Russia today, tomorrow the world
The Kremlin's news network has gained a global
following with a quixotic blend of news and conspiracy. Shaun Walker reports
Monday, 20 September 2010
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russia-today-tomorrow--the-world-2083869.html
The 11 September attacks in New York were an
inside job; the South Korean warship torpedoed in
March was not sunk by North Korea, but probably
by Japan or the US; and the world is run by the
secretive Bilderberg Group, who pursue a "New
World Order". Not the lonely ravings of a
conspiracy-minded blogger, but all opinions aired
recently on a satellite channel beamed into millions of American homes.
With its slick graphics, smiling young
news-anchors, and round-the-clock coverage, RT is
like any other news channel. But there is one
major difference, aside from the content: RT,
which stands for Russia Today, is paid for by the
Kremlin. The channel launched in 2005,
broadcasting news mainly about Russia on various
satellite packages around the world.
You might remember a provocative ad campaign
across London last year, with posters showing
pictures of Barack Obama and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
and asking, "Who poses the bigger nuclear threat?"
In the US, ads were run on screens inside New
York taxis, and the channel even broadcast live
on big screens in Times Square. This year, RT
went even further in its attempts to infiltrate
the US, when a new arm of the channel, RT
America, began broadcasting from Washington DC
several hours a day, exclusively for a US
audience. The focus is not Russia, but America
itself, and the radical opinions of some of its
guests have been raising eyebrows.
Last month, the Southern Poverty Law Center
(SPLC), a well-respected US organisation that
tracks hate groups and extremists in the United
States, published a report about Russia Today.
The group did not label the channel itself
extremist, but said it gives undue airtime to
conspiracy theorists and extremists. "Its slickly
packaged stories suggest that a legitimate debate
is under way in the United States about who
perpetrated the 11 September terrorist attacks,
for instance, and about President Obama's eligibility for high office."
The top brass at the channel, including
editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan, have denied
this. "We don't talk about 9/11 any more than US
media discusses who was behind the 1999
explosions in Moscow," she told the authors of
the SPLC report, referring to the apartment block
bombings that were a catalyst for the second
Chechen war. "Moreover, our own journalists have
never claimed or even as much as hinted that the
US government may have been behind the tragedy of 9/11."
This is not strictly true, as the report's
authors point out; not only do captions such as
"New Yorkers Continue to Fight for 9/11 Truth"
appear on screen during stories about the
attacks, but on the last anniversary, the
channel's website published a four-part series
entitled, "911 Reasons why 9/11 was (probably) an
inside job". A video of a recent interview with a
"9/11 Truther" on Youtube is entitled, "Two
planes didn't take twin towers down".
Why does a Russian state channel care about 9/11?
The refocusing of the channel away from Russia
and towards the US, as well as de- emphasising
the connection to Moscow in the channel's name
(since last year, anchors and correspondents have
been told they must refer to it only as "RT",
never "Russia Today") has led some to wonder what
the Russians are up to in the US.
There have been suspicions, even among some of
those inside the channel, that the aim might be a
Kremlin, or even a Russian intelligence plan to
stir dissent in the US. At the very least, it
seems an attempt by Russia to get its own back on
a Western world that often lectures Moscow on
democracy and human rights, and shine a light on
what it sees as the sore points for the US.
Even before the recent spy scandal about Russian
"illegals" in the United States, western
intelligence services have been wary about Russia
Today's correspondents. One journalist, posted by
the Russian channel to a western capital, recalls
that she was called to a meeting in a local café
by the country's interior ministry before being given her accreditation.
"This guy showed up, and he had a dossier with
loads of information about me and my past," says
the journalist, who does not want her name
revealed. "It was pretty obvious he was working
in intelligence, and eventually he came out and
asked, 'Is Russia Today a front for a spy
network?' I thought it was hilarious, but he was
serious." One employee of the channel told The
Independent, on condition of anonymity: "I have
mixed feelings about whether the channel is
actually trying to provoke dissent among
Americans. That seems the only logical reason to
have some of these guests on and to spend so much
time talking about these topics. On the other
hand, Denis Trunov [the head of RT America] has
said multiple times that his only goal is to get
YouTube hits and he will have anyone on who will
get Youtube hits. He has even suggested having
porn stars on to talk about topics like
Afghanistan, in the hope of getting hits." Mr
Trunov declined to speak to The Independent, but
Ms Simonyan, the channel's overall boss, agreed to reply to written questions.
"RT's target viewer is a person capable of
critical thinking, one who realises that one or
two sources of information are not enough to get
a full picture," says Ms Simonyan. "It is someone
who wants to know the truth, rather than who passively accepts stereotypes."
