THE IMAGE OF RUSSIA FORMED BY WESTERN MASS MEDIA
The article considers the image of Russia formed by western mass media with the help of various journalistic techniques and stylistic resources. The image of Russia is formed by western mass media through the analysis of her political-economic situation, home affairs, reforms, and the leading figures in politics and economics. The thematic unlimited range of the questions discussed by modern western mass media defines the use of various technologies of forming the required image. Among such techniques of forming the image of Russia are the contrast between the future and present of the country, subtle criticism and objection under superficial consent (the so-called fly in the ointment), a consistent and undoubtedly deliberate input of the negative factual information into the structure of the text, doubt about the reliability of a personality, the opposition of seeming and true realities, and others. The stylistic resources used for forming the image of Russia involve emotionally colored words, neutral and expressive means, verbal collocations and metaphorical expressions, epithets, repetitions, antithesis, insertions and others. The topicality of the subject discussed makes the journalists look for the ways of expressing their negative, seldom positive attitude towards Russia as well as of making a skillfully veiled impact on the readers' mind to receive specific responses.