A new Hollywood film that features the 2008 war in South Ossetia has sparked controversy as to whether it is an unbiased portrayal of historical events or another attempt at political propaganda.
First of.
After the war there was a European Union inquiry into the war that concluded that "Georgia ignited the conflict by attacking separatists in South Ossetia, but that Russia had provoked violence in the enclave for years and exploited its consequences. "
That's a direct quote from the international herald tribune from october 1st, 2009
(as a student you can easily apply for a kickass discount subscription to this great newspaper, I really recommend it).
The report finds no evidence that a Russian invasion was under way on Aug. 7, 2008, when Georgia ordered the shelling of the South Ossetian capital, Tskihinvali. It says Georgia broke international law by using force against Russian peacekeepers stationed in the city, and that the Russian Army had legal grounds to defend the peacekeepers. But the report says Russia "went far beyond the reasonable limits of defense" in undertaking a drive outside South Ossetia that violated international law and was "not even remotely commensurate with the threat to Russian peacekeepers."
According to one critic, Danny Schecter, we are “in an age of media grazing”.
“The problem is that often people are going to shorten and shorten news bits,” Schecter told RT. “People are just looking for a little more source of information about things they already know.”
Schecter says this is a problem because it is news industries job to provide information the public is not aware of.
“That sort of defeats the whole aim of the news industry because partly we are here to tell people stuff that they don’t know about,” he says.
Napoleon said; History is written by the winners. But do we really appreciate what he was trying to tell us ?
