How Corporate Media Narratives Distort Reality About Ukraine
By Nicholas S. Kass
March 28, 2025
Reading today’s [March 23] powerful column by John Kass about the damage to America abetted by the NY Times, the world’s leading journalistic institution, brings to mind a major epistemological challenge in the current global media landscape. That is the growing difficulty readers have perceiving and understanding reality, politics, and policy at home or abroad, in what the political Left calls the “post-truth” environment.
2) This problem is particularly acute in the dominant corporate media like the Times, which are increasingly ideological and deeply invested in the power structure status quo, in America and indeed many places across the world.
3) For example, it is often distressing to see how agenda-driven US corporate media reporting can be in covering events abroad, whether in Russia, Ukraine, China, Turkey, Syria and other parts of the Middle East, Hungary, and now even Romania.
4) Similarly, ignorance in Europe and elsewhere about the actually existing US is becoming more evident amid erupting disagreements over strategic issues, with the war in Ukraine as perhaps the best current example.
5) The reason for this US-Europe disconnect on Ukraine is far broader than the cataclysmic situation in Ukraine itself. For years now, political/bureaucratic/media establishments across Europe have followed the US lead on Ukraine policy as set by the (previous) Biden Administration, investing enormous political capital and propaganda in support of that policy — and perhaps even in hope that the Biden team would continue in power.
6) Consequently, any change in the Ukraine policy status quo — but particularly the dramatic change sought by the newly-reelected President Trump — is seen as a challenge to the primacy and survival of these European political establishments.
7) After years of being told by Biden that “Russia has lost,” and repeating that trope endlessly to their own electorates, there is an overwhelming temptation in Europe to explain Ukraine’s dire situation not in terms of ground truths (which were knowable but distorted and suppressed in Europe well as in the US), but rather as something nefarious, with incoherent and ludicrous accusations of alleged Trump Administration sympathies toward Nazism and subordination to Russia/Putin being cases in point.
8) In Europe this is, in some part, a consequence not only of indigenous state-corporate media landscapes designed to perpetuate the political status quo, but also decades of, let’s say, “USAID influence.”
9) Indeed the European battleground was prepared over the past decade during which US corporate media, colluding with what are now widely understood in the US as elements of an unaccountable Deep State, pushed to undermine President Trump and remove him from office in part by running misinformation operations against him. While failing to forestall Trump’s return to office, these ops succeeded in severely damaging political discourse in America and European elite perceptions of the United States.
10) So, it is understandable, but nevertheless distressing, to see how local and international European media try to shape opinion about the US, too often evincing an inability and unwillingness to understand what is actually going on in an America that is not confined to or defined by blue-tinged counties along its coasts.
11) Of course, some of this European media attitude reflects the professional laziness that often seems to be a universal feature of what passes for “journalism” the world over. And these negative traits are exacerbated in good measure by the extent to which foreign media operations seem to rely directly or indirectly on the NY Times’ “narrative.”
12) Ultimately, it is unsustainable. But its persistence is dangerous, and a disservice to diplomacy, international relations and even civilization itself. Indeed as Kass wrote, “‘Ozymandias’ is not just a sonnet written long ago to be marveled at by schoolboys. It is a warning.”
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About the author. This X post was written by Nicholas S. Kass and was initially published by Real Clear Politics. Kass served the United States for more than 30 years in CIA, National Security Council, U.S. State Department and other government posts. He is the brother of John S. Kass
Comments 19
I met a guy from the Netherlands (Dutch/Holland) and asked how the people back home felt about us here in the States. He said mostly upset. I asked if it was because of the influence of outlets like CNN. He agreed that it had something to do with it. A couple of things he mentioned were that the people back home didn’t think they had to manufacture things anymore or have a military. I guess if your neighbor’s guard dog protected both your houses, why get a dog? Trump talks about the pictures he has seen of the war in Ukraine and how horrific they are, and I think it’s time to release them. If people saw the ‘coffins being taken off the planes’ again, they might become anti-war again.
Thank you Nicholas, for your service and surviving as a kid with a brother like John.
All good.
No one likes being ‘surprised’ by what they advocate/support because they were given faulty information. The folks crafting faulty information (lies or wishful thinking) are relatively small, but we live in a high-tech echo-chamber where we witness lots of regurgitation of the same talking points, creating the illusion of consensus.
One way the average Joe can counter this is to focus time/attention on fewer narrators. Ideal narrators give longer explanations and have a track-record of not ‘surprising’ their readers by leaving out important details or lying. The fact that John Kass was pissed that he got it wrong about recent US middle-east wars (out-right lies from those in charge) is a credit to him.
Following folks on Substack and sites like this is a cure.
Well stated. Fully agree.
Simple solution to Ukraine…if you back fighting til the last Ukrainian, go to the front yourself, or send your children and/or grandchildren to the front line. Americans think another war doesn’t effect us at home. Look at the “war on terror” vets. War isn’t a product, it is a disaster of diplomacy. Trump has the next war lined up for the M.I .C., the Houthi war. So the M.I.C. should be content.
That’s kind of a ridiculous comment. Why would Trump line up another war for the MIC when all he’d have to do to make it happy is follow Biden policy and sink more weapons into Ukraine, which is the opposite of what he’s doing.
