Slashdot Mirror
Russia Today: Vladimir Putin's Weapon In 'The War of Images'
dryriver sends in a story at Der Spiegel Online about news network Russia Today, and how it is becoming a powerful propaganda tool for Vladimir Putin to use against Western audiences. Quoting:
"Since 2005, the Russian government has increased the channel's annual budget more than tenfold, from $30 million (€22.6 million) to over $300 million. Russia Today's budget covers the salaries of 2,500 employees and contractors worldwide, 100 in Washington alone. And the channel has no budget cuts to fear now that Putin has issued a decree forbidding his finance minister from taking any such steps. The Moscow leadership views the funds going to the channel as money 'well invested,' says Natalya Timakova, the press attaché to Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. 'In addition, Russia Today is — and I hope the Germans will forgive me for this remark — significantly more modern than Deutsche Welle, for example, and it also has more money.' ... Russia Today sees itself as a champion of a global audience critical of the West. But it is also meant to amplify the self-doubts of Europeans and Americans who have been forced by recent events to wonder if their own countries — like Russia and China — are corrupt and in the grip of a pervasive intelligence apparatus. In any case, the station has a rare knack for propaganda. ... To spice up the news, directors sometimes use Hollywood-like special effects, such as a computer-animated tank that looks like it is rolling over the newscaster's feet or Israeli fighter jets that fly a virtual loop through the studio before dropping their bombs over a map of Syria."
In 10 or 15 years, Edward Snowden will be remembered as a defector in the New Cold War during Putin's reign. Once enough Russians become unhappy with the puppet show, they will push Putin and Medvedev out.
Snowden's probably learning Russian so he can be a regular guest on Vlad's News Network, taking potshots at what locked-down, surveilled, liberty-starved nation the United States of America is (if he knows what's good for him.)
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
So, its like Fox News, but for Russians?
Big hair, pasty make-up, loud ties and announcer voices which grab your attention and slap you around a bit, no matter how banal the news item.
Perhaps growing up with the BBC and the CBC has biased me but that sounds like American journalism to me.
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
USA is hardly innocent when it comes to human rights. Gitmo, torture, years of solitary confinement, using our tax dollars to fund Israel and their disgusting human rights record to appease the local Jews, occupying countries to line the pockets of a few wealth people, private armies that are allowed to murder children and rape women.
A former soviet communist hardliner turned autocratic dictator without a PR wing?
RT is just Pravda. Interesting I find no mention of Pravda anywhere on this current page load.
And all this snowden bullshit. You know... blow the whistle on domestic spying is one thing. Running straight to Russia and buying some asylum by blabbing about US spy activities in foreign countries makes him nothing but a traitor.
THL phish sticks