Russia Today: why western cynics lap up Putin’s TV poison
While reputable news organisations from the BBC to the New York Times fire news reporters who try, however inadequately, to tell the truth, Russia Today has extended its reach. Putin is about to increase its $300m budget by 40%. Its resources will soon compare with Fox News. But while Fox serves the peculiar tastes of the American right, Russia Today has global ambitions.
.. Russia Today feeds the huge western audience that wants to believe that human rights are a sham and democracy a fix.
.. David Remnick of the New Yorker described Russia Today’s “nastily brilliant” ability to feed “resentment of western superiority and resentment of western moralism”. He forgot to add that nowhere is that resentment stronger than in the west.
.. Russia Today’s second mission is to spread conspiracy theories that help Russian power and provide sensational audience-grabbing stories – in every sense of the word. If you have heard that the Ukrainians who oppose Putin are fascists, that there is a land called “Novorossiya” in south-east Ukraine that historically belonged to Moscow, or that Assad did not gas Syrians, the odds are the story will have started on Russia Today.
.. I said that no one believed Putin offered a future for humanity. But his post-communist, postmodern flexibility means that many are prepared cut a deal when the bent copper makes an offer. Alex Salmond admires him because the break-up of Britain is in Russia’s interests. Nigel Farage, Marine le Pen and all the other leaders of Europe’s far right run to him because he shares their hatred of the EU. Despite his alliance with what we once called neofascism, the old communist left in Germany, George Galloway and Julian Assange support him because opposition to the west trumps anti-fascism in their book.
Russia Today provides a platform for anti-fracking greens because Putin wants us to remain dependent on Russian oil and gas.