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Mis-Communicator of the Week: Vladimir Putin

Does the internet know everything? I think so. At least I think the internet knows everything that the human race knows. I’ll just Google it to find out. There are over 33 million results to this question which probably covers just about everything. That we know.

The moral of that and our story today is: don’t plagiarise, cheat, lie, mislead or spin the truth too freely as you will be found out. Because the internet knows.

You may have seen that Russian president Vladimir Putin has given a series of in-depth interviews with Oscar winning Hollywood film-maker Oliver Stone.

The interviews, aired on the US Showtime network, were undertaken across a dozen conversations over a two year period with no topic apparently off limits.

For obvious reasons Showtime is touting these interviews as a pretty big deal with a suitably large marketing budget behind them.

In the high budget trailer for episode three released this week President Putin is seen showing Stone footage on a mobile phone of “work of our airforce” in Syria fighting ISIS. Stone seems impressed commenting that “you wouldn't want to join ISIS if you saw that”.

Now it has been revealed - via the all-seeing eye of the internet - that the footage wasn’t of Russian forces fighting ISIS but actually American helicopters in action in Afghanistan from 2009.

Russian researchers at the Counter Intelligence Team have put together this useful composite of Putin's phone video and the 2013 footage for comparison purposes.

Play spot the difference and you’re not going to score very many.

Even a man as powerful as Vladimir Putin will always get found out. The wisdom and the power of the crowd which makes up the internet is simply too strong. This is good for transparency and a lesson for all who work in communications. It is also why Vladimir Putin is my Mis-Communicator of the Week.

Mis-Communicator of the Week is written by Edward Staite.

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