{"id":20572,"date":"2022-03-01T17:24:54","date_gmt":"2022-03-01T17:24:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ounews.co\/?p=20572"},"modified":"2022-03-01T17:24:54","modified_gmt":"2022-03-01T17:24:54","slug":"ukraine-war-rt-coverage-is-biased-and-misleading-but-banning-the-network-may-not-be-a-good-idea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/arts-social-sciences\/society-politics\/ukraine-war-rt-coverage-is-biased-and-misleading-but-banning-the-network-may-not-be-a-good-idea\/","title":{"rendered":"Ukraine war: RT coverage is biased and misleading but banning the network may not be a good idea"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Dr Precious Chatterje-Doody<\/a>, The Open University<\/em><\/p>\n

YouTube has blocked access<\/a> across Europe to Russia\u2019s state-funded international broadcasters, RT (formerly Russia Today) and Sputnik \u2013 including to the UK. The decision follows the announcement<\/a> on February 27 of expanded sanctions against Russia by the European Commission, which saw RT, Sputnik and their subsidiaries, banned across the EU. These moves come amid increased concern about the potential for these networks to spread harmful disinformation about Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n

Controversy about the content of RT and Sputnik is nothing new. Various UK politicians responded to RT\u2019s reporting on the 2018 poisoning of the Skripals in Salisbury with calls for RT\u2019s license to be rescinded<\/a>. The calls have intensified this time round. Leader of the opposition Keir Starmer, foreign secretary Liz Truss, culture secretary Nadine Dorries and Scotland\u2019s first minister Nicola Sturgeon have all recommended that RT should be investigated<\/a> by the UK\u2019s independent media regulator, Ofcom, or banned outright.<\/p>\n

The UK prime minister, Boris Johnson<\/a>, has asserted the principle of political non-interference in broadcasting in the UK, while simultaneously encouraging vigilance from Ofcom. RT responded to these politicians\u2019 interventions by questioning the UK\u2019s commitment to free speech<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Research has shown that RT\u2019s output varies widely by platform. On the one hand it has produced critically acclaimed special reporting<\/a> and award-winning online projects<\/a>. On the other, it has been sanctioned multiple times by Ofcom \u2013 usually for coverage not considered \u201cduly impartial\u201d, and most recently to the tune of \u00a3200,000<\/a> for its coverage of the war in Syria and the Salisbury poisonings.<\/p>\n

There are some patterns in how its coverage plays out. RT usually gives strictly factual \u2013 albeit heavily curated \u2013 news coverage that prioritises sources and perspectives that correspond with Russian interests. These are made more relatable with commentary from NGOs, alternative news websites, or fringe political parties from across the US, UK and Europe, where RT is broadcast. Facts or fragments of facts are woven into narratives that don\u2019t necessarily follow logically. As my recent book<\/a> charts, favoured narratives often stray into the realm of conspiracy theories.<\/p>\n

But on matters directly related to Russia\u2019s immediate national interests, RT\u2019s reporting sometimes becomes \u201cmaterially misleading\u201d (the most serious category of breach). Examples include its reporting of the 2008 Georgian war and the 2014 Crimean annexation.<\/p>\n

Talking points<\/h2>\n

This pattern has been evident in recent days, where RT\u2019s coverage has boosted Kremlin talking points. As the story of Russia\u2019s military involvement broke on RT on February 24, broadcasts applied the Kremlin\u2019s preferred euphemism of a \u201cspecial operation\u201d in Donbas, rather than an invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n

Coverage skewed towards the breakaway regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, well after they had ceased to be the main focus of the combat operations. For example, RT News displayed maps that labelled the whole wider Donetsk and Luhansk areas as their respective \u201cPeople\u2019s Republics\u201d \u2013 even though prior to Russia\u2019s offensive, separatists had administered only somewhere around one-third<\/a> of these regions.<\/p>\n

RT also bulked out its coverage over the invasion period with special features<\/a> focused on civilian life in the separatist regions over the past eight years. These have focused on Kremlin-friendly pro-independence accounts.<\/p>\n

\u2018Morally justified\u2019<\/h2>\n

RT\u2019s Ukraine coverage claims moral justification for Russia\u2019s actions. This has included reporting unsubstantiated<\/a> Kremlin claims of a \u201cgenocide\u201d of Russian speakers in the east \u2013 while marking this clearly as a quoted allegation<\/a> and also covering Ukraine\u2019s allegations<\/a> that Russia is planning genocide.<\/p>\n

RT dutifully reported the Kremlin\u2019s assertion that its goals were \u201cdemilitarisation and denazification\u201d. These repeated narratives that the Russian government has for some years used to try to delegitimise the Ukrainian establishment with an association with the far right. Ukraine does display problematic levels of official tolerance<\/a> for its far right \u2013 and one of its military units, the Azov Regiment, infamously has neo-Nazi links<\/a>. But given that Ukraine\u2019s most recent presidential election result<\/a> was a landslide in favour of Volodymyr Zelensky \u2013 a Jewish speaker of the Russian language \u2013 it gives the lie<\/a> to the claim that this is a \u201cNazi regime in the middle of Europe<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n

RT\u2019s Ukraine coverage has also repeatedly insinuated that Russia\u2019s actions have a legal basis. Troops came in response to an official request<\/a> for assistance<\/a>, they involved precision strikes on military<\/a>, not civilian, targets \u2013 and the Ukrainian people will be able to decide what comes afterwards.<\/p>\n

In fact, the officials calling for Russian assistance were those installed in the Donbas with Russia\u2019s support. It is widely documented that Russian shelling has damaged civilian infrastructure and caused civilian casualties<\/a>. And it is established that the Ukrainian people voted by a big majority<\/a> for the political leadership they currently have.<\/p>\n

Should it be banned?<\/h2>\n

But while RT\u2019s coverage of the war is biased towards Russia and clearly misleading, a UK ban could be counterproductive. RT\u2019s UK audience is small \u2013 and the lessons of the Skripal saga show that RT\u2019s audience doesn\u2019t necessarily buy<\/a> its line. And if Ofcom\u2019s regular procedures were circumvented, this would give RT a chance to talk about \u201cwestern\u201d bias on social media platforms not subject to UK regulation.<\/p>\n

Most significantly, though, a UK ban on RT would open the way for tit-for-tat measures against the BBC in Russia. This was how Russia punished Germany\u2019s DW network<\/a> earlier this year after Germany banned RT Deutsch. BBC Russian is a valuable and trusted source for people attempting to access alternatives to Russia\u2019s information.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not to say that RT will emerge from this invasion unscathed. The network has been hit by a wave of staff resignations<\/a>, plus the demonetisation<\/a>, and now Europe-wide blocking<\/a> of its content on YouTube, and a string of DDoS attacks<\/a> where a huge number of small packets of information are sent to websites and servers from multiple sources, creating an information overload which overwhelms the system. RT\u2019s aim may be to shape public opinion, but it looks like the tide is turning.\"The<\/p>\n

Precious Chatterje-Doody<\/a>, Lecturer in Politics and International Studies, The Open University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Dr Precious Chatterje-Doody, The Open University YouTube has blocked access across Europe to Russia\u2019s state-funded international broadcasters, RT (formerly Russia Today) and Sputnik \u2013 including to the UK. The decision follows the announcement on February 27 of expanded sanctions against Russia by the European Commission, which saw RT, Sputnik and their subsidiaries, banned across […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":20575,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[1525,1640,2386],"class_list":["post-20572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-society-politics","tag-news-home","tag-ou-home","tag-war-in-ukraine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20572"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20572\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}