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Keeping an eye on RT, the international Russian-backed news channel. A project of Columbia Journalism School students.Read more.
While western sources tally away, RT avoids counting Russian troops in Ukraine
Ukrainian forces in Eastern Ukraine. They’re fighting separatists – and soldiers from Russia, says the West. RT’s not saying. Photo credit: RT.
By Arielle Dreher
Colleagues of slain opposition leader Boris Nemtsov this week released theUkraine report he’d been working on before his murder in February, andRT posted this short item about it.
One of Nemtsov’s key allegations is that at least 220 Russian soldiers have been killed while fighting in eastern Ukraine since last August. In response, RT offered a variation of its usual boilerplate.
Russia has been accused of sending its soldiers and military hardware to assist the anti-government fighters in eastern Ukraine almost since the start of the conflict. The repeated accusations came from Kiev, Washington and their European allies, but were not backed by any solid proof.
RT seemed to doubt the involvment of Russian troops in Ukraine well before the Nemtsov report, in response to Western claims (i.e., the U.S. military and NATO) that the number of Russian troops operating in the conflict zones of eastern Ukraine is around 12,000 andgrowingsince March. The Kremlin, as it has since the conflict began, steadfastly denies it’s sending troops into Ukraine. RT takes a somewhat passive approach to the numbers: it seems to back the Kremlinclaim by largely remaining silent on the issue – or using language like this week’s, that there isn’t “any solid proof.”
The question of Russian troops in Ukraine is a key one in the debate over western sanctions, applied against Russia by the U.S. and the European Union.
Reporting by the independent Russian paper Novaya Gazeta and others has confirmed that some Russians are fighting in eastern Ukraine – though the most clearcut evidence has identified Russian volunteers joining the separatists, not active duty troops deployed by Moscow. Maria Turchenkova, a Russianphotojournalistwho has worked in eastern Ukraine for the past year, told RT Watch that the volunteers she and other reporters have verified include men who might have served in the Russian military previously, but have come as private individuals to fight with Ukrainian separatists.
RT uses Victory Day celebration to attack Ukraine
By Alex Lubetkin
Much of RT’s coverage over the last week has dealt with Russia’s 70th V-Day celebration. Readers saw plenty of posts on rt.com geared at inspiring Russian patriotism. But it wouldn’t be like RT to stop there. No, RT used V-Day as a means to kick dirt at Kiev, at least a little bit.
In an interview with UCLA professor Arch Getty aptly headlined “WWII victory doesn’t bring Russia, Ukraine together as Kiev turned war criminals into heroes,” RT asks Getty if the memory of the former Soviet states’ victory is enough to ease tension between the two countries.
AG: It certainly should, but it is not, and it won’t because Ukraine as a new nation, a new state more than anybody else has to create a useable past, a useable history. And they have done so in the most glaring kinds of ways that the Ukrainian Prime Minister, [Arseny] Yatsenyuk has said that WWII was about the Soviet Union invading Germany. War criminals in Ukraine, Bandera, people who killed Jews and many others are being touted as national heroes there for current political needs of the Ukrainian leadership. I’m afraid these celebrations are not going to do that simply because of the attitudes that are being taken.
Two takeaways here:
1. This quote comes at the very end of the interview. And it definitely relates directly to that headline about WWII victory not bringing Kiev and Moscow together. But: There’s lots more here – Getty’s analysis on American-Russian relations, for example. Yet RT chose to package the whole thing around the Ukrainian angle.
2. As is the RT way, there’s no attempt to present any other views. Getty has the first, the second – and the very last word on Ukraine. Others need not apply.
Scandal, conflicts and protests: some of RTs most common tags
By Chava Gourarie
I noticed that RT often labeled their articles, even pretty standard news stories, with the tag ‘scandal.’
For example, RTreported that Paula Slier, a journalist with RT, left Ukraine because another journalist called on Ukrainian authorities to arrest her, triggering an online flurry that RT says included violent threats against Slier. The tags for the post were scandal, mass media, security, Ukraine, war and violence.
