In Bulgaria the American University (AUB) organized

a conference on the maidan bloody coup and the role

of the western media in the Ukrainian tragedy. A
conference where professor Johanna Granville,
Fullbright Lecturer, explained what the western
media
are
hiding

Original article can be found here:

http://thenewsdoctors.com/maidanand-beyond-the-media-blackout-inukraine-dr-johanna-granvillespresentation/
Maidan And Beyond: The Media
Blackout In Ukraine Dr. Johanna
Granvilles Presentation
TND Guest Contributor: James L. Coffin, Ph.D.
The lack of any real debate in the Western media on Ukraine has irked me ever since
the protests on Kievs Independence Square or Maidan Nezalezhnosti broke out in
November 2013. The anti-Russian bias is so prevalent that perhaps average readers
no longer detect it. In this post I would like to report on a very interesting presentation
I heard and the disturbingly biased coverage of it in a Bulgarian student newspaper,
which points to an alarming lack of critical thinking skills in todays young adult
population.
Given the deafening drumbeat of condemnation of Russia, and specifically Putin, I
found Johanna Granvilles multimedia presentations on November 10 (Ukraine:
Another Yugoslavia?) and especially November 19 (Beyond Maidan: The Media
Blackout in Ukraine) at the American University in Bulgaria (AUBG) both refreshing
and informative. While much of the information is already familiar to members of the
Vineyard of the Saker community, the presentation invites analysis of the negative
trend of repeated false flags in 2014 ever since the Euromaidan revolution, which so
many uninformed citizens gullibly championed.
Granville is the author of numerous scholarly articles, a book (The First Domino:
International Decision Making During the Hungarian Crisis of 1956), and is the winner
of two Fulbright lectureships in Russia and Hungary (see her website here:
http://www.johannagranville.com/). She was conducting research in Ukraine for her
second book when the Maidan revolts began. After delighting the audience on
November 19 with a three-minute introduction in Bulgarian, paying tribute to AUBG
founding father John Dimitri Panitza, Dr. Granville noted the decline in press freedom
around the world today. According to the Reporters Without Borders press freedom
index for 2014, the United States ranks 46th, Ukraine 127th, and the Russian
Federation 148th. (She cautioned that the Reporters Without Borders organization is
itself supported by the U.S.-funded National Endowment for Democracy). All too often
freedom of information is sacrificed in the name of national security, she stated. If

you get nothing else out of my presentation, remember this: we must not swallow
uncritically anything we read in any one countrys newspapers, she said. To get the
truth these days, a thinking person must dig for real facts and evidence. Dr. Granville,
who was AUBGs first Panitza Memorial Professor of Communist Studies, selected three
events in 2014 by which to illustrate the Ukrainian medias biased coverage: the
snipers killings at Kievs Maidan (February 20), the Odessa massacre (May 2), and the
shootdown of the Malaysian airline (July 17).
Hired to teach East European History in the Twentieth Century, which covered the
period of Soviet communist domination over the satellite countries, Granville cannot
be described as a Russophile. She is simply a diligent, impartial researcher. She
prefaced her remarks by stating that her essay was exploratory and intended to
encourage debate. Her sources included independently funded blogs by investigative
journalists and analysts not subject to government or corporate censorship (like
Vineyard of the Saker). When citing from the Russian press, she corroborated her
findings with other independent sources.
Snipers Massacre on Maidan
We have heard it repeatedly: that former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych
ordered Berkut anti-riot police to open fire on unarmed protesters, and that Russian
agents participated in the killings. In his speech to the U.S. Congress on September
18, 2014, current Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko repeated this line, adding that
the overthrow of the Yanukovych government resulted from mass peaceful protests
against police violence. Granville presented some arguments that make me question
this standard version.
First, take the Kiev regimes cover-up and use of scapegoats. All recordings of live TV
and internet broadcasts of the snipers massacre have been erased from Ukrainian
websites. The results of ballistic, weapons, and medical examinations were declared
classified. Even trees on Maidan with bullet holes were cut down. In her Power Point
presentation, Granville showed photos of Dmytro Sadovnyk, the Berkut commander
whom the Ukrainian Prosecutor General accused of killing 39 protesters at Maidan on
February 20. Theres just one problem: Sadovnyk cant shoot a gun very well. His right
hand was blown off by a grenade six years earlier.
Evidence suggests that the snipers were in fact from the Maidan opposition and/or
from a third party of professional snipers, and that they shot at both unarmed
protesters and policemen, Granville attested. She drew upon published interviews,
time-stamped live videos, and the meticulous research of Dr. Ivan Katchanovski of the
University of Ottawa, who examined 30 gigabytes of intercepted radio exchanges of
the Alfa and Omega units of the Ukrainian Security Service, the Berkut riot police, and
anti-government protesters during the entire Maidan uprising.
One interview she cited was that of the former chief of Ukraines Security Service
Aleksandr Yakimenko, published on March 13, 2014. According to Yakimenko, shooters
were spotted in at least twelve buildings around the square that were forcibly occupied
by the Maidan opposition, but Maidan Commandant Andriy Parubiy refused to allow
Yakimenkos armed men from entering the square. (Parubiy later became Secretary of
the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine until early August 2014. He is cofounder with Oleh Tyahnybok of the ultra right-wing Svoboda Party.)

