Dmitry Kiselyov yesterday and today or a story of Putinesque metamorphosis

Dmitry Konstantinovich Kiselyov is a Russian journalist. In December 2013 he was appointed by Russian President Vladimir Putin head of the new official Russian government owned international news agency Rossiya Segodnya [Russia Today], a 2,300 person organization made up largely of the former RIA Novosti news agency and the shortwave radio station Voice of Russia. He also serves as deputy director of Russian state TV holding company VGTRK [The All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company].

This is a quote from Wiki that should make it abundantly clear that Mr Kiselyov is as big a cheese in the Russian domain of mass media as a cheese could possibly get.

And no matter how cheesy you are, you don't get to this kind of executive heights without being able to carry faithfully the word from the above to the great unwashed. With assurance, with steely belief in what you do (and, especially, in what you say).

Some enterprising soul has glued together two short video recordings: one from sometime before 1999 and a recent one, creating a short clip of 2 minutes or so (the second part is about 30 seconds) starring Dmitry Kiselyov - then and now. The title of the result: "How does a man change near Putin"



Follows a rough translation of both parts.

Part 1

My name is Dmitry Kiselyov. You can't separate a journalist from ethics. But [many of the] people you see on your screens couldn't be called journalists, since frequently they are just propagandists. Propagandist, author of a pamphlet or a writer - they have a right to what they do, exactly as a painter has the right to paint over his whole picture in red color and to say that this is his vision of the world, according to his creative vision. But a journalist doesn't have that right, because the journalist's mission, in my opinion, is to show the correct proportions of the world, to show the full picture of the world. So the problem is rather the problem of the viewing public - to look at the screen and to understand who is it they see - a journalist or a propagandist. After all, we are discussing professional journalism here.

And if we talk about what the public consumes - the public will swallow the continuous lowering of standards - to more vulgar, more undressed, accepting any shocker, any lowering of the moral level - people will gobble up everything. But then one day we'll find ourselves simply wallowing in mud, like pigs, and this will be our society, where we'll gobble up one another, together with the mud. And it will be already impossible to get lower.

Part 2

I consider that fining gay people for promotion of homosexuality among teenagers is not enough. They must be forbidden to donate blood and sperm. Their hearts, in case of a traffic accident, should be buried in the ground - or burned, as unsuitable for prolonging someone's life.

Yeah, speaking about wallowing in mud like pigs...

As for being faithful to the hand that feeds him (and promotes him), Dmitry Kiselyov is so diligent and frantic to please his master that he even exceeds the brief, like in this instance:

Just in case you weren’t taking the situation in the Ukraine seriously enough, an influential Russian news anchor reminded viewers that his country could reduce the United States “into radioactive dust.”

Good doggy, good doggy...

More about Dmitry Kiselyov - a loyal werewolf wereparrot of his boss.