While test driving cars last week I found myself spending a few miles with a salesman who’s russian. While talking about where we’ve been in the world he asked me what I thought about the Russia/Georgia stand-off. I told him I only knew what I saw in mainstream news sources, which wasn’t much, and that I didn’t really have much of an opinion.

So he explained to me how Georgia was the aggresor in all of this and that Russia is only protecting the interests of people in South Ossetia, whatever that is. He said that South Ossetia wants to secede from Georgia and come back under russian control, but Georgia is forcefully asserting its will against the people there. I guess it’s like Texas wanting to become part of Mexico, but Washington sending in federal troops to fight the Texans, only Mexico sends troops in to force the feds to back off, while kicking its ass in the process.

Anyway, none of that jibed with anything I’ve seen regarding the issue, so I just took the salesman at his word and went about my test driving.

Later on I did some research and found that everything the salesman told me was pretty much true, although Russia doesn’t care about the people in South Ossetia as much as it cares about the territory. Not only is Georgia the aggressor, but it is heavily backed by Washington and Washington’s actions are being likened to Russia’s during the Cuban missle crisis in 1962. In fact, there is some opinion that Washington’s actions in supporting/backing Georgia is on the verge of creating a whole new cold war era with russia, and if it plays its cards wrong (which the administration currently in power has a keen ability to do regarding pretty much everything) Washington could trigger all out war. Also, if Georgia was admitted to NATO the way the USA was pushing, the USA and all of western europe would be bound by treaty to go in and fight with Georgia. Who knows what that would have done. For once, the euros did something right by blocking Georgia’s admission.

Truth is, my issue isn’t even with the Bush administration on this one. I mean, I have no idea what his agenda is or why he can’t just be a lame duck and wait for his time to pass, but come January we’ll have President Obama in power to get pushed around by the rest of the world and we’ll have all new reasons to hate the latest occupant of the Office of the President. My issue is with the media. Being ignorant of the history of the region (South Ossetia’s wanting nothing to do with Georgia is not new) it has done a terrible job detailing not the what’s of the issue, but the why. Look at these headlines from CNN.com:

Georgian President: Moscow picked fight
Russia cool to U.N. cease-fire draft
Russian might dampens Georgian ambitions
Russian leader: Georgia won’t go ‘unpunished’

To me, these headlines (and the stories under them) imply Russia is the aggresor in this conflict. Only one article on the index page about the crisis mentions/implies that Georgia is at fault, and that is reported only as the opinion of Mikhail Gorbachev, the former soviet leader. And who can consider his an objective voice, right? In fact, the article, a report about Gorbachev’s appearance on Larry King Live blaming Georgia, gives equal time to Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili to refute everything Gorbachev says.

In fairness, there is on one other article — an “analysis” piece — that states Georgia started it, but in its first few sentences it points out that Russia’s reaction was looked upon by the EU as overkill.

I guess I’ve always known that media isn’t objective and shapes opinion based on who in the highest positions gives them the juiciest stories, but this, a story that at this point doesn’t really have a lot of american interest outside of the Bush administration, should be one that is reported the way it is. Instead, media — all media, this isn’t a liberal/conservative thing — is once again betraying the trust of the people it reports for, and loses its credibility just a little bit more with each passing story.

The problem is that at this point media doesn’t have much more credibility to lose.