Uhm, only problem there is that fighting started on August 1. So Russian journalists being there on August 7 would not be unusual, it would be a case of journalists rushing to the nearest hot-spot in hopes of scooping each other (and Russian journalists because, well, nobody outside of Russia and Georgia really cared if Ossetian and Georgian forces were sniping and shelling each other, and certainly you would not see Georgian journalists in Tskhinvali!). If the Russian journalists were there *before* August 1, that would be unusual... but thus far we have no indication of that.Originally Posted by kaur
In other words, if you want to prove a conspiracy theory whereby Russia chose the time that Georgia invaded, this won't do it. Not to mention that it greatly mis-states the role of the Russian government in the Russian press. Russia is not the former Soviet Union, and the Russian press isn't a branch of the government. The Russian press is not a free press by any means -- media outlets that report things not beloved by the government find themselves charged with "extremism" and shut down, so they tend to self-censor very well, and as with the U.S. many major media outlets are owned by government supporters -- but a government official can't just say "Report on this or you go to the gulag" like back during Soviet days. All they can do is issue press releases and hold press conferences, just like here in the USA. If the U.S. government held a press conference and said that Mexican Army snipers were shooting across the border at El Paso and killing Americans, and that Mexican artillery had fired on a few houses near the border, you'd see the same stampede of American reporters to El Paso. But this doesn't mean the U.S. government controls the U.S. press. It just means that reporters stampede to where there's a story.
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