Oppressor Versus Oppresssed Dynamics in War Coverage
How astute is the legacy media coverage of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict? What does it mean for public consciousness?
American legacy media is guilty of portraying the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine in an oppressor versus oppressed dynamic. This framework is certainly easier to digest for the average media consumer. However, its accuracy and objectivity ought to be critically questioned.
Americans frequently frame their conflicts in an oppressor versus oppressed dynamic. This has been the case since the American Revolution. Ignoring the ideological and economic conflicts between conservative Loyalists and radical Patriots, the portrayal of the war has been of being between an oppressor United Kingdom, and the oppressed American colonies.
The US Civil War frames the core issue in a similar fashion. The Northern Unionists were liberators of the oppressed Black slaves from the oppressive Southern Confederates. The fact that abolitionism was only a minor element of a broader attritionary strategy against the Southern economy is willfully discarded.
The North went to war to maintain the union. For example, William T. Sherman was certainly not an abolitionist despite being a primary architect of the Union’s military strategy. It’s debatable whether the Unionists widely cared about the moral cause against slavery. Not to deny the conditions of slavery, or justify the cause of the individual Southern slaveholder, but to claim the primacy of moral value as a catalyst of this war is inaccurate. The Southern economy was built upon slavery and to dismantle that would be to neuter the confederacy.
World War 2 suffers the same narrative abridgment. The American role is commonly framed as heroic against the oppressor forces of Nazisim despite the provision of military aid to Nazi Germany by the business class, and the rejection of Jewish refugees by the government.
These examples intend to illuminate that, in terms of mainstream consciousness in America, conflicts tend to exist in this paired-down dynamic. Situational complexities that contradict this framework be damned. The greyness of reality is cast aside to maintain an understandable black and white.
As a contemporary example, the media portrayal of the Black Lives Matter movement has been generally portrayed in the same oppressor versus oppressed dynamic. Rather than critically engage with the complexities of crime and justice, race and policing, or efficacy of policy, the nature of this socio-political conflict is summarized as one between the broadly oppressive police and the broadly oppressed Black community.
While the platonic ideal of journalism is that of a truth-finding mechanism, there is a disconnect between that ideal and journalistic utility. There is a substantially greater benefit to promoting the use-value of a certain narrative rather than a truth value. To the average consumer of legacy media, the circumstances surrounding, say, the complex nature of policing in the country is opaque. Keeping the general public engaged is its primary financial and political incentive.
It is easier for a reader to be directed toward who to cheer for and who to boo than to navigate through the murk to form their own conclusions. Therefore, it is useless for legacy media outlets to convey a grey reality of war to their readers.
Legacy media champions this dynamic in order to sell stories to the public. Furthermore, the establishment favors legacy media and grants them legitimacy. This is no more apparent than in its current coverage of the Russo-Ukrainian war.
The Biden administration’s adamance about US involvement in the war exemplifies the preeminence of imperialist interests in its liberal-internationalist foreign policy. Liberal-leaning neoconservatives also echo the sentiments of the admin. These ideas diffuse to the level of legacy media journalists, who take the information given to them by the state as truth and convey those ideas in their binary framework for the consumer to digest.
There is an asymmetric willingness to recognize potential war crimes against civilians and POWs at the hands of the Ukrainian military. Ukrainian crimes against perceived Russian sympathizers and Russian captives will likely never be fully acknowledged by legacy media institutions like CNN, NPR, NBC, or the NYT. Neither will they be realized by international authorities like the UN. Both have taken on a totalizing narrative of Ukraine’s victimhood and the absolute justification of any defensive measures taken by the state or its forces. In this framework, Ukrainian war crimes against Russian captives are either not happening, or justified if they are. Additionally, one ought to notice the obvious minimization of the Neo-Nazi ideology that organizes Ukraine’s Azov Battalion.
Legacy media profits from operating in blacks and whites. The American public now puts Ukrainian flag emojis in their social media bios, and purchases “I Stand with Ukraine” merchandise while video footage of Ukrainian soldiers knee-capping Russian POWs circulate online. For the legacy media consuming, establishment supporting American liberal, there is a new facet of virtue signaling to extend their identity into.
To stand against the bad guys is what every good liberal ought to do, whether against white supremacist police or the total evil that is Putin’s Russia. The commercialization of Ukranian support should make this obvious. Whether the proceeds go to pro-Ukraine non-profits does not negate the fact that establishment Americans now signal their beliefs with Ukrainian merchandise.
To be clear, I am not excusing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This article is not intended to be pro-Russia. From a base ethical standpoint, the Russian invasion is an act of pure cruelty based upon esoteric nationalist and exoteric geopolitical interests. However, I am interested in analyzing the matter from a perspective that rejects the moral black and white as portrayed by legacy media outlets. The reality of Ukrainian war crimes against Russian captives seems shockingly suppressed in favor of a clear-cut, tidy characterization of Ukraine as a total victim as though that is at all how war works.
Morality and power, like truth and power, are poisonous combinations. Power is always hiding, it does not want to be seen and so it will cling to other reasons unless it is forced to show its ugly face. The question is always what is at the center of attention. We already see the Russo-Ukrainian conflict fading somewhat to the rising star of Elons attempted purchase of twitter, but will that hold attention or falter? It is difficult to tell, but the moral high-ground is always claimed by those driving the narrative.
Rejecting black and white thinking is so important, yet so seemingly unobtainable