Reading the corporate media coverage of Telegram CEO Pavel Durov’s arrest in Paris this week, you’d think he was a Kremlin spy or an international terrorist, not the founder of a popular social media app with nearly a billion users.
The charges against Durov — whom the media never fail to inform us was born in Russia — include “complicity in the distribution of child pornography and selling of drugs, money laundering, and a refusal to cooperate with law enforcement,” according to The New York Times. Nearly every news outlet said something similar, that Durov is “complicit” in serious crimes like child pornography, creating the impression that Durov is somehow personally involved in nefarious criminal enterprises — or that Telegram itself is a criminal enterprise.
In reality,
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