Russia Today – Tehran tomorrow? “Bahrain police kill teen on his way to mosque: US approves Government atrocities”
12th Nov, 2012 –
This was the headline of a Russia Today TV news report on the weekend of 12 November. The TV channel talked sensationally about “deadly clashes” in Manama. So what happened? Were protesters being mowed down by machinegun fire?
Actually, the only casualty was one protester tragically hit by a car. An unpleasant incident indeed, but hardly the “Government atrocities” we were promised at the beginning of the report. We are then treated to an uninformed rant by a “political analyst” blaming everything on the West and describing the Kingdom as a place with “zero percent chance” of reform. Please watch, to see how bad this really is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofyN8cyv6mM
It seems like writers for Russia Today were going out of their way to find the most negative stories and inflate them out of all proportion, making Bahrain look like a war zone. What have the Russia Today editorial team got against Bahrain?
I spent a few minutes on Russia Today’s website and realized that the issue wasn’t just Bahrain. I found dozens of bizarre and unduly negative stories about Libya, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and any other country which RT’s editorial staff are at odds with.
With Libya, it was telling that Russia – which had gone out of its way to oppose Qadhafi’s fall – wanted to make the post-Qadhafi Libya look as disastrous as possible. Features carried sensational headlines like: “Qadhafi’s regime looks like a beacon of light compared to the current Govt”.
None of us dispute the challenges facing Libya – However, RT was clearly going out of its way to portray the new status quo in Libya as bleakly as possible. Likewise, reports on Arabian Gulf states are a litany of disasters, political crises and over-cooked scandals. Meanwhile, more positive developments covered by other global outlets are often ignored.
Matters really go awry with Syria however. The coverage of events is unrecognisable from what we see on other news outlets. Everything is blamed on Western sponsorship of Jihadists (as part of a Zionist plot) with the aim of forcing regime change. To quote one article featured on RT’s website:
“The US Administration, leading from behind, purports to demonize Damascus’ legit authorities to justify a casus belli for NATO intervention to be spearheaded by Turkey. This nasty narrative, fed thru the controlled ‘independent’ media and borrowed from the Libyan humanitarian intervention under the aegis of ‘R2P’ (responsibility to protect), is all just a MISO – military information support operation – for regime change in Syria.” [apologies for the appalling grammar & syntax throughout!]
The rebels are portrayed as bloodthirsty extremists while Bashar al-Assad is the innocent victim of US plots. Russia Today invites on air an endless succession of figures who they describe as “political analysts”. These nobodies have no political expertise on the issues they discuss, and their standard fare is a litany of conspiracy theories and hearsay, with a default position of blaming everything on America and the West
Russia Today’s coverage of all things Iranian also has to be seen to be believed. Sample four headlines:
“US angry that Iran defended herself over spy drone”
“Existential cover-up: Iran only threatens Israel’s regional nuclear monopoly”
“Ahmadinejad talks peace & justice as US boycotts address”
“Tehran could destroy Israel in 24 hours – Khamenei spokesman”
While it’s not a surprise to see Russian and Iranian narratives coinciding on Syria, surely Russia isn’t in Iran’s thrall to the degree which it feels compelled to echo the most ridiculous utterances of Iran’s leaders? The strange thing is how Russia Today and the Iranian state propaganda media have almost identical perspectives on all the issues, which matter. Iranian outlets like Press TV and Al-Alam TV take every opportunity to report nasty, fabricated stories about Arab Gulf states – and we find the same with Russia Today.
RT and Iranian outlets both ignore massacres of Syrian civilians while crying crocodile tears over every Bahraini, Saudi and Kuwaiti opposition activist who faces legal measures. Both Russia Today and Iran are happy to blame everything bad on the US and the West and give air time to the most ridiculous conspiracy theories feeding this world view.
Communist-era Russia became almost a by-word for censorship, clunky state propaganda and tightly-controlled media. Those who thought that this was a phenomenon of the past need to watch Russia Today every once in a while.
The Middle East only relatively recently escaped from the era of state-controlled media, into the age when there are a plethora of news channels competing for Arab audiences. Russia Today’s style of journalism – which treats its viewers like idiots who believe whatever they are told, while glossing over the mass murder of Syrian Arabs – will be winning few friends for Russia in this part of the world.