International, Media, Politics

RT Reporter Resigns Over “Being Told To…Obscure The Truth” And Having To “Work For Putin”

Submitted by Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor

rt-russia-today-logoA second reporter for the Russia backed television network RT (Formerly known as Russia Today) has resigned her position due to what she considered to be being required to obscure the truth and whitewash the actions of Russian President Vladimir Putin. She made the announcement via a RT News Broadcast she anchored.

RT Reporter Sara Firth, based in London, resigned after five years with the network. She informed the publication Press Gazette the final straw came with a published report of the Malaysian Airlines crash in The Ukraine she considered to be evasive of the truth.

During the interview with Press Gazette, she reportedly stated that after the Thursday story:

Sara Firth
Sara Firth

“I walked into the newsroom, and they were running an eyewitness account of God knows who the person was blaming the Ukrainian government, and it is such a volatile situation. It’s the level of disrespect for the facts that really bugs me. I couldn’t do it any more, We’re lying every single day … and finding sexier ways to do it.”

According to Sarah, the RT Style Manual for editorials states that reporters are to cast blame on Ukraine or any other factor causing the downing of the Malaysian airliner and not blame Russia. She stated further:

“It’s scary that it’s genuine RT guidance on how to do a story, and you have to believe it to succeed there. You stop believing that what they say is the way it is and you stop being useful to them.”

For its part RT issued a statement on the matter that it was not surprised by Sarah’s actions and that it was anticipated because she accepted a position with another news agency.

“Sara has declared that she chooses the truth; apparently we have different definitions of truth. We believe that truth is what our reporters see on the ground, with their own eyes, and not what’s printed in the morning London newspaper.”

The Russian Government, especially under the leadership of President Putin has demonstrated a systemic disregard for the tenets of objective reporting and has been accused of going to such lengths of having reporters and dissenters imprisoned and in a few cases reporters were murdered with some evidence linking these crimes to the government. The oppression of the free press is rife and presented to be under the auspices a credible source of news while at the same time presenting reporting favorable to the Russian government and its leadership. It is showing further that Russia is returning to the days of Radio Moscow and Pravda of the Soviet period of Russia, something President Putin has declared to be a system he favors and laments that its collapse was one of the worst events in Russian history.

By Darren Smith

Sources:

USA Today

YouTube

Photo Credit: RT via YouTube screen shot

The views expressed in this posting are the author’s alone and not those of the blog, the host, or other weekend bloggers. As an open forum, weekend bloggers post independently without pre-approval or review. Content and any displays or art are solely their decision and responsibility.

37 thoughts on “RT Reporter Resigns Over “Being Told To…Obscure The Truth” And Having To “Work For Putin””

  1. Paul C. Schulte

    You forgot to mention that Bernays was a Socialist who helped Woodrow Wilson with the stiff armed salute to the American flag and had spend WWI creating propaganda to get isolationists to join up and fight. Just one Socialist following another.
    =========================
    Your Atwood-Rand hypothesis that the foundation of the republic is socialist is evidence of your indoctrination, true to your name (“brand”).

    However, conservative Adam Smith should inform you:

    One of the most important comments on deceit, I think, was made by Adam Smith. He pointed out that a major goal of business is to deceive and oppress the public.

    And one of the striking features of the modern period is the institutionalization of that process, so that we now have huge industries deceiving the public — and they’re very conscious about it, the public relations industry. Interestingly, this developed in the freest countries—in Britain and the US — roughly around time of WWI, when it was recognized that enough freedom had been won that people could no longer be controlled by force. So modes of deception and manipulation had to be developed in order to keep them under control”

    (The Deceit Business). But I know he won’t … hurry duck get under your desk … the socialists are coming!

    1. The Nazis were Socialists. So, yes, I am concerned about the Socialists coming.

  2. I know, let’s play a bored game.

    Pick the most exceptional propagandists.

    NO, you can’t choose yo momma.

  3. Bernays, top American propagandist, wrote the propaganda book, literally, and it is used by propagandists the world over:

    It is impossible to fundamentally grasp the social, political, economic and cultural developments of the past 100 years without some understanding of Bernays and his professional heirs in the public relations industry. PR is a 20th century phenomenon, and Bernays — widely eulogized as the “father of public relations” at the time of his death in 1995 — played a major role in defining the industry’s philosophy and methods. (The Matriarch of the Matrix – 3, quoting The Father of Spin, PR Watch Magazine, Vol. 6 No. 2, p. 11, 1999). He got style.