Granville also cited the April 2, 2014 interview by Yanukovych, in which he denied ever
ordering the Berkut police to shoot unarmed Ukrainian citizens. Furthermore, at a May
13 press conference, according to Granville, Ukrainian parliamentary investigation
head Gennady Moskal stated that the bullets that killed both unarmed protesters and
Berkut police in Kiev on February 20 did not match any of the firearms issued to
Berkuts special unit. This is interesting, when coupled with the testimony of Dr. Olha
Bohomolets, who averred that the same type of bullets were extracted from the
wounds in both protesters and police. Dr. Bohomolets performed emergency
operations at the triage center during the Maidan shootings. Her testimony was
alluded to in the famous leaked phone call between Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas
Paet and the EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton on February 25. Gennady
Moskal predicted decades of debate on this mystery of the snipers, since several
keydocuments were destroyed.
Granville pointed out other evidence typically ignored by the Ukrainian media. This
included videos showing members of the paramilitary group Right Sector leaving the
Hotel Dnipro with large cases, which they called musical instruments. It also
included radio intercepts of Maidan opposition fighters, positioning themselves on top
floors in occupied buildings around the square. She played excerpts from these
recordings, whereby the audience could hear Maidan protesters calling for access to
open windows and referring to the Berkut in the third person. Their cameramen and
shooters were apparently working together. Their words were audible in Russian at
0.22 in this video: You must show how the people are being shot and how they fall to
the ground. Some of the photos of armed Berkut police may be misleading, Granville
argues. In some cases, according to live videos, they are shooting at the dirt in front of
unarmed protesters in order to get them to retreat. The videos show dirt sprays, not
bodies falling to the ground. See here at 13:0914:13.
As many as ten unarmed Berkut policemen were fatally shot earlier on February 18,
which prompted the governments decision to bring in armed security forces. That
allowed later killings realistically to be blamed solely on the Berkut police. Granville
posed the question: Would Berkut police have shot at theirown fellow officers? At least
thirteen Berkut police died and 189 were wounded by gun shots. Curiously, no one has
been arrested for shooting the policemen. Ironically, Maidan opposition leaders sought
to appoint Andriy Parubiy to head the investigation of snipers attacks, the same man
who apparently prevented Yakimenkos men from entering the square to eliminate the
snipers from the surrounding buildings.
Odessa Massacre
Three months after Maidan, on May 2, another tragic loss of life occurred, this time in
Odessa, a key port city all the more valued after Russias annexation of Crimea in
March. Citizens in Odessa call it the Odessa Massacre or the Odessa Genocide, but
the Ukrainian media typically refers to it as the Odessa arson case, Granville said.
The official version of this event in the Ukrainian media goes something like this. On
May 2 several thousand young Ukrainians gathered to watch a soccer game,
Chornomorets Odessa vs. Metalist Kharkiv. A traditional march for a United Ukraine
was planned, with the opposing teams marching together. Before the march, some
400 pro-Russian protesters were armed with guns, bats and sticks and wore
bulletproof vests and helmets, while most of the Ukrainian patriots were unarmed.