Ms Simonyan says RT gives viewers access to
"stories they're not going to see on the networks
they're used to". Some of the commentators on the
channel support this view. Danny Schechter, a
veteran journalist and blogger, points to the
lack of diversity in the traditional US
television networks as one of the main reasons for RT's success.
"The US media today is a very partisan, polarised
environment; anyone who brings a perspective that
doesn't fit into this partisan fight is
considered out of the spectrum," says Mr
Schechter, who has recently completed a book
calling for criminal prosecutions over subprime
loans and the financial crisis. He says that
"today's conspiracy theories could be tomorrow's
facts", though emphasises that he personally has
little time for some of the more extreme views aired on the channel.
But lots of Americans like what they are hearing.
Ms Simonyan says independent surveys show that
among Washington DC viewers, more than six times
as many people choose to tune into RT than to Al
Jazeera English – and these are figures for 2009
– before the channel even began its dedicated US-only broadcasts.
"We now have more than 150 million views on
YouTube, which is much higher than that of Fox
News, CNN, Sky News or Reuters YouTube channels,"
says Ms Simonyan. "Just a couple of days ago, RT
made it into YouTube's All-Time Top 100 Most
Viewed Partners list, replacing President Obama's
channel." The channel also seems to have ruffled
feathers in the traditional media establishment.
At one point, RT got into a spat with Fox News
host Bill O'Reilly, who rubbished an interview
the channel's correspondent Anastasia Churkina
had with the radical activist and academic Bill
Ayers. "Don't you just want to slap him?" Mr
O'Reilly asked viewers of his show, after playing
a brief clip of the interview.
"They assigned a Russian interviewer to interview
that pinhead who didn't even speak English,"
crowed Mr O'Reilly, a rather unfair criticism of
what was in fact almost flawless English from the Russian interviewer.
In response, RT ran a report turning the heat
back on Mr O'Reilly. "The American mainstream
media, crusaders of truth, pathological liars, or
just scary clowns?" asked the channel's correspondent.
Ms Simonyan claims: "RT is not a state channel.
RT is a global news channel, just as Al Jazeera,
BBC, France 24 or Deutsche Welle. They may be
financed by government, but they are not state channels."
But RT is rather different from the BBC,
certainly when it comes to covering the "home"
country. Several journalists at the channel have
told The Independent that while some coverage of
problems in Russia and sensitive issues is
allowed, any direct criticism or questioning of
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin or President Dmitry
Medvedev is strictly prohibited.
With the start of RT America, observers have
started to question the coverage of topics other
than Russia. Some of the more bizarre moments on
RT can sometimes be put down to youthful
inexperience (such as the newsreader who clearly
skimread the autocue too fast and referred to
"North Korean leader King John the Second"), but
sometimes it seems something more sinister is at
play. One anchor told The Independent that during
an interview with a leading scientist working on
Aids he was repeatedly pressured by producers to
"ask difficult questions" about the "evidence"
that HIV doesn't cause Aids at all.
Such strange attachment to any conspiracy theory
going has led to some wondering what RT stands
for. Others simply see it as inexperience, and
welcome a new player in a stagnant media market.
"It's a force for diversity in the media," says
Mr Schechter. "They give voice to a lot of
people, like myself, who rarely get heard in
current mainstream US media. I was part of the
start-up team for CNN in 1980, and I see some
similarities. It's a channel of young people who
are inexperienced, but very enthusiastic about what they are doing."
+44 (0)7786 952037
http://tonygosling.blip.tv/
http://www.thisweek.org.uk/
http://www.911forum.org.uk/
"Capitalism is institutionalised bribery."
_________________
www.abolishwar.org.uk
<http://www.elementary.org.uk>www.elementary.org.uk
www.public-interest.co.uk
www.radio4all.net/index.php/series/Bristol+Broadband+Co-operative
<http://utangente.free.fr/2003/media2003.pdf>http://utangente.free.fr/2003/media2003.pdf
"The maintenance of secrets acts like a psychic
poison which alienates the possessor from the community" Carl Jung
<https://217.72.179.7/members/www.bilderberg.org/phpBB2/>https://217.72.179.7/members/www.bilderberg.org/phpBB2/
--
Please consider seriously the reason why these elite institutions are not discussed in the mainstream press despite the immense financial and political power they wield?
There are sick and evil occultists running the Western World. They are power mad lunatics like something from a kids cartoon with their fingers on the nuclear button! Armageddon is closer than you thought. Only God can save our souls from their clutches, at least that's my considered opinion - Tony
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