  4. Anonymous

    Several commenters here appear to use the RT Style Manual.
    =======================
    Not surprising, exceptional American propaganda is sought the world over:

    [Bernays remembes that] Karl von Weigand, foreign correspondent of the Hearst newspapers, an old hand at interpreting Europe and just returned from Germany, was telling us about Goebbels and his propaganda plans to consolidate Nazi power. Goebbels had shown Weigand his propaganda library, the best Weigand had ever seen. Goebbels, said Weigand, was using my [Bernays’] book Crystallizing Public Opinion as a basis for his destructive campaign against the Jews of Germany. This shocked me. … Obviously the attack on the Jews of Germany was no emotional outburst of the Nazis, but a deliberate, planned campaign.

    (Exceptional American Propaganda Inspired NAZI Goebbels).

    1. You forgot to mention that Bernays was a Socialist who helped Woodrow Wilson with the stiff armed salute to the American flag and had spend WWI creating propaganda to get isolationists to join up and fight. Just one Socialist following another.

  6. Remember that former Russian spy in the UK who was slipped radioactive tea by one of Putin’s operatives? This woman better stick w/ bottled water and unopened bottles of vodka.

  7. “The Bush administration turned the U.S. military into a global propaganda machine while imposing tough restrictions on journalists seeking to give the public truthful reports about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Associated Press chief executive Tom Curley said Friday.

    Curley, speaking to journalists at the University of Kansas, said the news industry must immediately negotiate a new set of rules for covering war because ‘we are the only force out there to keep the government in check and to hold it accountable.'” (Warriors Press For Propaganda – 4)

  8. “Later that year [1948] Wisner established Mockingbird, a program to influence the domestic American media. Wisner recruited Philip Graham (Washington Post) to run the project within the industry. Graham himself recruited others who had worked for military intelligence during the war. This included James Truitt, Russell Wiggins, Phil Geyelin, John Hayes and Alan Barth. Others like Stewart Alsop, Joseph Alsop and James Reston, were recruited from within the Georgetown Set. According to Deborah Davis (Katharine the Great): “By the early 1950s, Wisner ‘owned’ respected members of the New York Times, Newsweek, CBS and other communications vehicles.”

    In 1951 Allen W. Dulles persuaded Cord Meyer to join the CIA. However, there is evidence that he was recruited several years earlier and had been spying on the liberal organizations he had been a member of in the later 1940s. According to Deborah Davis, Meyer became Mockingbird’s “principal operative”.

    One of the most important journalists under the control of Operation Mockingbird was Joseph Alsop, whose articles appeared in over 300 different newspapers. Other journalists willing to promote the views of the CIA included Stewart Alsop (New York Herald Tribune), Ben Bradlee (Newsweek), James Reston (New York Times), C. D. Jackson (Time Magazine), Walter Pincus (Washington Post), Walter Winchell (New York Daily Mirror), Drew Pearson, Walter Lippmann, William Allen White, Edgar Ansel Mowrer (Chicago Daily News), Hal Hendrix (Miami News), Whitelaw Reid (New York Herald Tribune), Jerry O’Leary (Washington Star), William C. Baggs (Miami News), Herb Gold (Miami News) and Charles L. Bartlett (Chattanooga Times). According to Nina Burleigh (A Very Private Woman) these journalists sometimes wrote articles that were commissioned by Frank Wisner. The CIA also provided them with classified information to help them with their work.

    After 1953 the network was overseen by Allen W. Dulles, director of the Central Intelligence Agency. By this time Operation Mockingbird had a major influence over 25 newspapers and wire agencies. These organizations were run by people such as William Paley (CBS), Henry Luce (Time Magazine and Life Magazine), Arthur Hays Sulzberger (New York Times), Helen Rogers Reid (New York Herald Tribune), Dorothy Schiff (New York Post), Alfred Friendly (managing editor of the Washington Post), Barry Bingham (Louisville Courier-Journal) and James S. Copley (Copley News Services).”

    (Mocking America, quoting from Operation Mockingbird).

  10. Darren:

    Thanks for the correction. As for the essence of your article: “many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view” – Obi-Wan.

  14. If one case proves them all (like the “one ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them”) why do we have so many case law books?

    You know, the ones behind lawyers having their pictures taken.

    1. Al O’Heem,

      I made an error on the date of the article and her subsequent resignation along with the contemporaneousness. It was in fact in July. I made a correction in the article. I appreciate you bringing this to my attention.

      Darren Smith

  16. You realize that even if she is a card carrying member of the communist party she would be too conservative for MSNBC. Just sayn’

  17. Not sure any of the MSM want her. If she is willing to buck Putin, what would she do to Obama? She is clearly a loose cannon.

  20. Memo: To: MSNBC Headquarters
    From: (Sender’s name withheld)

    Contact unemployed reporter Sara Firth about a job. She has already been trained in our system. Little or no downtime getting her on air. Quick, before CNN or other MSM group grabs her!

    Squeeky Fromm
    Girl Reporter

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