While praise for the media coverage of Russia's invasion of Ukraine - and especially the courage of the journalists putting themselves literally in the firing line - is justified, it's worth bearing in mind that what we're seeing and hearing is not unbiased. This is most obvious in the subtle (and often not-so-subtle) ways in which the war is being framed: as between two "civilised" nations, whose people are alarmingly "like us".
Writing for the Guardian about the "pernicious racism that permeates today's war coverage and seeps into its fabric like a stain that won't go away", Moustafa Bayoumi makes a very compelling point: "If our sympathy is activated only for welcoming people who look like us or pray like us, then we are doomed to replicate the very sort of narrow, ignorant nationalism that war promotes in the first place."
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