If you want to see the end of journalism...start here.
All it takes is a English failed musician who lives and writes for the Russian Pravda. He has a long history of anti-American and anti-Israel invective. He sits on the Pravda editorial board and launches pro-Russian propaganda whose main thrust is to disparage what it is aimed at, while making the Russian side seem more glowing and noble.
We can argue Western journalism, corporate filters and Chomskyesque debates until we are blue in the face, but Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey's editorial accusing Canadian athletes of doping simply because Russia was unable to get any medals like they used is cold war rack-and-pinion steering by an Englishman educated in Leeds, but steering the anti-West attack for the motherland.
From one blogger who was able to look up his bio before it was deleted:
I incidentally became involved with the world of music and even became one of the leading English song-writers of the 1980s. I took part in three Eurovision contests, released three albums, two maxi-singles and five singles. That was the time when I started establishing contacts with the press. "I had to give a lot of interviews for television and newspapers. I noticed that facts were reinterpreted on numerous occasions, almost always, in order to make an article correspond to ideas of a reporter. One fine day I realized that there was only one way to strive for the truth: to write a true story and to send it to mass media outlets. That's what I did."
I showed my first articles to a friend, a reporter, who expressed his interest in them and asked my why I did not take up journalism seriously. After that, I finished journalism courses, and worked as a freelance journalist at Portuguese, Spanish, Latin American, English and Romanian media outlets. However, journalism was not my only occupation. "I believe that there is nothing more boring for a journalist than to sit at table, working on the so-called news, which has already been picked out from the Internet by someone, retelling someone else's stories. In addition to that, it is proof of the absence of professionalism, it is not worth it, in the long run. I like to visit new places, to collect new material for my own articles."
So Timmy seems to use Pravda...which is Russian for "truth", by the way, to launch venom at the West and all things that rail against his pro-Russian way of life.
Meanwhile per the Wall Street Journal, the 2010 Games are set to go down as the Olympics with the fewest doping infractions since Nagano.
But reality has not place in Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey's ludicious little world. He uses his perch to rip Vancouver as an unfit location, how terrible it was for Russian athletes (including one who was caught for doping), and finishes it off with his creme-de-la creme of accusations and hyperbole with assuming doping must be how Russia screwed the pooch.
Yet, some were onto him early on when he ripped Vancouver.
Mr. Bancroft-Hinchey apparently has a history of this sort of gibberish. And it's probably unfair to denounce all of Britain over one fruitcake with an axe to grind in Pravda. (Even Russians don't read Pravda any more, do they?)
When the Olympic flag was passed on to Russian officials at the conclusion of Vancouver's spectacular Olympic closing ceremonies, maybe someone should have handed over a few crying towels as well.Given all the whining coming out of Russia, the host country for the 2014 Winter Games, they probably could have used some.