ABSTRACT
Broadcast images of the Soviet Union begin with the correspondents on the ground in Moscow, many of whom recognize that their audiences back home are largely ignorant about life in the USSR. Western journalists in the USSR are isolated from their subject not only by language, but by the fact that they are required to reside, together with diplomats, in special apartment blocks, separated from the Soviet population both physically and in the comparative opulence of their lifestyles. A major theme in news about the Soviet Union in recent years has been the war in Afghanistan. Straightforward ‘ideological bias’ is one explanation for the tendency of television news to reproduce stereotyped images of the USSR, but there are other factors which must be taken into account. Some journalists acknowledge that such themes as the lifestyle and habits of the ordinary Soviet citizen, as opposed to the dissident/refusenik/dissenter, are newsworthy and should be reported.
