{"id":11976,"date":"2013-05-23T08:48:57","date_gmt":"2013-05-23T15:48:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/?p=11976"},"modified":"2013-05-23T08:48:57","modified_gmt":"2013-05-23T15:48:57","slug":"new-statesman-article-on-russia-today-worth-a-look-see","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/2013\/05\/23\/new-statesman-article-on-russia-today-worth-a-look-see\/","title":{"rendered":"New Statesman article on Russia Today worth a look-see"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m not sure why it would be called the “anti-Fox”<\/a>. \u00c2\u00a0It’s a similar propaganda bent. \u00c2\u00a0The only thing I might surmise is the current issue with the Obama Administration and Fox News would not exist with Vladimir Putin and Russia Today.<\/p>\n

What you need to know in the quasi- “Age of Austerity”, or where taxpayer financing of media outlets are always circulating about (see Public Broadcasting in the states; BBC in Britain):
\nIn October last year, Putin personally intervened to block a finance ministry proposal to cut RT\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s funding. The channel will receive more than \u00c2\u00a3250m this year, approximately the same sum as the BBC World Service received from the British government in 2011- 2012. And where the World Service will lose its direct government funding from 2014 and be paid from the licence fee instead, thus squeezing its budget, Putin will keep RT healthily supplied with cash<\/em>.<\/p>\n

This next sentence is pretty interesting, and needs a bit more elucidation, ie: What is the actual editorial policy? \u00c2\u00a0Surely it can’t be “pretty much anyone on air?”… may be more likely with a fervent belief in getting, quote-in-quote “voices marginalized in the Western Media’s corporate interests” or something.<\/p>\n

Through an editorial policy of letting pretty much anyone on air and with cash backing from the Kremlin, it has become a televisual home for disaffected viewers in the west, a refuge for the Occupy and hacktivist generation, which believes that its own countries\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 TV stations are in the pocket of corporate interests. Margarita Simonyan, RT\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s editor-in-chief, is even prepared to call it the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153anti-Fox News\u00e2\u20ac\u009d.<\/em><\/p>\n

And, this next one brings to mind the other big youtube sensation of media — Taiwan’ “Next Media Animation<\/a>“.<\/p>\n

Its strand\u00c2\u00a0The Truth Seeker\u00c2\u00a0\u00e2\u20ac\u201c presented by Daniel Bushell, a posh Brit whose on-screen style appears to owe a significant debt to Brass Eye\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Chris Morris \u00e2\u20ac\u201c reported on Barack Obama\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s re-election last November, as all channels did. RT put in for an interview and, as expected, its request was refused. Its next step was less orthodox.\u00c2\u00a0The Truth Seeker\u00c2\u00a0created Legobama, a Lego figure of Darth Vader whose head had been replaced with that of a black Lego character. RT jerkily stopmotion- animated it and made it answer questions on drone strikes in a poor imitation of the president\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s accent.<\/em><\/p>\n

Max Keiser\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s weekly\u00c2\u00a0Keiser Report\u00c2\u00a0specialises in lambasting the western banking system, often describing government responses to the financial crisis as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153genocide\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. Following the British government\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s decision to remove child benefit from higher-rate taxpayers, Keiser commented that George Osborne would \u00e2\u20ac\u0153sacrifice his child . . . throw the child into a volcano if it meant getting a good deal on a derivative\u00e2\u20ac\u009d.<\/em><\/p>\n

In comparison, the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who last year hosted a series of interviews on the channel with global rebels, including the Hezbollah leader, Hasan Nasrallah, came across as rather conventional. His interviewing style was gently probing, if not quite hardball<\/em>.<\/p>\n

And this may just be taking the basic inanity of the MacLoughlin Group or Crossfire and moving it beyond the Donkey v Elephant game and letting conspiracy theories circulate about. \u00c2\u00a0Given the sometimes pointless nature of those “talking heads” programs, I wonder if we might as well, and lose the pretensions that there’s any redeemable civic value with the programming.<\/p>\n

For the more extreme end of inter – rogation, viewers should seek out Peter Lavelle\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s\u00c2\u00a0CrossTalk, where the guests are encouraged to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153jump in any time you want\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and do, often making the discussion degrade into barely comprehensible shouting. Producers slyly undermine their guests with banner headlines contradicting whatever they are saying, and Lavelle throws in hand grenades of controversy if things are going too smoothly.<\/em><\/p>\n

The right-wing British commentator Douglas Murray was unprepared for Lavelle\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s approach when he appeared as a guest in 2010 to discuss France\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s burqa ban. Visibly baffled throughout the programme, he lost his temper when Lavelle dropped in an offhand remark about the 11 September 2001 hijackers not being fundamentalists.<\/em><\/p>\n