Photo of RT correspondent Paul Slier, from facebook.com/paula.slier
Three other articles on the same day were tagged scandal: A Florida county finds 97 percent of police-involved shootings justified, a US Air Force general resigns after a comment about drunken Indians, and the Missouri town of Ferguson is paying a lawyer $1,335 an hour to help implement reforms demanded by the Department of Justice. Links to the articleshere.here, andhere.
Those are pretty scandalous. In fact, RT traffics in scandals. Sure, what makes the news in most media is often scandalous. But a brief read of theSt. Louis Post-Dispatch’s storyon the pricey lawyer, versus RT’s version, demonstrates how the same story can be presented as a juicy tale of intrigue – or a straight news story about people looking out for their own interests.
RT loves partial quotes, and other editorial choices that drive us nuts
By Theresa Avila
A quick look at the homepage for rt.com gives some insight into the company’s editorial choices – not just the stories they choose, but their style choices. Like their passion for partial quotes.
Here’s the latest headlines on RT’s homepage as of May 4, 2015.
The very best quotes stand alone, even when they are just a fragment of a sentence. But the problem with partial quotes is that they can be taken out of context. RT seems to have a habit of using partial quotes that are never quoted in their entirety in the article, which makes it hard to determine their legitimacy.
Or, at the very least, they end up sounding like someone’s telling us a story with lots of “air” quotes. It’s about as appealing as watching this guy:
Once you read rt.com’s top news stories as much as we do here at RT Watch, it becomes obvious exactly how much RT loves a partial quote to kick off a story. Bonus points if the partial quote hints at great misfortune or wrongdoing.Down with Twerking! RT finds parallel between jailed twerkers and Soviet censorship
By Chava Gourarie
Last week, RT was scandalized by some twerking teens in Orenberg. This week, RT has the story of three young women arrested for having the audacity to twerk in front of a World War II memorial in southern Russia.
Their sentence:#MeanwhileinRussia: Women jailed for twerking next to WWII memorial (VIDEO)http://t.co/Tle1arUXtzpic.twitter.com/HP6QXDFGsq
— RT (@RT_com)April 25, 20153 of the 6 women will serve 15 days in jail, 2 received fines, 1 released to her motherhttp://t.co/Tle1arUXtzpic.twitter.com/SpZjT4aLOL
— RT (@RT_com)April 25, 2015
After the Orenberg twerking incident, when underage schoolchildren, dressed as bees, performed a dance that included twerking for their parents, “a federal investigation for ‘lewdness’ “ was opened,according to RT.
TheBBC reported that the dance school that choreographed the bees has been closed.
Though the recent articles make it seem like Russia disapproves of the American-inspired dance move, just last summer, RT was celebrating some Siberian twerkers.
Has something changed in the interim?Twerking Siberia: Russian dancers become YouTube sensation (VIDEOS)http://t.co/JAv1fR7kfcpic.twitter.com/83tGeYaRLi
— RT (@RT_com)August 17, 2014
RT suggests the Orenberg dance was judged particularly scandalous, because the teens were “underage.” As for other twerking incidents in Russia, “Parallels have also been drawn in the media with the Soviet era, when the authorities disapproved of boogie-woogie, the foxtrot and other ‘ideologically alien’ dances,” said RT.Conservatives take the UK elections, leaving them in charge of ‘the democratic crater at the heart of British politics,’ according to RT
by Asthaa Chaturvedi
The United Kingdom election last week brought some unexpected results and many flurries of political analysis. Even before the results were in, RT was ready to declare UK politics a disaster zone; this story warns of “a black hole in the heart of British democracy” at one point, while elsewhere saying that “the democratic crater at the heart of British politics” is “dismantling the welfare state.”
RT doesn’t offer much in the way of hard numbers or concrete examples to bolster its hyperbolic abyss images. But for the record, here are three reasons why UK parties are failing their electorate, according to RT:1. A corrupted and broken system is the top reason the parties no longer serve their constituents, says RT. The “tainted political funding system that allows gilded tycoons and firms to buy a system tailored to their interests has been sorely lacking.”
Who are the firms and gilded tycoons that RT is referring to? Hard to tell based on this piece.
An RT mashup: take one prank video, add one angry commentator, and voila – you’ve made a point about U.S. incompetence on Ukraine
By Rosalind Adams
When the U.S. ambassador to NATO commented in a speech this month that he got much of his news about Ukraine from social media, RT went to work on a segment labeled “Fact Checking” aimed at making a case for American ineptitude in military intelligence.
