U. S. media coverage of President Vladimir Putin and his policies, and the deletion from the narrative of the ‘catastrophic Yeltsin 1990s’, is both disgraceful and counter-productive. The writer, a professor emeritus of politics and Russian studies at Princeton University and New York University, argues that this is ‘a cautionary example of media malpractice, an anti-textbook for journalism schools’; and that by making ‘Putin’s Russia toxic in Washington’, this media malpractice is also deeply damaging to U.S. policy-making.
http://www.thenation.com/article/167746/stop-pointless-demonization-putin
Some other articles by Stephen F. Cohen:
http://www.thenation.com/article/166692/americas-failed-bi-partisan-russia-policy
http://www.thenation.com/article/165316/soviet-unions-afterlife
http://www.thenation.com/article/168028/orlando-figes-and-stalins-victims