I recommend establishing a commission comprised exclusively of citizen members that have the skill and expertise to validate or discredit news reports and to supply Congress with authoritative and confidential disclosures.
The commission would function in the realm of observable facts and realism, and not in the domain of ideology. It would be precluded from offering policy advice, and mandated to deal with just the facts on which members of Congress can base their own informed judgments.
Congress should invite Russia as well to set up a counterpart commission so that Russian leaders can have the benefit of their own reality-based information in a similar way.
The United States and Russia are the two nuclear superpowers that uniquely possess the capability to pose an existential threat to human civilization as we know it. This is far too serious a matter to abandon sensibility to reckless partisan or ideological differences. The proposed commission will serve to weed through deceptive media rhetoric, thus avoiding false points of contention. It is our best bet for disrupting the desperate course of deteriorating relations. I urge prompt action on this important matter before it's too late.
Attachment I
Bio
William Dunkerley is an expert on Russia's media sector and on the credibility of American media coverage of Russia and it leaders.
Mr. Dunkerley has worked to remediate the very challenging problems that face Russian media organizations. His work has been supported by various American organizations and agencies. He personally conducted intensive interventions in 17 different Russian cities. Through his seminars he has worked with hundreds of Russian media managers literally from Kaliningrad to Kamchatka. He is author of a book about Russia's media milieu, and has written dozens of articles about Russian media management. He served as principal consultant to the Publishers and Editors Association of Russia.
He also has done intensive work in Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Czech Republic, Latvia, and Croatia. In both Croatia and Russia his invited advice to governmental leaders has been incorporated into their countries' laws governing the media. In 2006 Mr. Dunkerley delivered a key-note address on the prospects for press freedom in Russia at the World Congress of the World Association of Newspapers.
Mr. Dunkerley has also closely studied the American media's coverage of Russia and its leaders. In 2007 he was commissioned by the International Federation of Journalists to analyze and report on the Western media coverage of the Alexander Litvinenko polonium-death case.
He is now the author of three books and hundreds of magazine and newspaper articles dealing with the problematic aspects of Western media coverage of Russian issues.
Mr. Dunkerley is principal of William Dunkerley Publishing Consultants, editor and publisher of Editors Only, a monthly for newspaper and magazine editors, and of STRAT, a monthly publication on digital and print magazine strategies. He has served as a columnist for the Moscow Times, SREDA (Russia's first media management magazine), and Komsomolskaya Pravda (Russia's largest newspaper). He is also a Senior Fellow at the American University in Moscow.
Attachment II
The Guardian
Friday 5 February 2016
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