RT (formerly Russia Today) is propaganda, not news

In the past few days, two distinguished British journalists;

Oliver Kamm of the Times on the CAPX website here,

and Nick Cohen in the Guardian here,

 have written about Vladimir Putin's UK propaganda channels, RT (formerly Russia Today) and Sputnik.

The former Soviet Union used to have news outlets callesd Tass and Isvestia, which mean "News" and "Truth" in Russian. Ordinary Russians would joke when they didn't think the KGB was listening,

"In 'Truth' there is no news, and in 'News' there is no truth."


I don't necessarily agree with every word either of Nick Cohen's article

"Russia's free pass to undermine British democracy," or Oliver Kamm's piece,

"Time to crack down on Russia Today and its destabilising propaganda"


But I do think that they are both right that every word which comes from RT or Sputnik should be treated with a bucketful of salt by any intelligent person. Kamm says of RT that

"It has the trappings of a normal news channel but not the substance, ethos or ethics. The same is true of Sputnik."

He also writes,

"Vladimir Putin’s regime murders critics, harasses opposition parties, poisons dissidents, locks up protesters, assassinates journalists, represses gays, invades neighbouring states and annexes their territory, shoots civilian airplanes out of the sky, interferes in the electoral processes of democratic states, and aids the unspeakable campaign of civilian slaughter waged by Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

With a record like this, the Russian president has an incentive to shut out scrutiny and spread disinformation. And he does.

His tools include the English-language state propaganda organs Russia Today (RT) and the Sputnik agency. These purported news outlets are agents of a hostile foreign power; civil society as well as democratic governments should say so and treat them accordingly."
Unlike Putin, most people in Britain believe in free speech. We do not shut down news channels because they say something we disagree with, even things we think that only a crank or a fruitcake could possibly believe.

That doesn't mean we should not subject them to scrutiny. And any supposedly serious politician who accepts invitations to appear on RT - such as, for instance, Alec Salmond, Jeremy Corbyn and several members of his shadow cabinet - should be asked questions about his or her judgement.

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