Russian claims that Georgia killed more than 2,000 people in a "genocide" in Tskhinvali have drawn skepticism from independent observers who tried to find evidence of the deaths. But criticism from abroad is not the primary concern of the Russian government, argued Oleg Panfilov, director of the Moscow-based Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations.
"The Russian authorities are significantly more interested in getting internal support for their actions," said Panfilov, who has been monitoring Russian, Georgian and international coverage of the conflict. "We are seeing the return of vintage Soviet propaganda. Television expresses only the official point of view of the Kremlin."
Russian coverage has also incited ethnic and nationalistic prejudice, Panfilov said.
Television reports have focused on overblown accounts of ethnic Russians being persecuted by Georgians -- but mostly ignored reports of looting and burning in Georgian villages by South Ossetian, Chechen and Cossack militias, he said.
The Georgian government deemed the coverage so inflammatory that it blocked access to many Russian broadcasters and websites.
Shutting down hostile views hardly seems in keeping with the values of freedom and democracy that Saakashvili was urging the outside world to defend in Georgia. But Saakashvili, too, has a history of stifling free media. Last year, he ordered security services into the studios of two television stations that he saw as hostile to his government, knocking them off the air.
Ingrid Ciprian-Matthews, CBS News' foreign editor, said Saakashvili was very responsive to media requests, agreeing to do two interviews with the network last week.
"He is very Washington-savvy, U.S.-friendly, and I think he also is quite passionate about everything he was discussing," she said.
Ciprian-Matthews said the network has aired interviews with two Russian generals to get a different point of view, but its requests to talk to Putin have gone unanswered.
"We have a pitch in to the Russians, but we're still waiting," she said.
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Gold reported from New York, Wilkinson from Warsaw and Stack from Moscow.