These armed pro-Russian separatists shot into the crowd of ultranationalist football
fans, killing at least one. The crowd of young, pro-Kiev football fans and Right Sector
members then rushed over to Kulikovo Field. There they set fire to the tents in front of
the Trade Unions building, where allegedly radical heavily armed pro-Russian
separatists were camping out. Warned that these pro-Kiev radicals were coming to
attack them, these protesters barricaded themselves in the large Trade Unions
Building. Russian citizens disguised themselves as separatists and provoked the
crowd. Official reports state that about forty-six died of asphyxiation. In differing later
accounts, six died of falls from windows and as many as thirty-two from chloroform
gas. The building, they state, was set on fire by the pro-Russian rebels themselves. In
an unfortunate case of accidental self-immolation, these rebels hurled a Molotov
cocktail at a closed window, which then ricocheted back into the room and ignited.
Other versions state that it is not known how the building caught on fire. The
Ukrainian Interior Ministry stated that 172 people were arrested after the tragedy, and
that the majority of detainees were identified as Russian nationals and residents of
Transnistria, Granville said. Never before has such agruesome event been so amply
videotaped.
Testimonies of survivors and eyewitnesses, plus unedited videos by local Odessa
citizens paint an entirely different picture of this event. The individuals trapped in the
burning building were in fact all local Odessa citizens, Granville noted. Videos actually
show Right Sector radicals removing passports and wallets from corpses after the fire.
(See here at 46:06). This enabled authorities to claim later that the deceased were
Russian citizens. Survivors state that perhaps as many as one hundred and sixteen
people were trapped in the buildings basement, and that they died not exclusively
from asphyxiation, falls, or burns, but also from gunshots and dismemberment by
axes. One woman had been raped, and another pregnant woman strangled. The
victims were unarmed (see here at 46:17), and included women, children, elderly men,
and World War Two veterans. Several videos clearly depict Right Sectorgirls preparing
Molotov cocktails and pro-Kiev radicals hurling the cocktails from without the building.
They show young men on the roof, throwing the first cocktails at the tents well before
the football fans had even arrived at Kulikovo field. Still other videos show the radicals
entering the building even before the pro-Russian protesters took refuge there, which
would explain Molotov cocktails igniting from within the building. Even more
mysterious is the footage of allegedly pro-Russian radicals and Odessa policemen
wearing red armbands. (See here at 3:07). Granville showed photos of the Odessa
deputy police chief, colonel Dmitry Fucheji, conferring with one red armbanded
protester. The first Molotov cocktail hurlers atop the Trade Unions building were also
wearing the red armbands, as was a young radical filmed shooting into the crowd of
football fans in the center of town before the fire was set at Kulikovo field. (See here at
2:51 and here at 1:41:18-1:42:08).
Live videos place Andriy Parubiy in Odessa on April 30 and May 1, two days before the
massacre. (Recall that Parubiy is reportedly the man who barred Yakimenkos armed
men from entering Maidan to eliminate the snipers and who was later appointed
Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council). He is seen distributing bulletproof vests to the pro-Kiev militants, including the 33-year-old Maidan Self-Defense
activist and later captain of the Interior Ministrys Storm Battalion, Mykola Volkov.

