CBS has censored its own documentary investigative reporting after an avalanche of pushback from supporters of Ukraine and its military. The segment highlighted that tons of weaponry shipped from the United States to the country’s military has gone missing, and sounded the alarm as billions in dollars more have been pledged by the Biden administration.
“CBS partially retracted a documentary in which it said that shipments of weapons to Ukraine from the US had been going missing,” Insider reports Monday. “CBS tweeted on Monday that it had removed a a video promoting the documentary that included a months-old quote saying most aid was not making it to Ukraine’s front lines.” Below is the deleted tweet, with the offending line of “30% of it [US-supplied arms and munitions] reaches its final destination.”
Terrifying how swiftly and obediently the corporate media walks back facts that are undesirable for the regime. https://t.co/SqafRmOnr0
— Hans Mahncke (@HansMahncke) August 8, 2022
The segment, titled “Arming Ukraine” was published days ago, and follows on the heels of Pentagon and US intelligence officials issuing similar warnings that there are few mechanisms in place to legitimately track the arms flowing into the country. One admin official even described in April that, “we have fidelity for a short time, but when it enters the fog of war, we have almost zero. It drops into a big black hole, and you have almost no sense of it at all after a short period of time.”
The fresh CBS reporting added to these concerns, quoting the the head of a Lithuania-based organization supplying the Ukrainian military, Jonas Ohman, who said bluntly:
“All of this stuff goes across the border, and then something happens, kind of like 30% of it reaches its final destination.”
Ohman stressed that actually getting the weapons to the designated Ukrainian army units involves having to navigate an array of “power lords, oligarchs [and] political players.” This also as there have been persistent reports that some weapons end up on the black market, or might possibly be moved outside Ukraine.
Don’t worry, @CBSNews, I saved it. pic.twitter.com/jiJorgw18F
— Viva Frei (@thevivafrei) August 8, 2022
A senior crisis adviser with Amnesty International also told CBS in the documentary, “What is really worrying is that some countries that are sending weapons do not seem to think that it is their responsibility to put in place a very robust oversight mechanism.”
Officials with the Ukrainian government promptly accused the mainstream US network of playing into “Russian propaganda”.
Along with a widespread social media backlash from Kiev’s supporters and pundits, this was apparently enough for CBS to announce it is “updating” the segment, with some of the offending lines now dropped…
CBS claims this documentary is now "being updated" after it received a giant tsunami of trolling from those who were upset at the information being reported. The original link was taken down: pic.twitter.com/b04P5KlRC7
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) August 8, 2022
The Ukrainian government further put out a dubious claim that “all received equipment is accounted for” – this despite months of Pentagon officials warning that this isn’t the case.
Unsurprisingly, Ukraine’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dmytro Kuleba, has demanded that CBS News conduct an internal investigation to get to the bottom of things.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Dmytro Kuleba, demands from CBS News to conduct an internal investigation due to the publication of disinformation that only 30% of the weapons supplied to Ukraine by allies reach the front.
1/
operativnoZSU pic.twitter.com/LvPUp98oAo
— Lynn Thigpen (@Lynski_07) August 8, 2022
There’s of late been growing scrutiny placed on the Ukrainian side, after Russia and Putin have long been the main focus of Western mainstream media reporting. It appears that efforts to “police” western MSM reports to deflect any possible criticism of Kiev whatsoever during the war is now ramping up.
