Western media favored liberal pro-Western voices inside the uprisings

Evidence

The power of whiteness is most luridly on display within the media. Its gatekeepers in Western nations are overwhelmingly white, and naturally, their journalistic lens sees the world through its exclusionary contours. The racism coming from the mouths of populists and pundits regarding Ukraine found unison among liberal and centrist media voices. Charlie D’Agata, of CBS News, cried on air, “[Ukraine] isn’t a place, with all due respect, like Iraq or Afghanistan, that has seen conflict raging for decades. This is a relatively civilized, relatively European—I have to choose these words carefully—city, one where you wouldn’t expect that, or hope that it’s going to happen.” — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 1202 (#expands, via linked claim)

But in 2004 they changed their name to Svoboda, or “Freedom,” and stopped using the Wolfsangel fascist symbol. They were still antisemitic—in 2012 a spokesman said actress Mila Kunis was not really Ukrainian because she was actually a “Jewess”—but they hated Russians most of all. Vitali Klitschko, a former boxer and center-right orange politician, was a constant presence, as was Arseniy Yatsenyuk, the foreign minister under Yushchenko, and Yulia Tymoshenko’s Fatherland party. There was Automaidan, a loose group of people who had cars and were willing to use them to help the protest movement. — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 491 (#expands, via linked claim)

There are many statesmen and even a few governments in the Arab world who believe that the long-term interests of their countries and peo­ ples require co-operation with the West, help from the West. They can, however, only pursue such policies by disregarding or suppressing popular feeling. It is the policy of rejection and insult that arouses immediate and spontaneous en­ thusiasm among the mass of the people. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1186 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Tahrir crowds were middle-class, TV-informed, and economic-motivated — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 239; Western media presented a divided coalition as a unified people’s uprising — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 491; Western media covered Muslim-majority countries nearly only through a violence lens — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes…, 753 (+4 more)

Related

• Western media presented a divided coalition as a unified people’s uprising (similarity 0.84)
• Whiteness shapes journalistic framing; liberal and right-wing media shared racist Ukraine framing (similarity 0.82)
• Mainstream Western media framed Ukrainian refugees as more civilized than Arab and Afghan ones. (similarity 0.80)
• Liberal media voices joined populist racism in ranking Ukrainian lives above Muslim ones (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Western media presented a divided coalition as a unified people’s uprising #expands (0.80) — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 491
• Whiteness shapes journalistic framing; liberal and right-wing media shared racist Ukraine framing #expands (0.80) — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 1202
• Pro-Western Arab leaders governed against prevailing popular sentiment #corroborates (0.75) — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1186
• Western media framed Ukraine as civilized partly because it is European #exemplifies (0.75) — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 1792
• Media framed Palestinian resistance as civilizational clash rather than political land struggle #exemplifies (0.75) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 650
• Western media covered Muslim-majority countries nearly only through a violence lens #qualifies (0.70) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 753