Is Russia Today Read and Made by Russians?
Russian federation's RT Network: Is Information technology More BBC or K.M.B.?
LONDON — The London newsroom and studios of RT, the tv set aqueduct and website formerly known as Russian federation Today, are ultramodern and spacious, with spectacular views from the 16th floor overlooking the Thames and the London Eye. And, its London agency chief, Nikolay A. Bogachikhin, jokes, "We overlook MI5 and we're near MI6," Britain'southward domestic and strange intelligence agencies.
Mr. Bogachikhin was poking fun at the charge from Western governments, American and European, that RT is an agent of Kremlin policy and a tool directly used past President Vladimir V. Putin to undermine Western democracies — meddling in the contempo American presidential election and, European security officials say, trying to practise the same in kingdom of the netherlands, French republic and Frg, all of which vote afterward this year.
But the West is non laughing. Even equally Russian federation insists that RT is merely some other global network like the BBC or France 24, albeit one offering "culling views" to the Western-dominated news media, many Western countries regard RT as the slickly produced heart of a wide, often covert disinformation campaign designed to sow incertitude about democratic institutions and destabilize the West.
Western attention focused on RT when the Obama administration and United states intelligence agencies judged with "loftier confidence" in January that Mr. Putin had ordered a campaign to "undermine public faith in the U.S. autonomous process," discredit Hillary Clinton through the hacking of Democratic Party internal emails and provide support for Donald J. Trump, who equally a candidate said he wanted to amend relations with Russia.
The agencies issued a study saying the attack was carried out through the targeted use of real information, some open up and some hacked, and the creation of false reports, or "imitation news," broadcast on land-funded news media like RT and its sibling, the internet news agency Sputnik. These reports were then amplified on social media, sometimes by calculator "bots" that send out thousands of Facebook and Twitter messages.
To many Americans, the impression that RT is an instrument of Russian meddling was reinforced when its programming suddenly interrupted C-Span'south online coverage of the House of Representatives in Jan. (C-Span later called it a technical error, not a hacking.)
Watching RT tin can be a boundless experience. Hard news and top-notch graphics mix with interviews from all sorts of people: well known and obscure, left and right. They include favorites like Julian Assange of WikiLeaks and Noam Chomsky, the liberal critic of Western policies; odd voices like the actress Pamela Anderson; and cranks who call back Washington is the source of all evil in the world.
But if there is any unifying character to RT, it is a deep skepticism of Western and American narratives of the world and a fundamental defensiveness about Russia and Mr. Putin.
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Analysts are sharply divided about the influence of RT. Pointing to its minuscule ratings numbers, many caution against overstating its touch. All the same focusing on ratings may miss the betoken, says Peter Pomerantsev, who wrote a volume three years ago that described Russian federation's use of television receiver for propaganda. "Ratings aren't the main thing for them," he said. "These are campaigns for financial, political and media influence."
RT and Sputnik propel those campaigns by helping create the fodder for thousands of fake news propagators and providing another outlet for hacked material that can serve Russian interests, said Ben Nimmo, who studies RT for the Atlantic Council.
Whatever its affect, RT is unquestionably a case study in the complication of modern propaganda. It is both a slick modern television network, dressed upwards with dandy visuals and stylish presenters, and a content subcontract that helps feed the European far right. Viewers observe it hard to discern exactly what is journalism and what is propaganda, what may exist "fake news" and what is real simply presented with a strong slant.
A recent evening featured reports of Britain refusing to condemn human rights violations in Bahrain and a "mainstream media firestorm" over Attorney General Jeff Sessions's chats with the Russian ambassador to the United States. Other reports included the "liberation" of Palmyra by the Syrian Ground forces with "the support of the Russian Air Forcefulness;" an interview with former British ambassador to Syria and a United states critic, Peter Ford; and a report about a London professor decrying the fall in British living standards.
There are "clickbait" videos on RT'southward website and stranger pieces, also, similar one most a petition to ban the financier George Soros from America for supposedly trying to "destabilize" the country and "drown information technology" with immigrants for a "globalist goal."
Mr. Bogachikhin and Anna Belkina, RT's head of communications in Moscow, insist information technology is absurd to lump together RT's effort to provide "alternative views to the mainstream media" with the phenomena of fake news and social media propaganda.
"There'south an hysteria virtually RT," Ms. Belkina said. "RT becomes a shorthand for everything."
For example, she says, while RT was featured heavily in the American intelligence report, it was largely in a seven-page annex (of a 13-folio report) that was written more than four years ago, in December 2012, a fact revealed only in a footnote on Page six.
She flatly denies any suggestion that RT seeks to meddle in democratic elections anywhere. "The kind of scrutiny nosotros're under — we check everything."