Exactly Robert: WAR IS A RESULT OF FAILURE OF DIPLOMACY!
Whatever its predicates, the reality of the Ukraine war is that under recent past, present, and foreseeable military and circumstances neither side can win. There will be no victory parade, neither in Kyiv nor Moscow unless there is a precipitous and significant drop off in support from NATO for Ukraine or the Russians put tactical nukes in play. The war will stop only with a Korean-like cease fire with Russia occupying a chunk of eastern Ukraine in addition to Crimea which it had taken before the invasion early in Biden’s term. Some variant of Trump’s proposals is the only hope to stop the death and devastation. The sine qua non is Ukraine giving all hope of becoming a NATO member.
If you ever read the European news/media, it is still a bunch of nitwits crowing that the Orange man is bad and knows not what he does. After years of Ukraine being a piggy bank for connected Ukes and connected Demorats, time to let the Euros take care of their own borders, we need to face west and north to where the real upcoming threats exist. If Keir and his Euro allies think that Ukraine is the hill to die on, let them spend their treasure and blood. Ironically in a short time at the rate it is going with immigration and birth rates, England and the rest will be run by Islamic extremists, and they might be more of a threat to us than any Russian bear. Europe is doomed by their own making, not by any external threat.
No connection to GOP. Gimme a brake. Who got us into Iraq war? The munitions industry is run by right wing nut jobs tied to CIA. BOTH PARTIES ARE POLITICAL WAR WHORES.
100%
1%
Your best line is the quote of the senile Biden “Russia has lost the war”, even as Russia continued to solidify its insurmountable “line of steel” across the eastern third of the country. This war will be an unfortunate testament to one of the worst presidencies in our history. Trump has no choice but to cede to some of Putin’s demands to end it.
I think it’s all a classic case of starting points and what you feed it will grow. If one starts with the assumption that Trump is stupid/bad and feed that viewpoint from within the echo chamber, the result will be (surprise, surprise!) everything he does is stupid/bad.
However, I start from the idea that he’s an incredibly flawed man who in his heart, loves this country, loves its people, hates death, hates war, hates losing, and hates the slavery so many have sold themselves into because they didn’t value freedom. His “arrogance” and love of the Trump brand motivates him to wanting to win at all of those: rescue the USA, MAGA, MAHA, create a safe place for families to raise their children, and bring about less carnage from wars. He wants peace in the world.
His will never be a lasting peace. Only Jesus could do that.
But as in the starfish story, for some young Ukranian or Russian young person, he will have made a difference for that one. I voted for Trump to give peace a chance.
Where 1)
Was thinking same thing. Might be one of those John Kass cliffhangers!
JOHN, Great column by your brother, I would like to offer a somewhat different view that no one seems to have thought of. Our V.P. J.D. Vance for whom I did vote, said that Mr Zelinsky did not show proper gratitude for our help. I would say that it is US who should be grateful for the Ukrains ability to stave off the invasion of Adolph Putin. Can you imagine what kind of Russia and Europe Pres. Trump would have inherited had Adolph Putin captured Kiev in the 3 days widely forecasted in February of 2022?
Adolph would have been puffing out his chest in victory, his paper tiger army would have been viewed as strong, and efficient, he would have a population of 40 million more from whom to conscript an army, he would control all the rare earth minerals that we would like to have Europe would not have had the ensuing 36 months to rebuild their armories AND Sweden and Finland would not be members of NATO and finally, Adolph would not already be a puppet China (you can’t think that 10,000 North Korean troops came to the aid of Russia without China’s blessing do you?) and Russian mothers, sons, spouses, brothers and sisters etc. of the estimated 150,000 dead Russian troops plus at least as many wounded in the unprovoked invasion of another sovereign nation.
How would you like that President Donald (not Neville I hope) Trump. BTW, do you still think you will get a NOBEL peace prize?
Ed. Roob,Northbrook, Il
BTW I am a 90 year old to whom WW ll was a current event and not a history lesson.
Ed. Roob Northbrook, Il
Before discounting Ukraine’s ability to resist Moscow’s warmaking in Ukraine, keep in mind that this conflict is hundreds of years in the making. The rulers in Moscow have declared numerous times that Ukraine, Ukrainians and the Ukrainian Language did not exist, never existed and will never exist. Yet, tens of millions of Ukrainians and even Russian speaking Ukrainians are still the stumbling block to Moscovites’ (“Moskali” as Ukrainians know them to be) dream of recreating the Russian Empire of old and crowning Putin their Czar. During the most recent Congressional hearing on security, John Ratcliffe said it best, “that Russia has the battlefield advantage, but that the Ukrainians have been constantly underestimated in this fight, and that “they will fight with their bare hands if they need to.” That is a critically important point for an intelligence chief to make to policymakers who have decided the best way to force Ukraine to the negotiating table is to threaten to cut off military assistance. That lever may backfire.”
This is the single, undistorted truth about Ukraine: IT CANNOT POSSIBLY WIN A WAR WITH A NUCLEAR POWER, especially one like Russia that is ran by madmen.
Once one understand this simple fact it’s easy to create realistic solutions to ending it. The track of the past 2-3 years is destined to end up into a full scale WW.