RT has long specialised in publicising alternative \u00e2\u20ac\u0153truther\u00e2\u20ac\u009d interpretations of the 9\/11 attacks and even ran a lengthy investigation called \u00e2\u20ac\u0153911 reasons why 9\/11 was (probably) an inside job\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, but Murray appears not to have known this and wrote of his confusion for the\u00c2\u00a0Daily Telegraph. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I leave it to readers to work out why the Russians would want to be pumping this kind of filth around,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he concluded. It is a good question<\/em>.<\/p>\n

And your bottom line…<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153My guess \u00e2\u20ac\u201c or interpretation, really \u00e2\u20ac\u201c is that they were getting pissed off with the bad publicity that Putin had already attracted and decided, in time-worn Soviet style, to \u00e2\u20ac\u02dccombat\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 it with a channel of their own,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he told me. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153That fits certainly with the impression I gained working with them that they wrongly believed the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcmessage\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 could be improved without changing the reality.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/em><\/p>\n

And into its appeal here in the states…<\/p>\n

RT does not lie, but it is selective about what facts it uses. Indeed, from its coverage of US politics, you might gain the impression that the only thing saving the Obama administration from collapse is police oppression of dissidents. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Several well-respected individuals have recently warned on the possibility of a severe social crisis erupting in the United States,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d RT warned on 21 January, basing its conclusion on quotes sometimes more than six years old. Its relentless focus on Washington\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s opponents has, however, won the channel their gratitude.<\/em><\/p>\n

Its coverage of Britain is similarly slanted towards marginal voices. Ukip\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Nigel Farage is a regular guest, as is George Galloway of Respect. In a recent edition of\u00c2\u00a0The Truth Seeker\u00c2\u00a0Galloway was described simply as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153a UK member of parliament who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s raised millions for victims of war\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. Neither Farage nor Galloway responded to my request to comment, but Loz Kaye, the leader of the UK Pirate Party and another occasional guest on the channel, was more forthcoming<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Where else am I to turn to hear from the Pirate Party?<\/p>\n

And the basic problem. \u00c2\u00a0Good for the marginal voices of the West. \u00c2\u00a0What of Russia?:<\/p>\n

And yet, RT campaigns on all these issues in other countries. This is not to say it does not cover dissent in Russia. It reported on the Moscow protests in the winter of 2011-2012 \u00e2\u20ac\u201c but Simonyan tweeted that the organizers would \u00e2\u20ac\u0153burn in hell\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and the reports lacked the detail of its work on Occupy. That is a pattern that holds true for almost all matters that affect both Russia and the west<\/em>.<\/p>\n

And your bottom line is the very bottom of this article.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I understand that you work for the\u00c2\u00a0Los Angeles Times, and not for Pravda or Izvestia, and that you have to take a certain position,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Putin said, revealing himself \u00e2\u20ac\u201c at least when it comes to propaganda \u00e2\u20ac\u201c to be the unreconstructed KGB agent that his enemies always say he is. That is where to look for an expla – nation of RT. Deep into his 14th year in power, the president appears to have given up on improving Russia. Instead, he funds RT to persuade everyone else that their own countries are no better.<\/em><\/p>\n

Looking through the comments section is curious. \u00c2\u00a0We get the idea from people that to even publish an article on the subject of RT is to “give it free publicity”. \u00c2\u00a0Beyond that, some predictable “equivalency*” arguments, an example of the exception that proves the rule with respect to Assange on Pussy Riot, and the most compelling part of the comments section is the reference to Russia merely being “conservative” and someplace most Americans wouldn’t be ready to live in with further suggestion that oddly American conservatives would love to implement some of Putin’s agenda (immigration and whatnot). \u00c2\u00a0Interesting.<\/p>\n

* The problem of the\u00c2\u00a0equivalency\u00c2\u00a0<\/span>\u00c2\u00a0argument in media was always on display when Fox News would go ahead and hold CNN as the spawn of liberal media. \u00c2\u00a0The one good thing about MSNBC becoming the outlet of opinion shows devoted to the agenda of the Democratic Party is that there is at least now an equivalency for Fox News to counter-weight. \u00c2\u00a0I suppose we’re back to the Cold War with the Voice of America beeming out over Eastern Europe… or something like that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m not sure why it would be called the “anti-Fox”. \u00c2\u00a0It’s a similar propaganda bent. \u00c2\u00a0The only thing I might surmise is the current issue with the Obama Administration and Fox News would not exist with Vladimir Putin and Russia Today. What you need to know in the quasi- “Age of Austerity”, or where taxpayer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11976","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11976"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11976\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11977,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11976\/revisions\/11977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}