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For RT and its viewers, the outlet is a refreshing alternative to what they see equally complacent Western elitism and neo-liberalism, representing what the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Five. Lavrov recently called a "mail-West world guild."
With its slogan, created by a Western ad bureau, of "Question More," RT is trying to fill a niche, Ms. Belkina said. "We desire to complete the movie rather than add to the repeat chamber of mainstream news; that's how we find an audition."
Nearly all the mainstream media came out confronting Mr. Trump during the campaign and much of the news coverage about him was negative, she said.
"This is why we exist," Ms. Belkina said. "It'south of import to watch RT to hear alternative voices. You might not agree with them, merely it'due south important to try to empathize where they're coming from and why."
A French legislator, Nicolas Dhuicq, who has appeared on RT and went to Russian-annexed Crimea in 2015 as part of a delegation of French legislators, said that RT'southward aim was "to make the phonation of Russian federation heard, to make the Russian point of view on the world heard."
All the same, Mr. Dhuicq said, "the impact of RT, in my opinion, is very low." He added: "In that location is enormous paranoia when we imagine that RT volition change the face up of the world, influence national or other elections."
Afshin Rattansi, who hosts a talk testify three times a week called "Going Surreptitious," came to RT in 2013 after working at the BBC, CNN, Bloomberg, Al Jazeera and Iran'due south Press Tv set. "Unlike at the BBC and CNN, I was never told what to say at RT," he said. At that place have been two cases of RT announcers quitting because of what they said was pressure to toe a Kremlin line, especially on Ukraine, but not in London, Mr. Rattansi said.
Michael McFaul, a Stanford professor who was the United States ambassador to Russia during the Obama years, said that RT should not be lightly dismissed. "In that location is a demand in certain countries for this alternative view, an appetite, and nosotros arrogant Americans shouldn't just think that no ane cares."
Prototype
But there is a considerably darker view, too. For critics, RT and Sputnik are simply tools of a sophisticated Russian propaganda machine, created past the Kremlin to push its strange policy, defend its aggression in Ukraine and undermine confidence in democracy, NATO and the world as we have known it.
Robert Pszczel, who ran NATO'south data office in Moscow and watches Russia and the western Balkans for NATO, said that RT and Sputnik were not meant for domestic consumption, unlike the BBC or CNN. Over time, he said, "It'due south more about hard ability and disinformation."
The Kremlin doesn't care "if yous agree with Russian policy or think Putin is wonderful, and so long as it does the job — you start having doubts, and of 10 outrageous points you lot take on one or two," he said. "A bit of mud will e'er stick."
Probably more of import than RT, Mr. Pszczel said, are Sputnik and local language outlets sponsored by Russian federation, like the Slovak magazine "Zem a Vek," known for its conspiracy theories. Sputnik is the largest source of raw news in the Balkans, he said, "considering it'southward a free product in local languages." And "then they set upward some friendly association, at some small university, which holds seminars, and so a number of foreign websites start promoting the product, similar an industrial marketing operation."
But RT is also helpful in another traditional Moscow try: making friends with useful people, and not just Mr. Assange, Mr. Pomerantsev said. "RT made Mike Flynn feel good after losing his job" every bit head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, he said, paying him a reported $40,000 to come to RT'due south anniversary celebration in Moscow and sit down near Mr. Putin. And Mr. Flynn, for a fourth dimension, was national security adviser of the United States.
Mr. Nimmo of the Atlantic Quango noted RT'south small reach in Frg, where Angela Merkel, a Putin critic, is facing a tough re-election fight, and where in that location are upwards to 3.5 million Russian speakers. "I strongly suspect that RT Deutsch has a picayune effect compared to Russian-speaking Germans watching Russian tv set," he said.
Stefan Meister, who studies Russia and Fundamental Europe for the German Quango on Foreign Relations, agreed that "we shouldn't overestimate RT. The main success of the Russians is the link to social media through bots and a network of different sources." That network, he said, is "increasingly well organized, with more strategic and explicit links between sources and actors — Russian domestic media, troll factories, RT, people in social networks and maybe also the security services."
"Open up societies are very vulnerable," Mr. Meister said, "and it'southward cheaper than ownership a new rocket."
RT is part of the reality of the 21st century, Mr. Pomerantsev said. "Everyone will do it shortly. Information technology'south the earth nosotros accept to live in." Hacks and leaks are much more disruptive, he said. "If you tin take out the electrical grid in Ukraine, that'south scary. It's hard to get too scared about Larry Male monarch on RT."
Mr. Pomerantsev agrees with Ms. Belkina that RT is not inventing popular mistrust about Western commonwealth. "The Russians are virtually sowing mistrust about institutions that is at that place already, feeding it," he said. "How do we make our institutions more trustworthy?"
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/08/world/europe/russias-rt-network-is-it-more-bbc-or-kgb.html
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