It’s Springtime for Stalin at Emmy-Nominated Russia Today
You may know the Kremlin’s state-sponsored “Russia Today” (RT) propaganda network by its public billboards asking if the world isn’t failing to appreciate Josef Stalin’s talent as a romantic poet. But it seems the network’s true calling is the glorification of Barack Obama. At least, that’s the thinking of those who control prominent international media awards.
You may even know RT a little better than just glimpsing its advertisements. Maybe having seen that Stalin ad, and wishing to learn whether Hitler had a way with needlepoint, you decided to order the service through your local cable provider, or maybe you just checked out RT’s free website.
In that case, you might have read stories about how condoms could solve global warming, how nobody will eat or drink anything after August 21 of this year, and how none of it matters because we are all about to be wiped out by killer algae.
Your pulse would pound at the revelations: The Russian Navy proves UFOs are 
real! They’ve landed, and RT’ll tell you where they are! They’re everywhere!!
Scientists invent a camera that sees your soul! Hairdresser turns robber into sex slave!
These are the stories that dominate the virtual pages of Russia Today. But reading or viewing them, while you might have flashbacks to the brilliant SCTV parody from the early 1980s of Soviet-era TV, you still won’t have glimpsed the true calling of the All-Putin network.
If you know RT more intimately, you may know how it runs scathing anti-American editorials from rogue disenchanted yanks who hate their homeland and want to see it destroyed, and how it actively recruits Westerners to provide pro-Kremlin content. You may know how, alternatively, it focuses on lauding Americans like Ron Paul who have actual power and think Vladimir Putin’s government is a model that America can learn much from. Mr. Paul shows up on RT with frightening, almost ritualistic, regularity. Pat Buchanan is also beloved by RT.
RT terminates reporters who won’t toe the Kremlin’s party line.
But no matter what you think you know about RT from its own pages, you still don’t know the real story. For that, turn to the International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (IATAS). They’ve just nominated RT for an iEmmy award — and not for entertainment, mind you, but for hard news reporting. It’s big “news” over at RT, of course.
That’s right, an iEmmy.
Right next to the UK’s Sky News, whose reporters risked their lives in Pakistan reporting on the Taliban’s creeping invasion, right beside Qatar’s Al Jazeera, whose reporters faced bullets on both sides of the front in Israel’s war last year in Gaza, right along with Brazil’s Globo, which exposed massive corruption that led to a horrific nationwide blackout, there is the Kremlin’s pet propaganda project Russia Today.
I’ve watched doom and gloom economists and soothsayers on RT, not knowing it was Russia Today. They don’t spell it out on the screen, letting one assume it’s some American group’s video blog. And they use Western interviewers. Very slick. But counterproductive to Russian interests. Better for Putin if Americans didn’t have access to dissenting voices in the financial racket. Sometimes the KGB is too clever by half. And they are undercutting their fellow traveler in the WH.
A traveller in Russia will find RT is generally the only English language news available. Only once in the six hotels I stayed in was the BBC offered, in most cases almost as bad.
We were there when the Mamara story broke. It was three days before even a token Israeli spokesperson appeared and even then he was given a few minutes compared to the hours given to Flotilla supporters. When the video was released contradicting the so called eyewitnesses it was suppressed. An RT talking head might say a few words to dismiss it without actually broadcasting it and allowing the viewers to make up their minds.
Yes, well I remember in the late 1980s when a Bulgarian newspaper published a story about how a Bulgarian doc found a cure for aids using herbs. A well hidden secret, I guess….
It will be decades before the KGB and communist influence wanes in Russia. Propaganda, thuggery and intimidation is all they know. Those who are in power today were staunch communists yesterday.
Just overlook the 50-70 million Russians and others slaughtered at the hands of Stalin’s utopia. Somehow all these “isms” never seem to work out as advertised.
I figure that when Stalin had those 60 million Russians who didn’t toe his Soviet line slaughtered, he pretty well wiped out the genetic inheritance of any future opposition and left alive those who would be good little apparatchiks.
