The best book ever written about journalism is Scoop!, by the English novelist Evelyn Waugh. Published in 1938, it satirizes, among other targets, self-important foreign correspondents. A memorable character is Wenlock Jakes, the best-paid journalist in the United States. An admiring colleague recalls:

Why, once Jakes went out to cover a revolution in one of the Balkan capitals. He overslept…, woke up at the wrong station, didn’t know any different, got out, went straight to a hotel, and cabled off a thousand-word story about barricades in the streets, flaming churches, machine guns answering the rattle of his typewriter as he wrote, a dead child, like a broken doll, spreadeagled in the deserted roadway below his window—you know.

Well they were pretty surprised at his office, getting a story like that from the wrong country, but they trusted Jakes and splashed it in six national newspapers. That day every special [correspondent-EL] in Europe got orders to rush to the new revolution. They arrived in shoals. Everything seemed quiet enough but it was as much as their jobs were worth to say so, with Jakes filing a thousand words of blood and thunder a day. So they chimed in too. Government stocks dropped, financial panic, state of emergency declared, army mobilized, famine, mutiny and in less than a week there was an honest to God revolution under way, just as Jakes had said. There’s the power of the Press for you.

I am reminded of Waugh’s brilliant fictional creation when I look at recent media coverage of the Baltic states. “Putin’s next target” declaims The Economist, telling readers “Estonia is girding itself for an invasion as its Russian minority grows restless.” The London-based think tank Chatham House asks, “Is Narva [Estonia’s border city] next in Putin’s sights?” An internet search will find a dozen similar pieces in recent months.

These subjects should not be taboo. Baltic defense and security is indeed hugely important. The attitudes and behaviour of different population segments matters. But it is easy to mislead readers, not least with the casual assumption that “Russian-speakers” and “Russian minority” are synonymous and meaningful political categories. The danger is that, like Waugh’s fictional Wenlock Jakes, lazy journalism creates a real problem through its exaggerations. When respected outsiders tell them that they are in grave danger, Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians experience at best cognitive dissonance, and at worst dismay. That has real-world consequences for businesses and individuals. It risks making these countries poorer, weaker—and thus more tempting targets.

Yet the greater dangers are elsewhere. As a regular visitor to the region, I feel safer in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania than I do in London (let alone in Vienna). These are vigilant, cohesive countries where threat perceptions are accurate throughout government and society. Yes, Russia is close by. But an attack, or some lower-level stunt, will not catch them unawares. That cannot be said for almost all countries farther west, who are still stuck in the 1990s when it comes to defense, deterrence and resilience.

A gripping new podcast series by my colleague Deborah Haynes of Sky News highlights this. Set in October of this year, “The War Game” posits a surprise Russian attack which Britain’s feeble air defenses are unable to prevent. The United States administration equivocates, telling a perplexed British prime minister not to “escalate” the confrontation with the Kremlin, and forbidding the Nato secretary-general to convene the alliance’s decision-makers. The British characters in this simulation are all played by retired senior officials, adding verisimilitude.

The final episode airs during the NATO summit this week. I hope Wenlock Jakes tunes in.

Edward Lucas is a Senior Fellow and Senior Advisor at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA).

Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.

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