Presenter of Putin’s propaganda TV quits on air
RUSSIA
THE stars of the Kremlin’s pet television channel, Russia Today (RT), are defecting from President Vladimir Putin’s personal media mouthpiece.
The latest to stray from its fiercely-enforced party line on Ukraine is the anchorwoman Liz Wahl, who declared on air: ‘‘I’m proud to be an American and believe in disseminating the truth and that is why after this newscast I’m resigning.’’
Wahl, whose grandparents fled to the US after witnessing Soviet tanks crushing the 1956 Hungarian uprising, drew a stinging rebuke from the channel’s editor-inchief, Margarita Simonyan. Wahl, she said, ‘‘resigned on air in a self promotional stunt’’.
Earlier in the week another presenter, Abby Martin, managed to slip in her own denunciation of the Russian intervention in Crimea at the end of her show Breaking the Set. Simonyan offered the US-based presenter an opportunity to see the ‘‘truth’’ for herself, with a paid trip to Sevastopol. Martin declined, but remains on the payroll.
For RT, the outbursts are a culture shock. It has, with its relentless reporting of the miseries and hypocrisies of life in America and the West, become a haven for conspiracy theorists who are regularly Skype-interviewed on world events.
Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks whistleblower, was awarded his own chat show, recorded in his bolthole in London’s Ecuadorian Embassy. George Galloway has a discussion programme called Sputnik, for anyone still pondering what happened to socialism after the death of Leonid Brezhnev.
One recent interviewee was the head of the Communist Party of Great Britain, who brought viewers up to date on the social reforms of the North Korean leadership. It all makes compelling viewing for people who feel they are being systematically lied to by the Western capitalist media and feel that any takeover carried out by Russia is an act of salvation. Most viewers, it seems, would rather believe in an invasion from Mars than from the Kremlin and some online commenters suggested this week that Ukraine had been invading itself.
Putin set up RT in 2005, but it came into its own after the invasion of Georgia three years later, when Moscow wanted to present an ‘‘objective’’ version of events. His personal involvement explains the barely-contained fury turned against Miss Wahl. Before signing off for the final time, she said: ‘‘I cannot be part of a network that whitewashes the actions of Putin.’’
Did they turn off the set in the Kremlin? Or break it? Stay tuned.