UPDATE: British reporter Graham Phillips finally released by Kiev – after 36 hour detention
21st Century Wire says…
If you were ever wondering just how controlled state-run and corporate media outlets were in the US and Britain, here is a good example…
As the Ukraine’s Presidential elections draw nearer, the self-appointed government in Kiev are wary of any negative reporting that might paint government-backed military incursions in the Eastern Ukraine in a negative light, and are now clamping down on international reporting by threatening and detaining journalists – a clear violation of international press rights – and international law.
Graham Phillips (photo, above), a British journalist and ‘stringer’ for RT reporting from the Ukraine, was detained yesterday and taken to an unknown destination by the National Guard troops at a check point in Mariupol, Eastern Ukraine. He wasn’t detained for any crime, but for his point of view and reporting facts on the ground – something which the western-backed Kiev government does not like.
There appears to be a willful intentional and highly politicised media blackout on his disappearance. No UK media outlets carried the story. Today, it finally received a mention, but only in the BBC’s Nottingham local news section of its website.
This in contrast to a series of vague, yet attention-grabbing headlines making their way through the western press as civil war looms in the Ukraine. RT explains:
“Ukrainian journalists face threats as separatists make demands of media”, “Two Ukrainian journalists disappear in Crimea – watchdog”, “US journalist Simon Ostrovsky held by pro-Russian militia in Ukraine.” These and other flashy headlines have lately appeared in abundance in the UK media, which detailed the plight of reporters working in Ukraine torn by probably the most dramatic civil strife in decades. But this display of corporate solidarity appears to have been bewilderingly selective.”
Phillips was not just any reporter, but one of the top frontline commentators in the region since hostilities began ramping-up in late April. RT continues:
“After the journalist refused to do so, his captors called Ukrainian Security Service who then confiscated his photo and video recording equipment and decided to send him to Kiev.
“I’m sitting at a blockade post in a portacabin. The dialogue is quite interrogation oriented,” Phillips earlier told RT in a phone call. “They’ve taken my bulletproof jacket and my helmet, but on the other hand they haven’t in any way inflicted any form of injury or any actions on my person,” he added before contact with him was lost.”
Phillips was interrogated by soldiers who wanted to know if he was a spy and why he was “supporting separatists” in Eastern Ukraine.
Some Kiev radicals have even put a $10,000 bounty on Phillips’ head.
Clearly, backward-thinking Ukrainian soldiers only needed to do a quick google search for Phillips blog site to glean some reality – that he is a journalist, and not a spy. “Working for a RT, it’s something am asked frequently – what is the exact nature of my relationship with Russia? So, time to lay it right out there.”
“Not that Phillips is a low-profile reporter whose disappearance would go unnoticed. To the contrary, having reported from the very frontline in eastern Ukraine for the past several weeks, Phillips has become one of the most prominent foreign journalists covering the Ukraine crisis. Clad in a bullet-proof vest and a helmet, Phillips reported from the very eye of the storm, often braving gunfire and putting his life at risk”, explains RT’s editorial.
“So how is it that his detention and subsequent disappearance have gone almost unnoticed by the UK media? Was it that Phillips happened to be an RT contributor, or something else that could explain this unexpected collective oblivion?
The UK media have always prided themselves on the long-running traditions of freedom of expression, plurality of opinion, objective reporting and rejection of censorship. Not only have these tenets been held dear by scores of award-winning British reporters, but they have also been tenaciously implemented by generations of their less-famous colleagues, who never hesitated to resolutely stand up to threats to their journalistic integrity.”
It’s generally accepted by most readers who have followed this story closely, that the self-installed Kiev regime is a ‘throw-back’ junta complete with NeoNazi paramilitary gangs and street mobs. It’s also widely understood (outside of White House and Whitehall press briefings anyway) that Kiev’s deployment of troops against its own people in Eastern Ukraine has been under the direction of Washington DC – and their CIA, who are currently occupying the top floor of the government security building in Kiev.
Despite the self-evidence of Washington’s management of the crisis from December 2013 until now – both the US State Department and the British Foreign Office are keen to frame events in the Ukraine as natural and democratic, and in order to achieve this image, they require major media outlets not to report anything which might expose otherwise.
“It is all the more amazing that having displayed so much professional solidarity with their Ukrainian colleagues, the UK media went silent when it came down to Phillips – one of their own and a British citizen.”
READ MORE UKRAINE NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Ukraine Files
