Research Seminar. Home task 1.

Akimov Nikita

Document 1.

The first document covers incident happened in 2017, when Russia supposedly bombed the
location in Syria where the US troops were dispatched.

It was written as collaboration between two CNN-affiliated journalists, and published on

CNN website in September 18, 2017. This document appears to be written specifically to be
published on the CNN website, thus is provided in its original form – a newspaper article.
However, despite the article being authentic itself, the information it covers, as well as authors’
approach towards disclosing (or, rather, non-disclosing) certain facts remains doubtful. To prove
this, internal criticism is necessary. First of all, it must be noted that this article is written for
CNN readers and CNN is known not only as pro-American newspaper, put also as a party-
biased one with it supporting primarily Democratic Party. Thus, the first point that must be
addressed is that presupposes Russia as an enemy to the US. The language and the tone are
mostly of descriptive nature, with narrative always being shifted towards criticizing actions of
Russian military and justifying US operations in the region. Another point to address is that
article despite referencing to a number of sources does not actually disclose them, thus creating
ambiguity and hampering its own reliability and credibility. Concluding, this article bears a
very controversial nature due to its presupposed biases, unclear sources and questionable
reliability and having little to no factual value with strong emphasis on propaganda mechanisms.

Document 2.

The second document basically is an answer to the allegations that criticked Russia for
bombing the location in Syria where the US forces were operating.

It was published on RT website at September 17, 2017, but no authorship is provided,

which is the first point of concern regarding this article. This one, being a newspaper article
like the first one, also poses some inconsistences and is doubtful in terms of reliability. First of
all, the tone and language are strongly pro-Russian in the way that authors often colourful
expressions praising Russian military, its joint operations with Syrian regime and event openly
blaming the US for supporting terrorists and insurgents, thus doubting their official intentions in
the region – this, however, like in the first case can be acknowledged by the fact that RT is an
official government-affiliated news-agency. In this regard this article may be considered as a
propaganda instrument, targeted specifically at radically-patriotic part of Russian citizens.
 Comparison

Both of these articles are very questionable in terms of reliability, firstly because of the
both carrying and already biased political agenda, where first one praising the US and criticizing
Russia and the second one doing the opposite. It should be noted, however, that RT article
provides far more in-depth references to sources with more complete quotations where the CNN
article not only gives what it seems like incomplete quotations but also does not disclose many
sources only referring to them as “officials”. In this regard each of these articles provides little to
no use as a source in terms of factual data and casual inferences, but may be used when studying
the issues of “Modern Cold War” or ideologies of both of these countries.