Page 223 - Communication and Citizenship Journalism and the Public Sphere

212 COMMUNICATION AND CITIZENSHIP

story, Gorbachev’s initial accusation against the US is legitimated by a
British general, present at the Moscow conference, who says that
‘nuclear arms were no use as weapons’. The story also ends on
Gorbachev’s call for the need to dispose of all nuclear weapons. While
the Soviet Union is ‘willing to renounce its nuclear power status and
reduce all other armaments to a bare essential’, America’s secret moves
over the ABM treaty, and continued efforts on the ‘star wars’ project are
seen as endangering the Soviet initiatives.
Throughout the narrative of the British stories Gorbachev appears to
be the determinative presence. The role he plays is essentially a creative
one, while in the American stories it is primarily manipulative. This is
manifested, for example, in the lead sentence of the ITN story: ‘Even by
the standards Mr Gorbachev has himself set, this was a most
extraordinary event’, and in the characterization of the event:
Five years ago, with Lenin’s statue looking on, the idea of Leonid
Brezhnev turning up for the same event as Gregory Peck, Kris
Kristofferson and Andrei Sakharov would have been unthinkable.
Yet that precisely is what Mikhail Gorbachev chose to do.

The American, and especially President Reagan’s presence through the
narratives is framed as passive, inept and retreatist. On the question of
arms control, the Soviet proposals are met not only by continued
American resistance but also by ignorance. Reagan’s poor performance
at Reykjavik is emphasized. The American negotiators are portrayed as
clearly out of their depth in dealing with the magnitude of the Soviet
proposals. The story goes on to illustrate the American incompetence in
other examples of the performance of the US administration:
disclosures about the Iran-Contra affair; the continued meddling of
Nancy Reagan; Donald Regan’s exposures, all add to the negative
picture. The story winds up by saying that the only reason ‘Reagan
wants to talk to the Russians is to deflect attention from the Iran-Contra
affair’. Gorbachev, however, has always wanted to talk and, in fact, in
the whole superpower debate, he ‘continues to make the running’.
The British stories also make different use of Begun and Sakharov.
Sakharov’s presentation in the stories is largely neutral and referential.
He is not made the focus of the story. Both the ITN and BBC stories
point out that he sat a few feet away from Gorbachev. This proximity
emphasizes Sakharov’s approval of Gorbachev, as in ITN’s statement:
‘the freed dissident, Andrei Sakharov, was there to applaud him.’ Like
Sakharov, the American actor Kris Kristofferson also represents an