Granville showed video stills of the porcine Volkov shooting into the Trade Unions
Building and mentioned that Ukrainian police since 2012 have sought to arrest Volkov
for fraud. (See here at 1:15-1:28.)
As with the snipers massacre, Granville identified in the Odessa case classic signs of a
cover-up. First, authorities were quick to blame Russia before any investigation was
conducted. Prime MinisterYatseniuk visited Odessa the following day, May 3, and told
reporters, We are at war with Russia, and that this was a well-planned Russian
terrorist plot. Second, although a parliamentary investigatory commission was
appointed, key public figures refused to testify, including Parubyi, chief of Ukraines
Security Council Valentin Nalivaichenko, and Interior Minister Arsen Avakov. Third, the
commissions report cut out, among other things, the roles of the Odessa regions
governor Vladimir Nemirovsky and Andrei Yusov, head of the Odessa branch of the
heavyweight boxing champion Vitali Klitschkos Udar party. Witnesses had testified
that Nemirovsky had bussed in about 500 Right Sector members from Lviv in western
Ukraine, and that Yusov instigated the pro-Kiev nationalists to burn the tents in front of
the Trade Union building. The published version of the commissions report was so
doctored that parliament member Svetlana Fabrikant, the secretary of the
commission, later withdrew her signature. Granville points out that if the Odessa
Massacre which resulted in the deaths of at least 48 pro-Russian protesters really
was a Russian terrorist plot, presumably the Ukrainian officials would want to
cooperate in the investigation. She concluded that, rather than being a well-planned
Russian terrorist plot, the Odessa Massacre was probably a deliberate provocation:
pro-Kiev militants posing as pro-Russians and deliberately shooting at their own, to
incite the mob and turn them on the real pro-Russian demonstrators at Kulikovo Field.
MH17 Takedown
Two months after the Odessa Massacre, on July 17, the Malaysian airline (MH17) was
shot down in the east Ukrainian region of Donetsk. In contrast to the snipers killings at
Maidan and the Odessa fire, this was truly an international crisis, involving the death
of 298 people, most of them Dutch, Belgian, or Australian nationals. Granville drew
upon the Corbett Report, and the well-researched articles and interviews on this
website and others. Within twenty-four hours of the crash, Granville told us, the Kiev
government stated that it had conclusive evidence that Russia had supplied proRussian rebels with a Buk surface-to-air missile, and that these rebels who controlled
the region of Donetsk had shot down the Malaysian airline, either accidentally or
intentionally. Granville played a video excerpt from U.S. President Barack Obamas
address on July 18, in which he implicated Russia, stating that it was not the first time
that pro-Russian rebels had shot down lower-flying Ukrainian military aircraft. We
know that these rebels have received arms, training, and anti-aircraft weapons from
Russia, Obama said. He then called for a credible international investigation.
Granville outlined the alleged evidence of Russian involvement commonly cited in
Ukrainian newspapers, which includes: 1) a YouTube video of communications
allegedly between a Russian military commander and pro-Russian rebel, discussing the
Buk; 2) a YouTube video of the Buk(uncovered by a tarp) being driven supposedly
across the Russian border at Krasnodon, missing a couple of missiles; 3) a comment
on the VKontakte page of Russian national Igor Strelkov (real name Igor Girkin) posted
thirty-five minutes after the MH17 crash, in which he supposedly wrote We

havewarned them not to fly in our sky.