Most of Russian newspapers and networks I can access run as tabloids, either it is RT or Pravda. Whenever I turn to any Russian media website, I see talks about UFO, apocalypses, porn videos. They will talk about Stalin, Hitler or Devil or group sex as long as it is in demand and sells and it seems that tabloid kind of material is what sells in Russia. The Spigel article Kim linked to actually explains why they did Stalin add:
“The station’s editor in chief, Margarita Simonjan, 27, adds: “We knew that the Stalin theme would be ambivalent in the eyes of many,” she says. “But it fulfilled its purpose wonderfully. The number of visitors to our Web site has doubled.”
Kim: “After all, if Obama can receive a Nobel Prize, why not, indirectly, an Emmy award as well?
Obama is just the fox. Where is the Republican farmer, who is supposed to be protecting the American chickens? Why hasn’t he done more to stand up against this neo-appeasement policy, as Ronald Reagan surely would have done?”
Gee… “ Republican farmer” has no voting power or interest in left liberal organizations such as IATAS or Noble Price committee . Secondly, why the hell we would care about Emmy awards and get political about something like that? Third, if anyone did, they would be far more offended by 5 Emmy awards to “Modern Family” which is yet another ABC homosexual lifestyle propaganda.
The above call for Republican political action against IATAS proves that Kim lives in Russia or possibly on another planet and has no idea how things work here in US or on Earth in general. This further justify my comments on her identity(see comments on her previous article:)
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/why-is-accounting-firm-kpmg-funding-putins-version-of-hitler-youth/2/
I particularly liked the part about “…scathing anti-American editorials by rogue disenchanted Yanks who hate their homeland and want to see it destroyed…”. What would you call those people, do you think? Traitors? Is that too strong a word?
Now insert “Russian” for “American” and “Russians” for “Yanks”. Congratulations! You’ve just done an encapsulated profile for Yulia Latynina. Except she’s not a traitor. She’s a hero journalist.
Perspective’s a funny thing, isn’t it?
What next, how about nominating Viktor Bout for the Nobel Peace Prize?
I wonder if James Manning also qualifies as one of those “rogue disenchanted Yanks?”
Black Pastor James Manning has sober conservative perspective on black community and he is also the most outspoken critic of Obama. Have you seen Manning’s perspective on Obama on CNN or Fox? No. But here is RT interview with Manning, the URL strings is a summary of what he says:
http://rt.com/Politics/2009-07-16/_obama_is_pure__unadulterated_evil_.html
At last, a real leader among the Republicans speaks out on Russia’s horrors!
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5he8QjJ4wTQLbmtUlSxPFbAJ1wXYQ
Time for the party to provide the foreign policy leadership so sadly lacking in the burger-munching Obama administration.
“Her comments came after Putin said in an interview with the Russian daily Kommersant, published Monday, that protestors would “take a cudgel to the head” if they failed to get “permission” from local authorities to demonstrate.”
We too may get arrested or even may go to jail for a short time if we demonstrate without taking all permits from the local government.
…….Surprise!!!!!!!
Kim: “…Russia does not rank in the top 135 nations on the planet for life expectancy. You know, the types of facts that RT chooses not to report.”
That is absolutely right! Not reporting 1 out of ~500 reasons why Russia sucks is indication of pro-Putin, pro-Russophile bias. RT team are no hero journalists! But here is our true hero journalist Kim Zigfeld and her PJM sponsors are saving the day and they pull us out right from the snares of Putin’s propaganda-machine-FSB-conspiracy-work! We are all saved!
This rises an important question: who is a hero journalist? A hero journalist is someone who at least reports the truth. Yes! The whole truth, like reporting all 500 reason why Russia sucks instead of just 250 of them. Yes, look at the real hero journalist Kim Zigfeld! She glorified her hero Alexander Litvinenko more than a hundred times and she always disclosed the whole truth:
Alexander Litvinenko was a Muslim convert and a collaborator of Chechen terrorists. He converted to Islam even after Beslan tragedy, when many Russian Muslims have been abandoning Islam for Christianity. Aside from giving info to MI6 Litvinenko was collaborating with Chechen terrorist, the ones who raped and murdered innocent kids in Beslan school. We will not go as far as some right-wingers to suggest that Litvinenko was helping Chechens to maintain a suitcase nuke device and got polonium-210 poisoning as result of his errors:
http://righttruth.typepad.com/right_truth/2007/02/alexander_litvi.html
Let us simply assume that Putin (not Beresovsky or Chechens or he himself) poisoned him. Being an FSB officer with access to Russian secrets, including nuclear secrets Alexander Litvinenko was under prisyaga ( military oath). The guy was not a civilian like Adam Gadahn. Litvinenko gave oaths that he is to be killed if he does what he did and he knew it.
