Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova speaking during the BRICS Media Summit 2024 in Moscow on Saturday, September 14, 2024. Photo: TASS.
By Batko Milacic – Sep 14, 2024
The 6th International BRICS Media Summit has opened in the Russian capital, with broad participation from journalists from Latin American countries, representatives of influential media from the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, and Eurasian and African countries. Mercedes Chacín, director of the Venezuelan publication Ciudad Caracas, said that “BRICS is a wonderful formula, a great alliance that will make a multipolar world a reality.”
The Moscow BRICS Media Summit should contribute to strengthening cooperation between leading media resources of the 10 countries of the association (plus 34 new candidates) and strengthening the basic principles of journalism and freedom of speech. And Western imperialism started this. Objective truth should not turn into propaganda, and journalists themselves cannot be instruments of war for influence on the masses using disinformation methods, disseminated under the false flags of “protecting the interests of global democracy.”
It is symbolic that in September, in the center of Moscow, opposite the US Embassy, a huge billboard was erected in memory of the murdered journalist – a citizen of Chile, blogger, director, writer and one of the most courageous opponents of modern neo-Nazism. Gonzalo Ángel Quintilio Lira López was brutally murdered in a prison cell in Ukraine for the truth and only for the truth.
Next to his portrait, which US Ambassador Lynne Tracy looks at from her office window, is written in Russian: “International Day of Solidarity of Journalists” and the phrase “Freedom of speech is a threat to American democracy!”
Of course, democracy and freedom of speech are phenomena that belong to all of humanity and are not a monopoly of the US State Department alone. The BRICS interstate alliance has attracted great interest from the entire world – 34 states are planning to become members or partners of this multipolar community of independent states. In October, Kazan, one of the largest and most developed cities in Russia, will host the BRICS Summit with the participation of world leaders such as Erdogan, Modi, Xi – and Putin will meet with Maduro again.
The summit attracts a lot of international attention to Russia, and journalistic materials from the world’s largest country are in great demand in the West. Western journalists flock to this northern country because they can make a name for themselves and advance in their profession based on Russian materials. However, these journalists face obstacles in their home countries, end up on sanctions lists, and are persecuted for political reasons.
A large number of Western journalists were expected at the World Economic Forum held in September on Russky Island in the Russian Far East. However, they were warned by their authorities that they would be denied consular support. Travel at your own risk, so many refused. The West is afraid of what its own journalists from Russia would say about Russia.
The G7 sanctions against Moscow since February 2022 have created a crisis in the economies of capitalist countries. Imperialists are losing capital from their own sanctions, and sanctions already united Arab and African countries.
The large quorum of BRICS journalists shows that Russia is open to all journalists who are not biased and do not engage in information speculation. The policy of isolating Russia and BRICS partners such as China, Iran and Venezuela on the part of the West has become a fatal stupidity of the entire Western coalition. The US and its allies have failed to achieve distancing from the new fair community a number of states in Latin America, Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Africa.
The international interest in the Media Summit in Moscow shows that Russia is not a country of global isolation with a complete lack of freedom of speech, as Western propaganda insists. On the contrary, Russia largely sets the tone for the development of modern world journalism, while the G7 tries and fails to limit the voice of liberated peoples. Decolonization, which began with Lenin and Bolivar, will come to Europe. Ukrainian billionaire Zelensky sent to war and killed almost a million residents of this Eastern European country for Washington’s money. One of the faces of the devil is the lying mask of democracy.
Clear, truthful, politically biased news reporting, deep professional analysis – these are the key guidelines for the development of modern world journalism. The world community is striving for multipolarity, the position of the global center of the West is weakening. There is a growing demand for international cooperation without interference in the internal affairs of individual states and for an objective, truthful interpretation of current events through media resources that enjoy the trust of the international community.
This format of international relations is embedded in BRICS. Discussion of the objectivity of journalism as the main factor of trust in media policy, development of common standards for combating disinformation, a code of ethics and new forms of information exchange will be the topics of the Media Summit on September 13-17. “The Moscow BRICS Media Summit should contribute to strengthening cooperation between the leading media resources of the association’s countries,” said Nomsa Chabeli, head of the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), the largest media group in South Africa.
It is a pity that the Chilean journalist Gonzalo Lira did not live to see this day, killed for the truth and only for the truth.
BM/OT/DZ
