The media have made a stunning series of miscalculations when it comes to what is now a global conflict in Ukraine.
Most journalists have underestimated the fiercely independent Ukrainian people, who have bravely fought back against the Russians (who have their vastly superior firepower), held the capital and slowed the military advance.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky holds a joint press conference with the German chancellor in Kyiv on February 14, 2022. (Photo by SERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP via Getty Images)
The media have underestimated Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a former comedian with no political experience, who has inspired the world by taking to the streets in military garb, rejecting a U.S. evacuation offer and making videos vowing to resist.
They have underestimated the impact of Western sanctions, which have shut down the Russian stock market, collapsed the ruble, cut off many of the country’s banks from the credit markets and sent untold numbers racing to their ATM machines.
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They have underestimated our NATO allies, some of whom have been tougher than us in sanctioning Vladimir Putin personally and partially closing off the SWIFT financial system, prompting the Biden administration to play catchup. They have also led the way in closing their airspace to Russian airplanes, with even such normally neutral nations as Japan, Finland and Sweden standing with Ukraine. But Joe Biden deserves some credit as well for laying the diplomatic groundwork for a more unified alliance.
Russian President Vladimir Putin visits the construction site of the National Space Agency on the premises of the Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Centre, in Moscow, Russia, Feb. 27, 2022. (Sputnik/Sergey Guneev/Kremlin via REUTERS)
On the other side of the equation, there was a minority in the media as well as politics who said the press drumbeat about an invasion was hype, that Putin wouldn’t take such a risky step, that this was all designed as a distraction from Biden’s political woes. Columnist Matt Taibbi deserves credit for apologizing for his misjudgment on the invasion itself.
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An overlapping group said that Ukraine is irrelevant to our national security, that most Americans don’t care, and that Biden should worry more about our southern border than the Ukrainian border. Some are changing their tune as the casualty count rises and Russia, despite its pledge to limit civilian casualties, has bombed apartment buildings. And with more than 500,000 refugees fleeing Ukraine, this is clearly a problem for the world community.
Over the longer term, virtually the entire media community owes Mitt Romney an apology for mocking and denigrating him for arguing in the 2012 campaign that Russia was our No. 1 geopolitical foe. The New York Times said the observation, which Barack Obama exploited, showed Romney was unfit for the White House. CNN and the Atlantic are among the media outlets that now say Romney was right. Over the weekend, the Utah senator called pro-Putin Republicans "almost treasonous."
Former President Donald Trump speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Saturday, Feb. 26, 2022, in Orlando, Fla. (AP Photo/John Raoux)
Some of the reaction to the Ukraine catastrophe has obviously been filtered through domestic politics. Few Republicans spoke out when Donald Trump called Putin "savvy" and a "genius," and branded our own leaders "dumb," and while Trump called the invasion "appalling" over the weekend, he refrained from directly criticizing the Russian autocrat.
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Trump said in a statement yesterday that he "got delinquent NATO members to start paying their dues…hundreds of billions of dollars. There would be no NATO if I didn’t act strongly and swiftly." The former president did press some members to boost their contributions, but he also questioned the need for the alliance and the likes of John Kelly and John Bolton have said he tried to pull away from NATO.
As for Biden, there is legitimate media criticism that he could have been even more aggressive in opposing Putin. But as Fox’s Jennifer Griffin told me on "Media Buzz," had the president sent troops to Ukraine’s border, he would have given Putin a pretext to launch the invasion and blame America.
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Despite the heroic efforts of the Ukrainians and the mounting western sanctions that are themselves a form of war, we don’t know how this Russian invasion will turn out. What we do know–thanks in part to courageous journalists covering the conflict–is that the world looks very different today than it did one week ago.
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