Since this week was Election week, I thought it only appropriate to examine how Russian media currently views and is talking of Barack Obama's victory and the future of the U.S. This BBC News article highlights a few Russian news lines regarding Obama including; "Obama has become a kind of new religion for some of his supporters" and "Experts are convinced that Obama will pay more attention to Russian internal political problems such as political pluralism and freedom of speech." I found this very interesting first of all because Russia is recognizing the Obama-craze that has swept the nation and also because for the most part, it seems that Russia is pleased with our election results and hold high hopes that he will improve our relations with Russia. I think this is a very important development. I also noticed the part in the second newsline about Obama paying more attention to the freedom of speech problems in Russia. Since our case study directly involves this issue, that caught my eye and make me wonder what Obama would be able to do in terms of helping this situation in Russia, if this is even possible.
Some other Russian news that I came across in my media monitoring this week includes the following:
Communists accuse Bond girl Olga Kurylenko of "betraying" Russia: The Communist Party of St. Petersburg has accused Ukranian actress Olga Kurylenko, Bond's sidekick in the most recent Bond adventure "Quantum of Solace," of "betraying" Russia by acting in this film. Though the film is of fictional nature, the party is angered that she assists "a man who worked for decades under the orders of Thatcher and Reagan to detroy the USSR." They feel that she is assisting the "killer of thousands of Soviet people and their allies." The article states that the Communist Party of St. Petersburg has a history of criticizing "disloyal" Western films.
I found this article rather interesting because it somewhat relates to media issues, but in this case it's Russia having an issue with our media. I think this really highlights how sensitive an issue it can be for countries to portray other countries in a negitive light, even through fictional movies. This reminded me of examples we covered in class relating to this issue such as the films "Zoolander" and "Borat," who both portray other countries in negative lights as well.
Finally, in one other news story I read, hate crimes in Russia are soaring. Attacks on Russian holiday kill 2: On a national holiday celebrating Russian unity, Russian youths killed two people from Central Asia. National Unity Day has increasingly been used by ultranationalists and facist groups to attack dark-skinned immigrants from Central Asia. Hate crimes in Russia are soaring and are at a 50% increase over the last year. According to the article, in the first 10 months of this year, 113 people were killed and 340 injured in zenophobic attacks. Most of these attacks happened in Moscow.
The reason this story caught my attention is because it made me think of our case study which focuses on the murders of Russian journalists. This case is different because the target is immigrants rather than Russian journalists, however it still highlights some of the country's issues and it still puts Russia in a bad light.
By Lauren Chapman
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