Evening news
Today is March 15, 2022. News, yesterday visuals, and some thoughts about the place and the ethics of a journalist.
Yesterday was quite a day for Russian television, today is all about it. An editor of the “The Time” - a news show coming out live on the First (federal) channel - walked into the frame with a banner in her hands:
“No war. Stop the war. Don’t trust propaganda. They lie to you here. The Russians are against war”.
She tried to say a couple of words while the host was reading the news about sanctions. Of course she was pulled out of the scene, details are unknown, as well as what happened with the woman. Lawyers still try to find her. She left a video recording explaining that she couldn’t work and write propaganda any more.
The spicy topping to all that is that the host - Ekaterina Andreeva - is the most recognised news journalist at the federal television, the face associated with journalism’s failure in Russia since the first mass meetings in 2012. I remember the meme I shared on my Facebook page that time on my way to the Bolotnaya square: “There’s such a profession - to lie every day” (the sentence was built on the popular citation from “The Officers” - a film about the Soviet army: “There’s such a profession - to defend the Motherland”). It was quite painful then and it’s painful still to associate myself with the same profession. Beautiful and noble in its core but spoiled by vanity and cowardice quite talented people. Instead of service to the public, bringing the facts to the surface and sharing all the different opinions with the audience so the society could keep the authority in check in time, they do something else.
What is the purpose to become a journalist if you are going to do something completely different? There’re so many options - models, PR people, copywriters, politicians, whatever who’s not about the truth seeking. Who are about the presentation of different stories and themselves. If you aren't ready to risk your life, your comfort, your peace, don’t become a journalist.
And that goes for all the specialisations we, journalists, have. It doesn’t matter if you are in fashion, art, film industry, writing features or sit on the economical and social analytics. If you call yourself a journalist, it means that general ethics apply to you as much as to people reporting from the war zones, like Brent Renaud who was killed filming refugees exodus from Ukraine a couple days ago.
The main reason for the fashion and glossy media crisis is that people don’t understand why they should read the advertising catalogues like those are the Bible, there’s no new meaning invented to the dress, skirt or glasses. Those are still things. Readers don’t find there anything that would correspond with their life, their thoughts. Just pictures, mythological language, descriptive passages for those blind who can’t see for themselves. And a lot of “ah” and “oh”. But why?
Banality became the new truth. Like we didn't know before that racism is bad as all other sorts of discriminations, that climate change is impossible to reverse but we can slow it down a bit, that minorities and women have rights, that cultural expropriation and artistic inspiration are different things, and so on and so on. Those are not news. Even if you name them correctly and address the events it doesn’t say much about the problems roots or their solutions. Why that happens, why we can’t stop, why we hurt each other, lie to each other - those reasons stay uncovered.
Creatives copy each other, artists literally produce shit and someone pays for that, and critics lie that shit is a good one. Are they smoking the “good shit” and can’t see the difference - between their visions and physical reality?
They are high indeed. But the excitement comes from money, glory, easy lifestyle, recognition - for the talent to make right connections and to chat, to keep their opinion to themselves, to take gifts and money from brands and PR agents like nice salary supplements. Being a journalist in the fashion or art world now is the same as being a politician. It’s about lobbying someone’s interests and collecting votes.
So meanwhile journalism is degrading, you can look at the jewellery from BAFTA, and learn who in luxury business earned the most, escaped Russia the first and will lose the last from the sanctions on “Business of Fashion”. Did you know their intro to the site?
“Unrivalled, world-class journalism that covers the intersection of business, fashion and technology”.
That’s the spirit. Fashion people are always go big, even when they reprint the news from big media.
I wish I could go big. I can’t. I was working on my consulting agency site when I discovered it was blocked by Russian censor control. I can open it only with VPN. All my sites are blocked, including the client’s. My provider is Dreamhost, so site’s IPs are probably in the same cluster as sites and social media blocked in Russia. Officially I’m fine, but practically they cut me from my Russian clients and cut my Russian clients from their Russian readers.
In the fight with Goliath I came to realisation that Internet can’t be sequestered and boxed. They tried to block something as tiny as a mice in the field. They didn’t know where exactly it will run, so they cemented the whole space. How many sites and services of banks, payment gates, social networks, applications, all sorts of digital resources, including Russian, became inaccessible from Russian territory? The answer is “too many”. The block was lifted an hour ago. But the lesson I’ve learned.
The mask regime is over in Moscow. That’s the last news for today. I know, tomorrow will be brighter.
A digest from my Instagram for March 14th, 2022
9.00am zakharova_kaetano Good morning 🌞 How are you today? #haveagoodday I’m posting with VPN, at the moment it works unsure: sometimes it let me pass through the block, sometimes it cuts the Internet))) Sounds like all or nothing))) I live in an absolutely surreal dimension right now. Read on my Substack the article about surreal tendencies in fashion. Here’s an interactive #artinstallation by Karina Smigla-Bobinski (@karinasmiglabobinski) at Muffathalle for your #morninginspiration and my #morningmood visualization. #artasinspiration #beautyofart #contemporaryart#goodmorningpost #goodmorningart #staysafe
4.30pm zakharova_kaetano Perfection #finding at @albionart.instituteSardonyx Bacchus Cameo by #NicolaMorelli - Circa 1810 Provenance: Caroline Murat, Queen of Naples & Sicily, and the younger sister of Napoleon Bonaparte. #antiquejewellery#beautyofjewellery #artofjewellery #historyofjewelry#jewelleryasinspiration
9.00pm zakharova_kaetano Feeling myself a bit of Bonaparte #nightmood #fashionportrait with #StellaTennant by #TimWalkerfor @vogueitalia May 2011 issue. Styled by @kjeldgaard1 hair @estherlangham makeup @mirandajoyce #artofphotography#fashioneditorial #colours #beautyofwoman#fashionasinspiration #fashionphotography
11.30pm zakharova_kaetano #goodnightandsweetdreams #nightmoodHere’s from @saatchi_gallery feed A circus elephant and the trainer’s daughter, England, 1986. Photo by #JohnDrysdale.⠀#artofphotography #reportagephotography#vintagephotography #dreaming
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If you like F! Simulacrum and want to help make it even better, give me feedback, point out factual errors or typos, or send me news subjects you want to describe. My email: o.zakharova@adlifestudio.ru
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