In the American mainstream media fact and fiction frequently diverge, leading to established narratives that bear little relationship to what is actually happening. The recent events in Paris have most often been described as free speech colliding with religious extremism but the reality is that existing French hate crime legislation means that the country has only very limited freedom of expression. In France you can be arrested and imprisoned or fined heavily just for saying something that the government considers to be unacceptable even if you do nothing at all beyond that.

In the United States there has been a virtual media evisceration of Russian President Vladimir Putin. He is consistently demonized as an autocratic along the lines of the country's former Czarist rulers and it is frequently claimed that he is an ex-KGB thug and bully who seeks to muzzle the democracy in his country, to include the press and all independent political forces. He is also invariably depicted as the agent provocateur in the recent upheaval involving Ukraine.

But are the claims about Putin true or are they just the kind of pablum that is convenient to feed to a mass American audience that is essentially blissfully ignorant about what is going on in the world? With that possibility in mind, it would be useful to compare the record of the Russian president with that of our own President Barack Obama. Such an examination might well include their respective interactions in areas that most people would consider part and parcel of the essential liberties pertaining to a democratic society.