As Granville explained, there is no way to confirm the identities of the two masked
men labeled Major and Grek depicted in static photos on the video. In the third
part of the video an unnamed rebel says he can see Malaysia Airlines written on the
plane, which is hard to believe, since the wreckage was spread over several kilometers
in pieces. The other Buk video has been traced to the city of Luhansk, fifty kilometers
from Krasnodon, an area that was indeed under the control of the Ukrainian army, not
that of the rebels, on July 18, when the video was made. Finally, Strelkovs supposed
VKontakte account cannot be directly traced to him. Even if it was, Strelkov possibly
thought at first that his men had indeed shot a plane down, but that it was a small
military aircraft. Granville warned that none of these social media sources can be
verified and are unreliable. They have all been thoroughly debunked by contributors in
the Saker community.
When one considers Russias nuclear status, and the MH17 takedown as a potential
casus belli (like the Lusitania or Gulf of Tonkin incident), making unjustified accusations
is extremely reckless. The Russians denied supplying Buk missile launchers to the
separatists. The Ukrainian military, incidentally, possesses several of them. On July 18
the Russian government formally asked Ukrainian authoritiesten questions. Granville
provided the list. They included questions such as: On what evidence are accusations
about Russias involvement based on? Why were Buk missile launchers deployed by
the Ukrainian army in this conflict zone, since the self-defense forces dont have any
planes? Why did Kievs air traffic controllers tell the MH17 to fly fourteen kilometers off
the normal route, directly over the war zone? Why did Ukraines Security Service start
working with Kiev air traffic control recordings without waiting for international
investigators? Will the Ukrainians provide data regarding the movements of Ukrainian
warplanes on July 17? How does Kiev explain the comments by a Spanish air traffic
controller regarding two Ukrainian military planes flying alongside the MH17?
Granville mentioned that the Russians startled everyone further by holding a press
conference on July 21, 2014 in which military officials presented their own satellite and
radar data. They stated that there was a Ukrainian Air Force jet, probably Su-25,
climbing and approaching the MH17 just minutes before the airline disappeared. The
Su-25 carries R60 air-to-air missiles as ammunition. Granville gave a timeline of
events. On July 21 the black boxes were handed over to the Malaysians, who then sent
them to London for an independent investigation. On August 8, the official
investigation of the crash was finished. An agreement was signed between Ukraine,
Netherlands, Belgium, and Australia to keep the findings of the long-awaited
investigation classified. (For some reason, Malaysia the country that lost an
expensive airplane had no say in this decision and, in fact, was originally excluded
from the Joint Investigation Team until November 2014). The Kiev-based Prosecutor
Yuri Boychenko stated that the results will be published only if all four countries give
their consent, and any one of the countries can veto without explanation. This is quite
astonishing, given President Obamas strident calls for an independent international
investigation and the endless tragic images the media has fed the world community.
On August 19, Russia addressed the UN Security Council, asking for Kievs air traffic
control records. Granville informed us that, according to Annex 13 of the Convention
on International Civil Aviation, The investigator-in-charge shall have unhampered
access to the wreckage and all relevant material, including flight recorders and ATS

