- Putin may strip CNN of its Russian broadcasting rights
after it refused to air a 30 minute exclusive interview he gave the network.
-
- You probably didn't know that CNN censored Putin for
being just too darn sensible. Yep, it's true. About two weeks ago, Putin
gave the network an exclusive 30-minute interview. And you know what happened? Nothing. It
was never allowed to air. CNN doesn't know it yet, but that decision might
have cost them their Russian broadcasting rights.
-
- On August 29, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin met with
senior political correspondent Matthew Chance for a CNN exclusive interview.
"This was unprecedented access to Russia's powerful prime minister,
the former KGB spy now increasingly at odds with Washington," an overly
dramatic voice-over introduced the segment as Chance and Putin enjoyed
pre-game banter and a walk through the courtyard of Putin's palatial Sochi
residence. Once seated, Chance didn't waste any time with his provocative
questions:
-
- Matthew Chance: But it's been no secret either that
for years you've been urging the West to take more seriously Russia's
concerns about international issues. For instance, about NATO's expansion,
about deployment of missile defense systems in eastern Europe.
Wasn't this conflict a way of demonstrating that in this region, it's Russia that's
the power, not NATO and certainly not theUnited States?
-
- Vladimir Putin: Of course not. What is more, we
did not seek such conflicts and do not want them in the future.
-
- That this conflict has taken place -- that it broke out
nevertheless -- is only due to the fact that no one had heeded our concerns.
-
- I think both you and your -- our -- viewers today will
be interested to learn a little more about the history of relations between
the peoples and ethnic groups in this regions of the world. Because
people know little or nothing about it.
-
- If you think that this is unimportant, you may cut it
from the program. Don't hesitate, I wouldn't mind.
-
- It was a prescient comment. Not only did CNN delete Putin's
historical roundup of relations between Russia, Georgia and South
Ossetia going back to the 18th century that followed, the network
cut out almost everything else as well. Despite the "unprecedented
access" hook, for its U.S. feed, CNN reduced the 30-minute
interview into a series of sound bites that seized and ridiculed Putin's
crackpot theory that the Republican party started the war to
boost McCain's ratings.
-
-
-
- CNN's international audience, enjoying the news from
hotel rooms all round the world, got to see a little more of the the footage.
But most of it had to do with Russia's ridiculous "non political"
decision to ban some American poultry importers from doing business with Russia because
of their poor quality control standards. CNN's intentions were clear: Putin
must come off looking like a fool. And it seemed Putin gave them the perfect
material. Embargoes on dead chickens and global neocon conspiracies? Gosh,
what serious self-respecting world leader would start talking this kind
of gibberish? Even Ahmadinejaddoesn't sink that low. Well, the chicken
meat embargo might have been a little weak, but the neocon conspiracy I'm
not so sure about. But more on that later. (You can see the <http://search.cnn.com/search?query=putin&type=video&sortBy=date&intl=true>heavily
edited interview clips on CNN website, but the network never made
the full version available. But you <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ1HaztRKaY&feature=related>can
see it on Russian TV.)
-
- Not surprisingly, this didn't go down none too good with
the Prime Minister. See, as it turns out, when Putin told CNN he wouldn't
mind if they cut some of his comments, he wasn't exactly being honest.
Not only did he mind, but he was sovereignly pissed off to find
the entire interview censored. After all, he is the one that usually does
the censoring. And it's not like he gives out TV interviews every month,
or even every year. If I'm not mistaken, the last interview Putin gave
to American TV was waaaay back in 2000, when he was on Larry
King Live making crude comments about the sinking of the Kursk submarine.
-
- And then there's the issue of Saakashvili's CNN
time. Just in the past month, Saakashvili has appeared a dozen
times on the network giving interviews averaging 5 to 10 minutes each.
As CNN correctly pointed out, Putin is a former KGB spy, so he knows all
the details, down to the nearest second. And that's exactly why he's taken
it as a personal insult from CNN's headquarters (and probably more proof
of an international media/government conspiracy against him). But he just
might have the last word.
-
- The word on the street here is Putin is out for blood.
It's payback time. According to a source with high-level government connections,
the Russians are planning punitive actions against CNN. At this point,
it is just a rumor, but they are preparing to kick out about half of the
half-dozen Western journalists working at CNN's Moscow bureau.
Sooner or later they're going to have to apply for a visa renewal and that's
when it's gonna go down.They'll be denied, clean and quiet like. We
can only pray that the tool Matthew Chance is up for a new visa soon.
-
- So why did CNN decide to cut the interview? The thing
is, Putin came off pretty darn well. Sure, the chicken embargo was
embarrassing, but the McCain/neocon conspiracy theory wasn't as crazy as
some would want you to believe. Gary Brecher has been saying
all along that this little war had the mark of a half-baked neocon plan
for world domination. As Gary says, Georgia's move makes
no sense at all from a Georgian perspective. Somebody must have told those
idiots they'd be safe to retake South Ossetia.And who better than
Cheney?
-
- In general, Putin was able to strike an unusually sympathetic
chord during the interview. It sure wasn't anything like the grotesque
interview he gave eight years ago, where he made that cruel "it sank" <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqDqvKYDv9M>Kursk
joke. This time around, he was level headed, reasonable and, most importantly,
very convincing and believable -- not what you'd expect from the evil Stalin/Hitler
hybrid personality being pushed on the American public. And that worried
the hell out of CNN editorial staff, enough to make them crudely censor
the entire thing and hope no one noticed.
-
- So, what parts of Putin did CNN leave on the cutting
room floor?
-
- Putin the anti-Stalinist:
-
- Therefore, those who insist that those territories must
continue to belong to Georgia are Stalinists: They defend the
decision of JosefVissarionovich Stalin. [It was Stalin who first split
up Ossetia and gave the southern half to Georgia.]
-
- Putin the caring:
-
- For us, it is a special tragedy, because during the many
years that we were living together the Georgian culture -- the Georgian
people being a nation of ancient culture -- became, without a doubt, a
part of the multinational culture of Russia.[C]onsideringthe fact that
almost a million, even more than a million Georgians have moved here, we
have special spiritual links with that country and its people. For us,
this is a special tragedy.
-
- Putin the peaceful:
-
- You and I are sitting here now, having a quiet conversation
in the city of Sochi. Within a few hundred kilometers from here, U.S.
Navy ships have approached, carrying missiles whose range is precisely
several hundred kilometers. It is not our ships that have approached your
shores; it's your ships that have approached ours. So what's our choice?
-
- We don't want any complications; we don't want to quarrel
with anyone; we don't want to fight anyone. We want normal cooperation
and a respectful attitude toward us and our interests. Is that too much?
-
- Putin the conscientious business man:
-
- Construction of the first gas pipeline system was started
during the 1960s, at the height of the Cold War, and for all those years,
from the 1960s until this day, Russia has been fulfilling its
contract obligations in a very consistent and reliable way, regardless
of the political situation.
-
- We never politicize economic relations, and we are quite
astonished at the position of some U.S. administration officials
who travel to European capitals trying to persuade the Europeans not to
buy our products, natural gas for example, in a truly amazing effort to
politicize the economic sphere. In fact, it's quite pernicious.
-
- It's true that the Europeans depend on our supplies but
we too depend on whoever buys our gas. That's interdependence; that's precisely
the guarantee of stability.
|