Well, sorry for the details, it was all a digression. Going back to our hero journalist Kim Ziegfeld we shall note that she carefully reported the one and the single fact why t her big hero Alexander Litvinenko sucks,he sucks because he is a Muslim terrorist. Or did Kim report it? Ooops, I do not see when or where she did it. Well, no doubt Kim is a hero journalist, but, if so a hero journalist is not the one who reports the whole truth. It is all about democracy!
Let us talk democracy. I wonder if US Army will be allowed to assassinate Adam Gadahn if they can get opportunity to do it say in Dubai or Yemen? Perhaps under Obama, the answer is a resounding no! They will have to capture him, bring him to US and read him his Miranda rights. Then they have to spent a few millions on lawers to try him in New York. This is the democracy and is the example how we should deal with the terrorists and we should make all other nations to follow us, like Obama taught us.
Ros-Lehtinen should show leadership and make sure that people who assassinated Hamas operatives in Dubai (presumably the Jews) and people who assassinate a Chechen terrorists in Britan (presumably the Putin’s FSB ) should be held accountable for their non-democratic treatment of the terrorists.
Again I digressed, sorry. So, who is the hero journalist? The hero journalist is a brave person who, while pursuing his/her noble goals, could go against social norms and conceal the facts (like fact that Llitvinenko was a collaborator of Chechen terrorist and hence a legitimate target) or tell lies (like “nashi” is racist”), just to punish all those scum suckers who are guilty of concealing the facts and telling lies (like RT , which is nothing more than Putin’s propaganda-machine-FSB-conspiracy-work!)
Russia’s history since the 1917 has been one long train wreck. I believe RT is a symptom of a far deeper malaise afflicting Russia. Without the high prices for Natural Gas, Oil, and Gold Russia would not have the money to be flexing it’s muscles, and financing outfits like RT, helping the Iran acquire Nuclear weapons. If you look at the history of Russia since 1917 they have been good tacticians, but the Russians have never really had a feel for the long game. Russia has several serious endemic problems the government is not addressing a serious demographic problem, corruption, a collapsing health sector, a large and growing Neo Nazi movement that has been responsible for the murder of several people, and someday might challenge the government.
I think the Russian elites never really got over the collapse of communism they use RT, as a tool to what they believe undermine the United States. If you have ever been to the sites, and read the comments they are pretty much talking in the same echo chamber as CNN, MSNBC, and the New York Slime. The RT Internet sites saving grace is as several posters have pointed out they have some very good guests.
As a Russian I watch RT sometimes, yes, it is a biased channel, but not much more biased than any mainstream western media I know. Watching both sides gives you a better perspective. Yet Kim apparently believes that only western media tells the truth (or wants us to believe it is the case). But for the journalist who is on a crusade against RT for being pro-government, should not she look home first and start questioning local media which supported US government in waging current wars which resulted in massive civilian casualties and human right abuses (which again are under-reported in her home country), or expose the fact that so called free and democratic mainstream western media are in fact controlled by big corporations which determine their editorial policies. That’s what free- media journalist would have done, but as Kim is not one of them (contrary to what she implies in her article) she is a good example why western journalists lost any credibility. RT is at least honest that they are out there to give another story -) and Kim is plain annoyed that there is another story out there!
” But for the journalist who is on a crusade against RT for being pro-government, should not she look home first and start questioning local media which supported US government in …..”
But, this is what makes me to believe that Russia is Kim’s home. She writes as if she has no idea about what happens in US. If she was in US she would be able to see links between her indignation for RT and Conservative’s indignation for All Barack Chanel (ABC) and Clinton News Network.