records, and shall have unrestricted control over it to ensure that a detailed
examination can be made without delay. See here on page 39. On the day of the
crash, the BBC reported: Ukraines SBU security service has confiscated recordings of
conversations between Ukrainian air traffic control officers and the crew of the
doomed airliner, a source in Kiev has told Interfax news agency.
Granville reminded us that all U.S. surveillance satellite imagery is also missing. This is
all the more glaring, since the shootdown of the MH17 coincided with the ten-day
NATO military exercise in the Black Sea code-named BREEZE 2014. NATO ships and
aircraft had the Donetsk and Luhansk regions under total radar and electronic
surveillance. U.S. officials have repeated publicly that their judgment is based on
sensors tracing the Buk missiles trajectory, voice print analysis of separatists
conversations, and patterns of shrapnel in the debris. However, we should remember
that none of this hard data has actually been presented to the public. If the Russians
or the rebels of eastern Ukraine really are responsible, then why wont the Kiev and
Washington governments simply publicize their records?
Can we verify the Russians data about a Ukrainian air force jet approaching the
MH17? Yes, according to Granville. She cited the BBC report by Olga Ivshina published
on July 23, 2014. Ivshina interviewed Ukrainian villagers who saw one or two military
planes flying next to MH17 before it blew up. The BBC later tried to scrub the internet
of this report, claiming that it did not conform to the newspapers editorial values,
but it has been preserved here. By contrast, no reliable eyewitnesses have claimed to
see a Buk launch or plume. To drive her point home, Granville played a video showing
the loudtakeoff of a Buk missile and the white fluffy plume that typically remains in the
sky. Do you think you would have remembered this if you saw it in the sky after
hearing loud explosions? she asked. Thesound of a Buk missile launch can be heard
within a radius of ten kilometers. It vibrates the earth all around for two kilometers. On
that day there was very little wind. A plume like this would have remained in the sky
for at least ten minutes, Granville said. She also played the video of a villager who
captured the crash as it happened. No Buk plume is visible. (The report by British
social media blogger Eliot Higgins, claiming that residents saw the BUK smoke trail has
been discredited by the Saker and others. Higgins of the blog Bellingcat is the same
blogger who claimed the Syrian government was behind the sarin gas attack in
Ghouta on August 21, 2013).
Granville also played a recording of OSCE monitor Michael Bociurkiws interview with
Susan Ormiston of CBC News on July 28, 2014. Bociurkiw arrived at the crash scene
when the wreckage was still smouldering. He noted three pieces of fuselage that were
pockmarked by heavy machine gun-like fire, and told Ormiston there was no
evidence that a missile brought down the plane. The hypothesis ofPeter Haisenko, a
German national and retired Lufthansa pilot, also interested the audience. Haisenko
observed small holes in the wreckage consistent with a 30 millimeter caliber projectile
(which is the size of the cannon in an SU-25 military plane). A fragmentation blast from
a Buk missile, on the other hand, is not capable of producing neatly aligned round
holes. Haisenko also detected larger holes, some of which were inbound, others which
were outbound. This is what you would have if the plane were shot at from more than
one direction, for example, from below and from alongside the plane, Granville said. A
Buk missile attacks only in one direction. Haisenkos findings also fit with the Sakers
here and Colonel Cassads here, namely that both R-60 missiles and the SU-25s

cannons were used. Cassad found no cross-shaped traces that the Buks projectiles
typically leave, and also conjectured that the explosion of firepower was no more than
five meters from the MH17, further ruling out a BUK attack.
Still more chilling, Haisenko surmised that the most heavily pockmarked piece fit
directly over the cockpit, suggesting that the pilots stomach was probably targeted
directly. If true, Granville said, this would explain why there (apparently) was no May
Day distress signal on the voice recorder, according to air traffic controllers from
Dnepropetrovsk.
Granville ended with the curious case of Jose Carlos Barrios Sanchez, the Spanish
national the Russians had asked the Kiev regime about. Apparently he was employed
as an air traffic controller in Kievs Boryspil airport and tweeted minutes before the
plane disappeared: Plane shot down, no accident [Military] has taken over air traffic
control. Before they remove my phone or break my head, shot down by Kiev. Sanchez
wrote that the MH17 was escorted by two Ukrainian fighter planes just minutes
before disappearing from the radar. This Twitter account (spain@buca) was deleted
soon after the tweets, but the account has remained in internet archives. It was
opened in August 2010 and contains several photos of the Boryspil airport. Even if
you discount this as a hoax, Granville told the audience, consider the timing of the
tweets: 3:15 pm Kiev time, the same time air traffic control lost contact with MH17. It
shows that at least someone had inside information. Presumably the Kiev authorities
would not implicate themselves. If it were somehow the Russians, to throw the blame
on Kiev, one would think Ukrainian reporters would investigate the story in depth.
Instead, the Ukrainian and Western press ignore the issue.
Thus, as with the Maidan and Odessa killings, Granville states, to date we lack
incontrovertible proof that the Russians were directly or indirectly responsible for the
MH17 crash. The official report of the Joint Investigation Team is due around October
2015. In all three cases, we see signs of an official cover-up, stonewalling, and
destruction of evidence. The lack of a Russian motive and opportunity in each case
should also give us pause. Surely Moscow would not benefit by employing snipers to
infuriate a crowd already angry at Yanukovych a pro-Russian leader prompting him
to leave Kiev, and hence enabling Maidan opposition leaders to seize power. Likewise,
it is hard to see how Moscow could benefit by the deaths of a hundred or more proRussian peaceful demonstrators in Odessa or how Russians could even infiltrate the
local Odessa police force. Certainly neither the Putin government nor the rebels in
Donetsk could benefit by shooting down a large civilian airline. Critics point out that it
was an accident. If that is the case, one wonders why Russia was punished with a
second round of sanctions. Granville points out that on July 29, a week after the
takedown, the Obama Administration was able to persuade Germany to move ahead
with this second round of sanctions against Russia. Within hours of the shootdown,
Israel launched its ground invasion of Gaza, its air assault having begun on July 7. The
crash also enabled the Kiev government to paint the pro-Russian rebels and Russia as
responsible for what is essentially a civil war, not a foreign invasion.
A vigorous question-and-answer period followed this presentation at the American
University in Bulgaria (AUBG). Granville shared her personal survey results and
videotaped excerpts from interviews with citizens in Kiev and western Ukrainian cities,
and also explained the results of the recent elections in Ukraine. After the applause

