They say that robots or software robots can prepare news to be distributed much like a newspaper does.
Evidence is mounting that robots or robot-like reporters are already filing reports for leading newspapers, and making editorial decisions on headlines and what goes into a particular edition of a newspaper.
Now El Pais from Madrid has published a news story that states that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s popularity has soared to 88%, one year after the military invasion and purported “annexation” of the Crimea.
See
Agencias (Moscu), “Putin alcanza una cifra récord de popularidad del 88%. Crimea quiere nombrar al presidente ruso ciudadano de honor un año después de anexión El Zpais, 11 de marzo 2015 (19:28 CET).
El Pais is one of Europe’s leading newspapers, and it is nothing short of scandalous that it would print this story with this headline.
Is El Pais taking a direct feed from Russian newswires, giving their propaganda the impramatur of a leading international newspaper, and then publishing the “news” story? It cites the poll results as reported by the ITAR-Tass Russian news agency.
Is it the policy of El Pais to republish news stories from Russian wire services, or are its editors just asleep at the wheel?
In fact, many newspapers in many countries have been publishing these and similar poll numbers, as if they had any significance, much as the election “results” announced by the “separatists” in Donetsk and Luhansk and earlier in the Crimea that were reported, as if they meant anything.
See “The meaningless “sham” elections in “separatist”-held areas of the Ukraine on November 2, 2014, The Trenchant Observer, November 2, 2014.
Think for a minute. Russia is a dictatorship where there is no freedom of expression in the state-owned and state-related media, and opponents of Putin are harrassed, arrested, expelled from the country, or, as in the February 27, 2015 assassination of Boris Nemtsov, simply killed.
If you were a Russian and a polling company called you for your opinion, on the phone, or even if you were asked questions in a survey questionnaire administered in person, would you say you approved of President Putin and his policies? What’s the downside?
If, on the contrary, you say you disapprove of Putin and his policies, what is the upside? As for the downside, might you not be a little concerned that, in a police state, your answers could be used to hurt you, in one way or another?
See Saeed Ahmed, “Vladimir Putin’s approval rating? Now at a whopping 86%,” CNN February 26, 2015 (Updated 1256 GMT).
Ahmed reports,
So how is it that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s popularity is at a whopping 86%?
That’s the conclusion of a poll conducted this month by the Levada Center. Last month, Putin’s approval rating was at 85%.
The Levada-Center describes itself as an independent, non-governmental polling and sociological research organization.
And it has found that Putin’s approval ratings have been holding steady in the mid-80s since around May last year, which incidentally is when the Ukraine/Crimea conflict bubbled up.
What gives?
The answer is simple, says Ben Judah, author of “Fragile Empire: How Russia Fell In and Out of Love with Vladimir Putin.”
“That figure is made up,” he told CNN last month.
“An opinion poll can only be conducted in a democracy with a free press,” he explained. “In a country with no free press, where people are arrested for expressing their opinions, where the truth is hidden from them, where the media even online is almost all controlled by the government — when a pollster phones people up and asks, ‘Hello, do you approve of Vladimir Putin,’ the answer is overwhelmingly yes.
“So what that opinion poll is, is not a poll of approval but it’s a poll of fear.”
Regarding the recent poll, The Guardian adds one significant detail: “The state-run VTsIOM pollster reported on Friday that 88% of Russian approved of Putin’s job performance – an all-time record.” So, we are talking about the results of a poll conducted by a state-run polling agency, which El Pais picked up from a Russian ITAR-Tass wire story.
The Russian poll results are meaningless. Fatally flawed. Devoid of significance. Useful only for their propaganda effect.
In a dictatorship, the polls are meaningless, as meaningless as the election results. That is the news story.
Please tell the editors of El Pais.
If citizens and officials in the West are to accurately understand what is going on in Russia and the Ukraine, and the world, Western media are going to have to do a much better job of filtering out Russian propaganda.
To do that, they need reporters and editors who can think on their feet.
Moreover, a good starting point for them would be to never rely on news sources that are well-known for their mendacity. That would include most Russian news wires and newspapers.
The Trenchant Observer
