Using news to sway the wary West

Russian news agency Sputnik claims to ‘tell the untold’, but is it thinly veiled state propaganda?

Anew cold war has chilled Moscow, where the Russian government is conducting an international counterattack against so-called Western-leaning news agencies and broadcasters such as Reuters, the Associated Press (AP), CNN and the BBC.

The strategy appears simple but is effective, and is best described as relaying the “opposite” news to that projected by the mainstream media. For every AP article or CNN segment about Russian “aggression” in the Middle East or Africa, Sputnik provides the “truth” — which mostly portrays Russian military interventions as quests for justice and peace, blessed by the affected country.

In November 2014, by an executive order from President Vladimir Putin, state news agency Rossiya Segodnya launched Sputnik, a governmentowned online and radio international news agency aimed at nonRussian-speaking audiences.

Sputnik operates with a budget of 91-million roubles and reports mainly on political and economic news, with regional offices in Washington, Cairo, Beijing and London.

The propaganda war was supposed to have ended in 1990 but it was never going to be easy to wish away decades of indoctrination in Russia. With the fall of the Soviet Union, the ensuing rise of the oligarchs and the ascent of former spy chief Putin to the hot seat, attempting to restore the glory of “Mother Russia” would require a sustained media effort. Enter Russia Today, an alternative to the dominant Western media, which in just over a decade has garnered an audience of close to a billion viewers.

And as the US government directly sponsors media focusing on the international market such as Voice of America, the Russians in turn are spreading their country’s official line outside their borders with the advent of Sputnik.

Sputnik’s international broadcasting editor, Anton Anisimov, said this is just the start. “We hope to extend our reach to all the countries in Brics [Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa] and further into Africa and Latin America as we get older — we are just two years old, after all.”

The news agency employs fulltime and freelance reporters in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) — countries that broke away from Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

The task of persuading global citizens of Russia’s good intentions has been placed in the hands of veteran Russian journalists and senior staff from the government’s communication and foreign ministries. The downside, according to Sputnik’s CIS multimedia editor Andrei Blagodyrenko, is that governments in former Soviet Union countries don’t allow the agency’s staff to attend official press conferences.

“Our journalists are harassed in countries such as Lithuania and Latvia, where they refuse to give us comment or refuse accreditation to official government events,” he said.

One such veteran journalist, Oleg Dmitriev, has worked in both proRussian and dissenting publications over the past 30 years, including a stint at Reuters. Without hesitation, he relates the restrictions by which the press have to abide.

“Whenever we publish the word Isil [Islamic State], it must be followed by: ‘which is banned in Russia’. You cannot publish a picture of a criminal or accused person unless it is a wanted poster supplied by the police,” Dmitriev said.

“Another one is that we cannot publish the nationality of someone in the news, under any circumstances. These are all legislated rules for the media by the state,” he added with a smile and a shrug.

Anisimov shocked journalists from 19 countries attending a training workshop in Moscow this month by calling a spade a spade. “Call it propaganda if you like,” he declared, in response to whether the agency purposefully promotes the government view despite contrary articles from reputable agencies.

Sputnik is often accused of ignoring the facts to present a biased view of Russia’s military or economic actions. Anisimov brushed this off, saying: “Our slogan is ‘Telling the untold’, which is about giving the side of the story which is either being ignored or does not fit the narrative on other media platforms.”

Anisimov spoke frankly about perceptions of the agency as a mouthpiece for the Russian state. He shot down suggestions that journalists are primarily accountable to the consumers of news before the people who pay their salaries, and was dismissive of the concept of a truly independent press.

In this new global village where the battle for control of the political narrative is at its most fierce, Anisimov said, such expectations are idealistic.

“No, I don’t believe there is such a thing as independent, free press in today’s world. Everyone is owned by someone else and has an agenda, so while it is ideal not to be tied to someone, it just doesn’t happen,” he said.

When confronted about the journalist’s moral and ethical responsibilities, Anisimov brushed this off: “Well, the press code is not legislation [and until] it is made legislation, there’s really nothing to force journalists to stick to it.”

He downplayed the idea that Sputnik was created to “wage a communication war” against Western media outlets, despite “war talk” taking place in the newsroom.

“In our newsroom, my colleagues are sometimes ranting about the communication war. Like: ‘Yeah, let’s go get ’em!’ But I don’t preoccupy myself with that.”

Sputnik’s online publications and English-medium radio stations are dominated by anti-Western content. Last week the headlines slammed Hillary Clinton over another leak about her emails and questioned her legitimacy to stand as a candidate for the US presidency, but under-reported the scandals swirling around her opponent, the now president-elect Donald Trump.

For Sputnik, the most frequently quoted sources on contested global events such as the war in Syria or tensions on the Russian border include government and military officials, human rights organisations that have previously supported Russia’s interventions and eyewitnesses.

On the other end of the spectrum, agencies such as Reuters and AP, and broadcasters such as CNN and BBC, rely on their own military intelligence and what the Russians call “pro-US” civil society groups.

Dmitriev noted, with some acknowledgement of the effects of this bias, that “you can’t trust any of them independently; you need to consume both sides to get close to the truth”.

As a first-time visitor, one left Moscow with a feeling that most Russian media have a patriotic bias and see nothing wrong with it. And, to at least two cab drivers and a bellhop at an international hotel, Sputnik “is very good; they show the good Russia”.