"ABC, it's easy as 1-2-3..."

RIA's coverage of the recent brouhaha surrounding Nightline's decision to broadcast an interview with Shamil' Basaev, and then follow it up in a later edition with an interview of a member of MS-13, a notorious Latin American gang, is rather interesting. For domestic consumption (in Russian), there's a just-the-facts story which describes the interview and has some background on this criminal organization. But on the http://en.rian.ru/ English-language RIAN site, we get a shoddy translation of a hatchet-job commentary piece (here is the original in Russian) by one Pyotr Romanov:

ABC: Reality show of murderers, Aug. 5, 2005

MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti political commentator Pyotr Romanov.) The U.S. ABC's late-night hard news program Nightline has shown an exclusive interview with a member of MS-13, one of the most dangerous gangs in the U.S. and several Latin American countries.

It was done, deliberately, soon after ABC broadcast an interview with Chechen bandit Shamil Basayev, which provoked the protests of the Russian Foreign Ministry and the indignation of common Americans, and despite the Russian ministry's decision not to prolong the accreditation of ABC staff in Moscow.

This is a highly "original" line of defense chosen by the channel. Its leadership apparently decided to prove that the principle of freedom of speech allows them to show the world's scum and butchers and hence the interview with Basayev was routine and quite normal for American television. [...]

Jose said he was used to seeing corps [sic] all around, decapitated, maimed and the like. "We torture them before killing," he said, to the delight of beer-swilling Americans watching him on TV.

Personally, I cannot accept the logic of ABC leaders - and many other normal people, including in the U.S., will surely agree with me - that the founding fathers of American democracy fought for freedom of the media to show the decapitated bodies of innocent victims and broadcast philosophizing pathological killers. I thought the "founding fathers" had different goals. [...]

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and may not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.

Romanov has a hard time with his train of thought, poking fun at "beer-swilling Americans" (a rather strange dig, given the astronomical consumption of malt beverages in Russia on the street, in the metro, in the morning...) in one sentence and then appealing to "normal people" in the US to agree with him in the next.

Regardless of the lame disclaimer at the end, RIAN saw fit to publish this under the rubric of "opinion and analysis." Disappointing, but not surprising.

To be fair, the RIAN website also has more thoughtful items on this controversy, including an interview with RFE/RL Director of Communications Donald Jensen and a response to that interview from Caucasus expert Robert Bruce Ware, both in English.