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February 23, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 4
of the Defence Ministry with a warning that Latvia is probably subject to “an outsourced large-scale information operation” based on an “analysis” of outlets reporting the Rimsevics affair that would embarrass a seventh-grade media studies class.
The story emanated from a single journalist at Associated Press, the ministry informed, and the controversial picture of the fishing trip did not date from 2010 but had only appeared on Scanpix at around the same time as the accompanying story! And outlets that usually show no interest in reporting on financial affairs or Latvia are sud- denly reporting on the Rimsevics affair! These sinister disseminators include The Fresno Bee, Idaho Press and the North Platte Telegraph. “All this suggests that this is probably a very large- scale information operation to defame the image of Latvia in the Western countries and to under-
mine the public's trust in the state,” the ministry thundered.
Clearly, bneIntellinews does not have the sophis- ticated “analysis” tools of the Defence Ministry
at our disposal, but we do have a certain amount of experience in how the media works. It is not particularly unusual for stories and pictures that go with those stories to appear at the same time. Equally, it is not surprising that subscribers to the world's largest newswire, which is particularly strong in the US, run major AP stories as a matter of course. There is even the possibility that some of them may have chosen to do so, not as part of a vast Melmottian consipracy to discredit Latvia, but because the story of a central banker being locked up on suspicion of operating an extortion racket is one that has widespread appeal. If only someone would write the book.
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