I decided that if I posted all the stuff I want to about this “newspaper’s” current decline, I’d run out of Roman numerals somewhere along the way. Hence the column “Freefall Watch.”
While most of the time, I find the author’s tone extremely off-putting because he seems to go out of his way to tease ignorance out of stone, and he simply can’t fathom why most people don’t know or care about Central Asia, I think he’s more on the mark in his criticism of The Economist:
Is it me, or has The Economist become incredibly lazy as of late? I’ve noticed, in much of their reporting, sloppy fact checking, incomplete analysis, and just plain old wrong information. Take this little screed against Kazakhstan’s potential chairmanship of the OSCE. Can a news agency discuss Kazakhstan without referencing Borat?
I have noticed the disturbing prevalence of Borat references that the author refers to as well. There’s more:
Normally, if you label a country’s human rights record as “dire,” you offer some sort of example of dire human rights violations—say, a massacre, or wretched oppression, or a brutal civil war. Maybe you even discuss worrying trends instead of imagined scenarios like crushed demonstrations or murdered journalists (in Russia, which is not, I should repeat, Kazakhstan, just as “another part of the former Soviet Union” is not Kazakhstan). No, since they don’t have free elections, therefore the situation is dire and teetering on the verge of Andijon-like chaos. Has no one taught these jokers the dangers of hyperbole?
The best points are in the post itself. Recommended reading, as is the whole blog, warts and all, if only because the Curzons and Younghusbands of the world are either dead or posting on Coming Anarchy.
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