Zakharova Refutes Catalan Story By The New York Times

According to Maria Zakharova, the absolutely delusional content of the Catalan story published in The New York Times clearly shows that the publication, with its history and traditions, again becoming a hostage of their own unprofessionalism, or even an instrument in the hands of some lobbying centres.

A couple of days ago, the Russian Foreign Ministry published a refutation of a NYT article, Married Kremlin Spies, a Shadowy Mission to Moscow and Unrest in Catalonia, on its webpage devoted to examples of publications replicating false information about Russia. Actually, if it were not so long, it could be of use to the James Bond franchise, except that there they seem to employ “talented” people who come up with creative headlines. If anything, this piece can be defined as bad fiction. It would be a stretch to call it journalism because it is fake from beginning to end.

As for the aforementioned New York Times misinformation, Russia, for our part, have promptly reacted to it by publishing a refutation. The problem is that nonsense cannot be refuted. This is their true strength. They publish things that are difficult to disprove. One can disprove an incorrectly presented fact, an incorrect quote, or a wrong date. But absurdity is impossible to refute. Apparently, this is the two journalists’ most valuable skill. Their names are known to us; Michael Schwirtz and Jose Bautista have been added to the history of world fakes. They have been hailed as world-class bunglers for an entire week already.

According to Lippmann and Merz, from the end of 1917 to the end of 1919, the New York Times reported 91 times that the Soviet government had fallen or was about to fall. This is just one aspect, and the NYT reported a non-existent story 91 times. It was a hundred years ago; but, as they say, if the tradition is good, why change it? Still, there are journalistic standards; people learn from mistakes, their own or someone else's. You need to change. It's time.

Isn’t this amazing? A hundred years later, they still work the same way. The journalistic standards of some newspapers never change. Bravo, New York Times! Nevertheless, we are hoping against hope that you will draw some conclusions from this lesson, Zakharova stressed.