The bizarre result was abiting broadcast, which opened with an RT news anchor describing a YouTube video (which likely was a hoax)that depicted images of Russian tanks projected on the White House. From there, noting that information found online should be treated with “a healthy dose of skepticism,” the anchor segued to the ambassador’s remarks.
Skepticism, he noted, was “precisely what some senior state officials lack when using social media as a source of information.”
For the record, Douglas Lute, the U.S. ambassador to NATO, said “I read more on social media about what’s going on [in eastern Ukraine] than I get from formal intelligence networks.”He wasspeaking at a “Friends of Europe” forum in Brussels, where he noted the decline of intelligence networks in the post-Cold War era.
Lute’s remark seems pretty mild in context, shedding more light on the shifting politics since the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
RT expert compares NATO commander to “Dr. Strangelove”
RT screenshot showing where the naval exercises are beingpracticed in the Norwegian Sea.
By M. Chadwick Shank
NATO naval forces from 10 member countries are participating ina two-week anti-submarine exercise in the Norwegian Sea, which has causedRTto sound the alarm about NATO being on Russia’s doorstep.
NPR reported that the exercises, an annualaffair, are larger than ever this year in response toreports of foreign vessels in the sovereignwaters of some northern European countries – and in response to concerns “thatRussia could employ the same tactics in the three Baltic states – Latvia,Lithuania and Estonia – that it used in Ukraine.”
RT screenshot showing the Baltic states and their proximity tothe Russian Federation.
RT interviewed activistJan Oberg, director of a think tank called theTransnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research, about the NATOexercises. Speaking about U.S. General Philip Breedlove, the commander of NATOForces in Europe, Oberg couldn’t resist a play on his name: “He’s not exactlybreeding love.” Then Oberg offered this stunning Breedlove comparison: “He’smore a ‘Dr. Strangelove,’ terrible-type of personality.”
“Dr. Strangelove”ofcourse refers to the 1964 political satire about about an insane general whoseactions trigger a nuclear holocaust. So, is RT’s expert suggesting that routineNATO exercises are on a par with global nuclear war?
RT’s Redacted Tonight beats the drum for class warfare in America
by Latena M. Hazard
As Baltimore began rebuilding after recent riots, Redacted Tonight host Lee Camp discussed why class warfare was bound to happen here.
“These riots in Baltimore and Ferguson were inevitable,” says Camp. “The police have been militarized and left unaccountable in order to protect the wealth of the .1 percent.” Then he rolls out some of thedata that illustrates rising inequality: the richest 3 percent of families hold about 54 percent of the nation’s wealth, while the bottom 90 percent have only about a quarter of U.S. wealth.
“Mob violence is a system of a class warfare that we have been in the middle of for decades,” says Camp. “A war perpetrated against the bottom 99.9 percent percent of society and yet we live in an era of mental slavery.”
A lot of Camp’s basic message might resonate with some audiences, but the message falls apart when he wraps it in offensive penis jokes (they’re right at the beginningof the segment and not at all funny).
RT: “Thugs” in Baltimore was just a predictable part of the “US mainstream narrative”
By Siyu Qian
A debate over whether it’s racist to call Baltimore protesters “thugs” has been going on for days, pitting the prevailing US media narrative against“activists and residents,” according tothis RT article..”
“The mainstream US media are facing criticism over their coverage of unrest in Baltimore,” said RT. “Activists and residents claim the media ignored peaceful marches, focused on labels and violence, and ignored the chronic issues of poverty and police misconduct.”
Criticism of mainstream media coverage has been widespread and widely covered – from RT, to Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, to some MSM outlets in the U.S. But RT’s coverage has been distinctive in pointing the finger: it’s “corporate media” that’s to blame,according to In the Now host Anissa Naouai..
Her show then aired a montage of clips, starting with CNN host Wolf Blitzer repeatedly asking “there is no excuse for such kind of violence, right?” when heinterviewed activist DeRay McKesson during live broadcast. “Yeah, there is no excuse for the seven people that the Baltimore city police department has killed in the past year either, right?” replied McKesson.