Russian TV channel probe over ‘bias in Skripal reports’

KREMLIN-BACKED television channel RT is being investigated amid claims it has flouted broadcasting rules seven times with biased coverage of the Salisbury nerve agent attack.

RT, formerly Russia Today, is accused of breaking Ofcom’s impartiality regulations over last month’s poisoning of exspy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, pictured. The watchdog could strip the channel – described as a ‘loosely disguised arm of the Russian state’ – of its licence if it is found to have broken UK rules.

In the clips under investigation, RT presenters and interviewees repeatedly deny Russia’s involvement in the Salisbury attack. They also say the West’s attacks on Syria were ‘a choice’ and insist there is no evidence of chemical weapons being used by Syria’s dictator Bashar Al Assad. The assertions were left unchallenged.

Ofcom yesterday said it had a duty to ensure organisations that hold a licence to broadcast in Britain operate in a ‘fit and proper’ manner.

The watchdog is understood to be concerned about the fact that RT did not offer alternative arguments when covering events such as the chemical weapons attack in Douma, Syria, this month.

In one clip, ex-MP George Galloway interviewed Steve Topple, a journalist from left-wing website The Canary, about the Skripals.

Mr Topple said: ‘I don’t want this situation where the media is so terrible and so full of sewerage all the time that people have to turn to the likes of The Canary but it is what’s happening.’

Of the Salisbury attack, Mr Galloway said: ‘Nobody died, nobody was assassinated and the jury is out on who did it.’

Guest David Morrison, described as ‘an independent researcher’, claimed the perpetrator must have been an ‘enemy of Putin’ – and the Russian president ‘couldn’t have possibly organised this’.

In another clip, presenter Peter Lavelle said the air strikes in Syria were ‘theatre’, adding: ‘I think it was political attack. I think it was theatre.’