: President Trump and his Alt-Right troups were rather successful with their „fake news“ and „alternative truths“ inside the US. Outside they tried to destabilize NATO, they lied about the EU, they alienated allies, supported Brexit and aligned with extremists like Nigel Farage. Deliberately weakening the West, Trump played Putin’s game. I do not know if he was just too stupid to know it, or if he really preferred the „genius Putin“ as a partner to the weaklings in Europe. Whatever the reasons, this was treason! Treason against democracy in the USA and against the Western alliance beyond.

The systematic use of „fake news“ was quite a test for all journalists. Most passed the test. After some time only the most ideologically blind followers believed a word from the mouth or the Twitter account of Donald Trump.

The Soviet Union was known to be a realm of lies. There was no shame about that. Even clear facts would just be denied. The dialectic thinking, going back to ideas of Hegel and Marx, then turned into a primitive ideology by Lenin and Stalin, mocked any concept of sincerety – because whatever you think can only be the product of your class-position, so any dissent makes you a class-enemy. Some postmodern concepts are quite similar when giving up on truth, declaring facts to be a form of opinion (in philosophy extreme forms of radical constructivism, in politics the so-called „radical democracy theory“, which is the rather undemocratic heir to a mould of neo-Marxism and Carl Schmitt and Heidegger influences). George Orwell may recognize the „Ministry of Truth“ he described in his novel „1984“.

Putin’s carreer started in the Soviet „Ministry of Truth“, the KGB, Lawrow served 20 years in the Soviet diplomatic service – starting out under Gromyko. He learned to „lie for his fatherland“. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs lied about Stalin’s Katyn massacre of Polish officers and denied the existence Molotov-Ribbentrop secret annex with the map to divide Poland with Hitler. Gromyko repeated these lies even in his memoirs. Then Jelzin presented the original documents on the massacre as well as on the Stalin-Hitler pect in an exhibition in the Tretjakov Gallery in 1993. The professional liars must have been shocked.

After the perestroika and during my second time in Moscow between 1992 and 1995 many younger Russian diplomats started to speak out freely – there were real debates, certainly they defended the interests and the values of their country, but there was trust coming up that you could rely on their word. But the old power elites were still there. And those in the power structures – especially from the powerful KGB – who were renegades on communism did not look forward to a modern Russia but fell into deep nostalgy of the autocratic Russian Empire, as if there could be a restart in 1917. These people tried a coup against Gorbatchev in 1991, they tried to force Jelzin from power in 1993, and they successfully staged a peacemeal takeover of Russia at least after the 1996 elections.

One day I met the right hand of mayor Sobtschak in St.Petersburg, who then also managed the city-partnership with Hamburg. His name was Vladimir Putin. He did not speak much – but he was friendly and showed some affection for Germany. Much later he wrote on his time as an KGB officer in Dresden, that he was shocked that „Moscow did not answer“ the appeals to save the GDR. So behind the facade was somebody resenting that Berlin was no longer divided, that there was no more shooting on refugees, that the wall and barbed wire did not continue to divide Germany. He was shocked that the people in East Germany were able to be free and democratic. This shows that there were good reasons to be careful to trust anybody from the old KGB-structures even if they pretended an affinity to Germany.

The new liars are the old liars – but they have new means. Social media and Russian influencers are today much better equipped than at any time before.

A predilect means of propaganda is „framing“: the Russians bring out some fake news – or even better: half-truths – and Western media jump on this, make breaking news out of it and have frantic debates in their talk shows about this topic. Often they are not aware that they jumped in the middle of the „frame“ prepared for them. The reason for such framing is not always to introduce their propaganda directly, but to divert from real issues, to push controversal and divisive issues into the Western debate. Controversy is the essence of Western freedom of the press. Using it in the way a Judo master levels his adversary out of balance is a high art.

While our journalists are quite resilient to direct and crude propaganda it seems to me that they are not well prepared against such framing attacks. There is a deep resentment of journalists against any secrecy (except about their own sources). Every investigative journalist needs some hunting instinct to find out what the authorities try to hide. Being successful flatters their vanity, they feel they did something good for the people. And rightly so! It is one of the most important tasks of a free press to uncover abuses of power, corruption oder just disclose grave political errors.

But the same give an enemy a good entry point for framing.

Our media are not free of framing – sometimes they try to do good by framing news against extremists in our countries. The public does not digest this well. Trust in the press suffers from such framing. An example are news anchorwomen (and men) who first tell the spectators what to think about the news and only then bringing the facts – this should be treated as beginner’s mistakes at schools of journalism. The „moderators“ have multiplied, but the separation of news and comment, once a basic law of journalism, has suffered from mixing this up and calling this „moderation“. This also opens the door for Russian framing.

What can be done against being framed? First of all awareness is already a good vaccine. Second: known liars must be sanctioned by not believing them first hand. A notorious liar like Sergei Lawrow must know that whatever he says will be treated as a lie until the truth is corroborated by independent sources. That is the price for lies! Third: do not pick up the topics coming from framers – ignore them and do your own agenda-setting.