The level of propaganda around US reporter Evan Gershkovich is interesting to watch.
The day after he was arrested, the story in several MSM outlets was that at the time of his arrest he was about to have a meeting with someone from a tank factory in Ekaterinburg. He was, apparently, working on a story about tank production and, in some versions, about the view of workers at the plant to the war.
That story has since been completely wiped. None of the above is mentioned any more, and hasn’t been for months. The public is just told by the corporate media that he was arrested by the evil Putin regime for a prisoner swap while involved in ‘legitimate journalism’
It isn’t hard to see how the story he was covering was extremely sensitive. Russia does not have a tradition of investigative journalism as we (used to?) in the West. Even if Russia did have a tradition of investigative journalism this still crosses a line. Interviews with weapons production workers of the opposing side in war time? He didn’t realise that was sensitive? Simple thought experiment; if a Russian state journalist was nosing around a US weapons production facility – seeking to interview people, would that be regarded as fine? I doubt it.
Who swallows this propaganda?