Now Online: The Propoganda Machine

With every new issue of New Eastern Europe, we conduct a poll on our facebook page asking readers to vote for which article they would like to see for free on our web site. The winner of this issue is Marcin Mączka's "The Propoganda Machine" – a look inside Russia's greatest media project: Russia Today.

The Propaganda Machine

By: Marcin Mączka

Promoted by the slogan “Question More”, Russia Today is the greatest Russian media project since 1991, and was designed to be competition to BBC World and CNN International.

In 2005 the Kremlin-sponsored news channel, Russia Today (RT), went on air. Supporting the creation of the channel, the head of the Federal Agency for Print and Mass Communication at the time, Mikhail Seslavinsky, complained that the English-language world should know more about Russia due to the fact that its image in the global media was distorted. In some respects, he was right: Russia is often shown in a bad light, using only superficial and selective information.

Since the rapid development of the media market in the 1990s, Russian television stations started to reach foreign viewers through satellite providers (and less commonly through cable networks). But no Russian-language channel ever had a mass audience, and the Russian diaspora dispersed across the globe made up their main audience. This all changed when the English-language 24-hour channel was created. Its editor-in-chief, Margarita Simonyan, claims that RT’s intended target is a specific type of viewer, who is “a person capable of critical thinking, for whom one or two sources of information are not sufficient to create a complete picture. Who wants to know the truth rather than passively accept clichés.”  

To read the full article please visit: https://www.neweasterneurope.eu/node/383

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