RIGA – A friend of mine asked me the other day whether I had heard that Soviet partisan-veteran Vasily Kononov has been acquitted by the European Courts of Human Rights.
I have not. The Latvian media had kept a tight lid on the news that would have been splashed across the front pages all major newspapers in this country.
Or it wasn’t news at all.
It turned out to be a figment of someone’s overactive imagination, or simply reporting based on hearsay without crediting any sources. Ivan v. Jaan chronicles pretty well how this news item evolved from an utter acquittal to its mysterious disappearance among English-language Russian news sources known for their impartiality and balance.
Okay, the last three words were thrown in for a joke.
Of all news sources in Latvia, Russian-language Telegraf alone picked up on the non-news news.