Writing in the Columbia Journalism Review, Joshua Foust, who also blogs on Central Asia at Registan.net, takes a look at the lobbying, PR, and information war going on between Russia and Georgia, and finds that Tbilisi is more or less winning the effort to shape the narrative in the English-language media.  Foust’s point isn’t so much whether or not it was Russia or Georgia at fault for the war, or who the bad guy is, but rather that we had better steel ourselves with a good dose of cynicism in the face of so much effort and money being thrown behind all the media influence trafficking by both parties.

Georgia has also intensified its campaign in the English-language Web–sites like GeorgiaUpdate.gov.ge exist to advance the Georgian government’s point of view to a Western audience. The Georgian government has also been adept at reaching out to Hollywood: Joshua Kucera, a freelance journalist who has traveled the region, wrote recently of how Tblisi is enlisting documentary filmmakers to sympathetically portray Georgia’s experience during the August war.