Journalism

In the reading for this week, It was clear that journalists repeatedly had to compare socialist values in the Soviet Union and Capitalist values in the U.S. “Alexei Adzhubei, who was closely associated with journalistic reforms, underlined the importance of the journalist’s educating role… It was revealing that Adzhubei chose the difference between socialism and capitalism as an example of the universally important truths that journalists should convey (Fainberg, 88-89). Since journalists were given this task to constantly compare themselves to the U.S. Was it because the Soviet Union was scared, that once they opened themselves up to other foreign nations, the Soviet people would start to like the West and want to become it? Although the Soviet leaders did trust their people, “Soviet leaders expressed confidence that the people’s faith in the socialist project would not weaken, but strengthen, if they knew more about foreign countries” (Fainberg, 90), why did they specifically instruct journalist to do this constant comparison? Did the Soviet Union really trust its people by keeping the constant comparison in journal articles and newspapers? Would it be different if a journalist were given the liberty to express themselves freely instead of following the Journalistic reforms? Or was this a necessary part of the Cold War by comparing each other’s values?