died down, I overheard numerous positive comments from colleagues and students
sitting around me. From the Provost Steven Fenter Sullivan, Associate Professor of
Economics, came: Granvilles talk was a success well-structured, and certainly
topical. Pierangelo I. Castagneto, chair of the History and Civilizations department,
said It was concise and challenged the version in the Western media. Tamara Peneva
Todorova, Associate Professor of Economics, concurred, saying Even people who may
have disagreed with Johanna Granville were convinced that she had done a
tremendous amount of research. She had interviewed local Ukrainian citizens in the
Russian, Ukrainian, and Hungarian languages. Dinka H. Spirovska, Assistant Professor
of Journalism and Mass Communication, stated, I thoroughly enjoyed Granvilles
presentation. She condensed complex material in forty minutes and raised important
questions.
Compliments came from students as well. From Vladimir S. Todev, I heard: Honestly,
Professor Granvilles talk was the most interesting one I have heard at AUBG. Until now
I was pro-Ukrainian, but now Im not so sure. It showed a lot of respect for us
Bulgarians that Granville began her lecture in Bulgarian, which was quite good for a
non-native speaker. I also appreciated the photos from her travels in Ukraine. The
event drew a large crowd and several student reporters attended. Journalism major
Tereza L. Denkova, a junior, said The photo exhibition first caught my eye as I entered
the room. Next was the soft cello music which I later realized was by Professor
Granville, an accomplished cellist. I was amazed by her interviews in several
languages and her efforts to dig so deeply for information. From Irina Sotirova I heard,
I was surprised to learn that the same bullets killed both protesters and policemen,
that there were no witnesses who heard the Buk launch, and that the results of the
international investigation are still classified. I liked the way Granville presented both
sides. A lot of people asked questions afterwards, and she had thoughtful answers.
Tsvetiana S. Zaharieva, another junior, agreed: It was a very interesting talk that
made me think deeply about the trustworthiness of the media. I wonder how many
similar blackouts have distorted the recording of history. Professor Granville prepared
a solid Power Point presentation with many audio and video clips.
Student Media Bias at AUBG
Having heard such favorable remarks, I was rather bewildered to read the two reports
in the student-run online newspaper, the AUBG Daily, that were published on
December 10, nearly a month after the November 19 event. Oddly, the 19-year-old
reporter from Vitebsk, Belarus ignored the most plausible points, for example, those
concerning the testimonies of Michael Bociurkiw and Peter Haisenko about bullet-like
holes in MH17s fuselage and NATOs military exercise in the Black Sea. At other times
she listed without any context other credible pieces of evidence. An especially glaring
oversight is her failure to mention Granvilles boots-on-the-ground experience in
Ukraine, her extensive preparation, and the uniformly positive response from the
audience. This includes the enthusiastic remarks I myself made during a videotaped
interview with the reporters classmate shortly after Granvilles presentation.
Apparently the reporter was so hard-pressed to find any dissatisfied members of the
audience that, in her other article, she had to solicit comments on the public lecture
from someone who did not even attend ita former AUBG professor who was not even
in Bulgaria on November 19! In another case, she interviewed a skeptical visiting

