 The media's odd double standard on evidence required for claims of an impending attack. After weeks of uncritically passing along completely unevidenced claims about an endlessly imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine, the mass media have suddenly remembered basic journalistic ethics when reporting on claims that Ukraine is plotting an attack on Russia-backed separatists. I've emphasized a key repeating phrase we've been seeing in a few quotes to help you spot the difference between the way the western media cover unevidenced claims about a future attack by Moscow and unevidenced claims about a future attack by Kyiv. Here's one from the New York Times on February 19th. Russia-backed separatists who have been fighting the Ukrainian government for years have asserted, without evidence, that Ukraine was planning a large-scale attack on territory they control. Here's one from NBC on February 18th. Dennis Pushlin, head of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, announced the evacuation in a video posted on social media. He claimed, without evidence, that Kyiv was planning its own military assault on the region in the country's east, where the Moscow-supported separatists have been fighting government forces since 2014. Politico on February 17th. Dmitry Peskov, the top Kremlin spokesperson, then commented that the situation near the borders of Ukraine can ignite at any moment, insisting, without evidence, that Ukraine's forces had taken provocative actions that have only intensified in the past days or several days. The Washington Post, February 11th. On Friday, the Task News Agency reported, without evidence, that the head of the self-proclaimed separatist territory of Donetsk had announced the discovery of 130 mass graves of victims of Ukrainian aggression. The Guardian, February 4th. While massing troops around Ukraine, Russian officials have made repeated claims, without evidence, that Kyiv was planning on attacking Russia or Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine, rather than the other way around. See if you can spot the difference between the above examples and the way CBS News reported an anonymous government official's claim that Putin had ordered the invasion of Ukraine to proceed. Quote. As intelligence that Russian commanders have received orders to proceed with an invasion of Ukraine, with commanders on the ground making specific plans for how they would maneuver in the sectors of the battlefield, a U.S. official told CBS News. Quote. Or the way the Guardian reports on the claim that CBS aired. Quote. Or if those examples are too subtle, how about the way the New York Times reports on the alleged intelligence which prompted Biden's recent announcement that he is convinced a Russian invasion is imminent. Quote. Officials declined to describe the intelligence in any detail, anxious to keep secret their methods of collecting the information. But intelligence officials have told the administration that they have a high level of confidence in the intelligence that they have collected in recent months about Russian military planning, as well as about plots by Moscow's intelligence agencies to try and create a pretext for war. The administration's trust in the intelligence has only grown as the world watched the Russian military take steps that American spy agencies had predicted. End quote. Now this is super subtle stuff, I know. But see if you can detect the ever so slight difference in tone between the way the mass media outlets are reporting on claims that Kyiv is about to attack Moscow-supported separatists in eastern Ukraine and the way the Washington Post reports that Putin is plotting to round up journalists and LGBT persons and have them tortured, murdered, and disappeared after invading the entire country. Quote. The letter alleges that Moscow's post-invasion planning would involve torture, forced disappearances, and widespread human suffering. It does not describe the nature of the intelligence that undergirds its assessment. Krocker said the Russian military's targets would include Russian and Belarusian dissidents in exile in Ukraine, journalists and anti-corruption activists, and vulnerable populations such as religious and ethnic minorities and LGBTQI-plus persons. End quote. Yep, so subtle you almost need an electron microscope to see it. And of course completely unspoken in all this straight shooting news reporting is that the actual evidence seems to suggest that the separatist factions in Ukraine do indeed seem to be under attack with a sharp spike in aggression as explained by Moon of Alabama, link in the description. None of these discrepancies would be worth pointing out if the mass media in the western world did not uphold itself as a free and impartial press whose only job is to report the truth about what's happening in the world. If the western mass media were openly owned and controlled by the United States government for the explicitly stated purpose of distributing imperial propaganda, there would be nothing odd about brazen one-sided reporting which uncritically accepts un-evidenced claims by secretive government agencies with an extensive history of lies. The discrepancy is only noteworthy because it highlights another one, the discrepancy between what the western mass media purport to be and what they actually are.