“Those who sell tremendous headlines playing with something as serious as war should be ashamed of themselves, and if anyone had any dignity, perhaps they would leave their jobs or go out to ask for forgiveness.” Javier Rodriguez Carrasconews presenter of the RT channel in Spanish, culminated with these strong wordson February 16, a broadcast entitled ‘History of a great hysteria, imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine?’.
eight days later, Vladimir Putin announced the start of the “special operation” to “denazify Ukraine”, Russian tanks stormed the neighboring country, while the first bombs fell on kyiv and Kharkov. And as stated to EL PERIÖDICO Carlos Hernandez-Echevarriadisinformation specialist cursed.es“all the speech of RT, of ridicule of the Western media, of accusations of hysteria and tremendousism, jumped into the air”, irrevocably damaging the credibility of the channel among its audiences in Europe and the US.
The war, moreover, has been the last straw that has broken the patience of the western authorities regarding this television, financed by the Russian budget that has accumulated endless warnings from the national regulatory entities due to its scant respect for the professional ethics. A week after the start of hostilities, the European Council agreed to “suspend activities” of Sputnik Y RT until the Russian Federation ceases its “disinformation activities against the EU”.
Collateral damage
Lastly, the shock wave of the conflict has caused the cascading resignation of foreign personnel. numerous journalists, documentalists Y presenters-star They submitted their resignation in the days after the invasion, especially on the English channel, where there are only two British presenters left, unable to continue working in a medium that refuses to qualify as “war“The events in the neighboring country. “I was fine; I was dedicated to reporting on sports and showing the good side of Russia, but when everything became very cynical, I quit,” he explains from the United Kingdom. Daniel Armstrongformer correspondent for Sports Y Present on the Russian channel.
They paint coarse for RT and other media controlled by the Kremlin, and in this unfavorable environment, those responsible have begun to rethink their propaganda strategiesgiven the great importance that Moscow attaches to information, considered as one more weapon against the enemy, as specified Valeri Gerasimovchief of the Army General Staff, in an article in a military magazine in 2013: “The value of non-military means to achieve political and strategic ends has not only increased, but in some cases exceeds the effectiveness of weapons” .
Banned in the US and the EU, the controversial channel, the most precious tool of Russian propaganda, is now concentrated in Latin America and Africa, where it hopes to exploit the anti-colonial speech and the historical resentment to the USA. “Latin America is a more important audience for RT in Spanish than Spain; in the first 15 days of war, RT was the most cited medium on Twitter in Spanish language”, notes Hernández-Echevarría. “In the region, there is a major mistrust towards the Anglo-Saxon media, and there is a more complicated relationship with the US than the one with Western Europe,” he continues.
In Africa, everything points to the release, in the coming months, of a bitter information battle as a result of the food crisis caused by the Russian naval blockade of grain exports from Ukraine. According to Nicholas of Peterdisinformation expert thinktank British Institute for Statecraft, in the Russian media it is common to see “diplomats addressing with great interest African and Latin American audiences to convey the message that the possible famine is the responsibility of the West”, not a consequence of the Russian military deployment in the Black Sea. In contrast, in the West, the banned RT has suffered a severe blow, which it tries to overcome by two formulas, explain From Peter. On the one hand, it “replicates its web page with other domains”, making itself accessible to the Western audience; on the other, “it spreads content through numerous Telegram channels,” he continues.
Exploit tiredness
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But above all, to push forward its narratives and exploit possible future war-weariness in the US and the EU, the Kremlin relies on the action of so-called ‘influencers’, “a figure defined as someone who knowingly or unconsciously, it spreads narratives favorable to the Kremlin”, affirms this expert. In a recent articleEl Confidencial wonders if Inna Afinogenova, a former director of RT in Spanish, for a long time one of the main propagandists of the Kremlin, a fervent defender of President Putin and his policies, and recently signed by Pablo Iglesias for La Base after affirming that he had resigned from the Russian chain for its supposed “disagreement” with “all wars”, fits this profile. kevin rothrockeditor-in-chief of the independent publication Meduza, assures The Washington Post that his resignation is not credible: “he has worked for 12 years at RT; in that period, Russia has been involved in many similar wars”.
The shortage of foreign staff this wreaking havocwhich has pushed the chain’s management to increase wages (which were already substantial) “by 30%“, affirm well-informed people about the ups and downs of the chain. In some cases, even demands to triple the salary have been accepted. These same sources cite as an example that the permanent information channel has had to “limit its broadcasts”, while documentary journalists they have had to go to Belarus “to cover”.
Some of the (mis)informative practices of RT, exposed
Veteran Foreign Correspondents supervised from the editorial office in Moscow by young editors who follow at foot together direction instructions, unfair terms with fines included to prevent leaks about the ways of working, assignment of shifts or inconvenient vacations to those journalists who raise problems, interviews with unknown experts or of questionable reputation… Well-informed sources assure that a tense atmosphere always reigns in the RT newsroom, in which many reporters prefer to censor themselves to avoid problems or quarrels with the address. Many foreign presenters play with the direct, and introduce last minute changes in the wording of the headlines and the news to avoid as much as possible the handling or the propagandist tone when they are on the air.
The editors who dispatch with the special envoys “are the more taliban“, these sources explain. They are able to send messages to the journalist on the ground at the last moment, implying how “sensitive” this or that information is, or reminding that in RT “when Ministry of Foreign Affairs either defense Russia is not questioned; only what she says is quoted”. Another of the most repeated slogans refers to the white helmetsthe Syrian volunteers who rescued from the rubble the civilian victims of the Russian bombardment and the Assad regime. “They cannot be treated as a legitimate source of information.”
According to Hernández-Echevarría, RT “is not a regular propaganda medium” and modulates “the editorial line always in accordance with to the interests the Russian Government”. This expert cites as an example the coverage of the refugee crisis in 2015. On the Spanish channel, with a mainly Latin American and left-wing audience, it was criticized that the EU was “a white and even racist club”, while RT in Germany, with an audience from the extreme right, “preached the opposite”.