Who labelled family defenders as pro-Kremlin?

by Justas Stankevičius:

For some time now, it has been extremely difficult to find transparent and credible media sources that are not based on propaganda or disinformation. A good example of this is the journalist Šarūnas Černiauskas, who once claimed to “show the truth without distortion”, but today engages in biased and uncritical investigative work against ideological opponents.

Admittedly, he does valuable journalistic investigations into political and business corruption – and one can understand why some of the public appreciates him for that. However, when he writes about values rather than transparency, any impartiality is lost. In order to separate the wheat from the chaff and to critically assess a journalist’s credibility as a source of information on this issue, it is necessary to take into account the objective facts. 

Is Š. Černiauskas a compromised journalist?

More recently, in 2019, Černiauskas was fired from the portal 15min.lt for collecting and selling information about natural and legal persons that was available to him as a journalist. As a result of these events, the then President Dalia Grybauskaitė stripped Černiauskas of the Order of the Grand Duke Gediminas of Lithuania, which the journalist had received for his services to Lithuania.  A piquant detail: among the eight people who were stripped of their awards during Grybauskaitė’s presidency were Algirdas Paleckis and Dmitrijus Kiseliovas. 

What financial conflict of interest does Š. Černiauskas have? 

Š. Černiauskas’ project “Siena” is funded by the Open Society Foundations through the IJ4EU fund. Details of how this fund is harmful to the West and to Lithuania in particular can be found here.  Černiauskas calls this information “conspiracy theory”.  However, if we recall the case of the illegal sale of data, and if we are faced with the journalist’s undisguised value bias, can we be sure that his financial interest does not motivate him to write “commissioned” articles? 

Š. Černiauskas “pinpoints” family defenders’ links to Russia

On 21 March this year, a journalist published a new “study”  on the project funding received from the Ministry of Social Security and Labour by family and parent organisations. One part of this project was participation in an international conference in Verona (Italy). The author wrote that at this event “the footprint of the Russian oligarch Konstantin Malofeev was clearly visible”.

The headline of the article itself is absurd: “The state financed the trip of family defenders to a pro-Kremlin event”. This creates the impression among readers that traditional family defenders are pro-Kremlin. And although the vast majority of Lithuanian society supports traditional family model, no one wants to be identified with pro-Kremlin wannabes.  

Programme of the “Pro-Russian Event”

If we open the programme of the “pro-Russian event”, we can see that it has nothing to do with Russia or with pro-Kremlin narratives. Of course, it is worth mentioning, for the sake of the truth, that among the many European politicians, monarchs (!) and intellectuals at the event, there was a deputy from the Russian Duma and a number of other representatives of the country.

Is the presence of a few influential Russians enough to say that the event is pro-Kremlin and that the Lithuanian state finances travel to pro-Kremlin events? If that is enough, many top Lithuanian leaders are also pro-Kremlin: after all, they have attended international meetings in various formats, where one or another Russian politician, or even Putin himself, has participated.

To make matters worse, Černiauskas labels all family defenders as pro-Kremlin, even though only representatives of one of them attended the event. Meanwhile, neither representatives of Pro Patria, the Institute of Free Society, nor any other Lithuanian family organisations mentioned in the study attended the event. 

Questionable statements

More questionable statements can be found in the “Siena” investigative journalism episode “Family defenders, hybrid warfare… spirals!”, dedicated to the conference and the criticism of family defenders. According to the programme, the participants of such conferences become “tools in Russia’s soft power politics.” 

Š. Černiauskas also argued in his study that “traditional family associations and unions are immune to Russia’s hybrid warfare,” adding that “the very principle of their merger is flawed and contrary to liberal democracy.” This is yet another empty attempt to attribute traditional views to the Kremlin.

Without shying away from the many labels (e.g. “radical right-wingers”), the programme’s author finally asked “how is the Istanbul Convention threatening the family, how is it harmful, and how is it destroying the family?” The interviewer replied that such a narrative is “a product of the same hybrid war, i.e. Russian propaganda.

Propaganda does not need facts, it just needs emotional sway, it needs faith, not analysis and not the language of facts.” This is not honest reasoning without being able to identify any of the dangers of the Istanbul Convention.

Like many of the other statements in the programme, these create associations between traditionalist organisations and Russia. Of course, such banal discrediting practices as claiming that everyone who supports an idea that is also supported by persons who are discredited or attempted to be discredited in society is identical to those persons is common.

Think of the argumentum ad hitlerum: an attempt to refute an opponent’s point of view by claiming that Hitler or the Nazis thought similarly (e.g. say Hitler liked moustaches, therefore those who like moustaches are Nazis).

However, for some reason, we have never heard a similar comment from Š. Černiauskas, who is a pro-Kremlin label for representatives of traditional views, for example, about Remigijus Šimašius, who, after ordering to secretly hang a commemorative plaque to the Lithuanian military officer J. Noreika (General Vėtra), who was described by Russian propaganda channels as “a modern European politician who was ahead of his time in Lithuania”, although it is a fact that discrediting partisans is one of the tasks of Russia’s hybrid warfare. Such “journalism” fuels public distrust of both specific experts and the media in general.

And it is precisely the division of Lithuanian society (which has recently been actively developing thanks to radical proposals such as the hate speech law, the Istanbul Convention, etc., the ultimatum tone of the ruling party and media agitation) that benefits Russia and can be called the goal of its policy.

The “journalism” created by Černiauskas does not leave many choices. The essence of his research is to impose a distorted choice between Russia and the ideas of the radical left. On the one hand, this discredits the ideological opponents, on the other hand, it shows the dumb part of society what will happen if they show their views. This is neither investigative nor journalism, but simply the training of society.