professor who cites the preponderance of evidence that allegedly proves Granville
wrong about the MH17 crash, but then does not provide any such evidence as if by
dint of stating that the speaker is wrong makes her wrong, despite all the supporting
material she provided. I noticed that many Ukrainians attended, including some from
Crimea who supported the Russian annexation. Strangely, the reporter chose to
interview just one, a nationalist Ukrainian from Kharkiv, who alluded to facts that
directly contradict Granvilles view, but then did not provide any. This fits a familiar
pattern in the Ukrainian and Western media coverage of the MH17 crash; by blaming
Putins Russia, we make Russia solely responsible for the war in Ukraine. No hard
evidence need be given. If a spokesman from a NATO member country states that he
knows something or says confidently we have evidence (but shows none), he is
automatically believed, whereas genuine data if it originates from a Russian source
is automatically discounted. One has only to watch how State Department
spokesperson Marie Harf feebly ducks the penetrating questions of Associated Press
correspondent Matt Lee to see such a pattern.

This fact-free, ad hominem approach starkly contrasts with Granvilles crisp, evidencebased analysis. The student-run periodical has consistently reported on the Ukrainian
conflict entirely from a pro-Kiev perspective, either without citing any news sources at
all or citing exclusively CNN, a news channel whose staged events, bias, and
falsehoods on conflicts in Syria, Iraq, Iran, Bahrain, and a host of other places is welldocumented. To be sure, we all learn ultimately by doing, and the idea is to give
students the experience and responsibility. However, as I later found out, writers for
this student gazette (including first-semester freshmen) are not currently being trained
on how to evaluate sources, examine both sides of an issue, and abide by the rules of
responsible journalism. The Bulgarian student newspapers bias is all the more ironic,
since Granvilles key message, stressed throughout the November 19 presentation,
was that a democratic society depends on a free, unbiased press. She emphasized
from the start the need to examine sources and to check facts.
In an era when politicians practically own media empires, young people today might
get the idea that the media is simply an instrument of one side or another. The
boundary between media and PR has become very blurred. Educators today need to
remind students (West and East) that there exists a higher calling for investigative
journalism. Truth is not relative. Without rigorous training in critical thinking skills and
guarding against bias, journalists and their newspapers can easily become instruments
of war.
In all three cases, we are talking about war crimes, Granville stated passionately in
her conclusion, while Apples 1984 TV ad about Big Brother played silently behind her.
Innocent people have died in the sniper attacks on Maidan, the massacre in Odessa,
and the shootdown of the Malaysian airliner. What we need to do as individuals is to
keep asking the hard questions and demanding real evidence, rather than passively
accept what we read in the mainstream media. We need to hold government officials
accountable.
I couldnt agree more. As the Saker wrote recently, the Western media is mounting a
truly heroic effort into not mentioning the MH17 topic, as if it had never happened. If
more people and organizations around the world not just Russian ones demand the

truth, the truth about the MH17 catastrophe might not disappear so easily into the
memory hole as just one more conspiracy theory.

Dr. James Coffin was a Balkan Scholar at the American University in Bulgaria
in 2013-2014, as well as Director Emeritus of the Center for International
Programs at Ball State University in Indiana. An anthropologist, he examines
how developing societies cope with pressures from developed societies and
has developed programs to train anthropologists in fieldwork overseas.