NBC Butchered Putin’s Thoughtful Responses to Megyn Kelly. Good for Ratings — and Warmongers, by Gilbert Doctorow

Dear NBC News Team,

Congratulations! You have graduated from fake news to falsified news, arriving at a journalistic level that is identical to that in the Soviet Union in its heyday.

A couple of days ago, the political talk show moderated by Vladimir Soloviev on state television channel Rossiya 1 broadcast two versions of a segment from Megyn Kelly’s interview with Vladimir Putin last Friday in the St Petersburg on the sidelines of the International Economic Forum.  One was the complete, uncut version that was aired on RT. The other was the cut-to-shreds version that you put on air for the American audience. (Watch here, beginning 4 minutes into the program.)

The segment was Megyn Kelly’s aggressive question to Putin, asking his response to what she said was Americans’ understanding of his government, namely one that murders journalists, suppresses political opposition, is rife with corruption, etc., etc.  In the NBC version, Putin’s answer has been cut to one empty introductory statement that “Russia is on its way to becoming a democracy” bracketed by an equally empty closing sentence.  In the full, uncut version , Putin responds to Kelly’s allegations point by point and then turns the question around asking what right the USA and the West have to question Russia’s record when they have been actively doing much worse than what was in Kelly’s charges. He asks where is Occupy Wall Street today, why US and European police use billy clubs and tear gas to break up demonstrations, when Russian police do nothing of the sort, and so on.

In a word, you intentionally made Putin sound like an empty authoritarian, when he is in fact a very sophisticated debater who outranked your Megyn at every turn during the open panel discussion in the Forum, to the point she was the laughing stock of the day.

Who wins from these games? You are only preconditioning the American public for the war that is coming, whether by intention or by accident.   And there will be no one left to have the last laugh after the first day of that war.  So you can forget about your stock options and retirement schemes, ladies and gentlemen of the News Team.

have a nice day

Gilbert Doctorow

Brussels