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How ‘The New York Times’ Got Ukraine Wrong

In his appearance on The John Batchelor Show, Stephen Cohen exposes an “astonishing piece of media malpractice” by The New York Times.

Stephen F. Cohen

January 7, 2015

Anti-government protesters clash with police in Kiev on February 20, 2014. (AP Photo/Sergei Chuzavkov)

 

 

On Tuesday, The Nation’s Stephen Cohen joined The John Batchelor Show to discuss Western policy towards Ukraine and the media’s latest attempts to cover it. Cohen began by discussing The New York Times’s recent investigation on the ouster of former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, a piece that he called an “astonishing piece of media malpractice.” In their eagerness to justify US support of the new government, Cohen said, the Times completely missed the story in Ukraine—including the fact that multiple independent investigations by scholars, journalists and witnesses have concluded that the sniper attacks in Kiev in February were part of an “ultra-nationalist” coup. The Times article, Cohen went on to say, is “an attempt to airbrush out of history one of the looming questions of how we got into this new Cold War.”

—Naomi Gordon-Loebl

Stephen F. CohenStephen F. Cohen is a professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New York University and Princeton University. A Nation contributing editor, his most recent book, War With Russia? From Putin & Ukraine to Trump & Russiagate, is available in paperback and in an ebook edition. His weekly conversations with the host of The John Batchelor Show, now in their seventh year, are available at www.thenation.com.


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