Thread by @Milo_Edwards

ok so lots of people don't seem to understand what the deal is with russia today aka 'rt'. i'm no expert but i have some experience with the russian media culture and hoo boy. thread:

in simple terms: rt is a broadcaster and news outlet funded by the russian government which promotes the agenda of the russian government

lots of rubes in the west go on there because rt will give them a platform for whatever viewpoint it is they can't get much of a platform for in the mainstream media, and this spans the political spectrum from george galloway to alex salmond to nigel farage to tory backbenchers

these guests go on there for exposure and young journos go and work there because they pay well because, spoiler alert, they are funded by the russian government

many of these people invariably end up saying things like:
'oh actually rt isn't what you think, they actually let me say/publish xyz'

this is naive and it misunderstands rt's agenda, because it assumes that rt just wants to spout a russian propaganda line and what rt is doing is much more subtle than that:

1) rt publishes a lot of reasonable stuff and/or inoffensive content because that makes it seem like an innocuous and/or credible source of news and information

2) rt seeks to platform 'dissenting voices', i.e. people in the west who espouse opinions contrary to the general party line of the uk/us/nato/eu/whoever - these people are often right wingers like farage, but can also be left wingers

3) they do this to seem interested in debate, when in fact they are just trying to disrupt the status quo - the status quo in the uk/us etc is arguably bad, but it matters who is disrupting it & why. their aims are not progressive, even if they sometimes platform left(ish) voices

4) they seek to undermine confidence in the media by presenting news as information chaos: true and false are constantly mixed, everything is confusing, you can never make out the truth. rt presents its news in this way so that you think the western media does as well.

4 cont.) their agenda is not so much 'we are truth, the bbc is falsehood' so much as 'there is no truth, we're all as bad as each other' - that way no investigative journalism can ever truly be believed.

5) they publish nonsense to provoke regulators into sanctioning them, and then they cry foul and say 'the british govt doesn't care so much about free speech when it's russia today!!' and imply they're being silenced because they let some tory mp say we should have hard brexit.

this is all insidious, but it doesn't mean the people who work there are all insane fascists or even bad journalists: as i've said, much of it is naiveté or just really wanting an elusive steady job in journalism that pays a living wage

also a disclaimer: this is intended as an overview for people with no background in this, i'm not a journalist, i just have some experience in russia and this thread in part draws on things said by people who know more about russian media culture than me such as peter pomerantsev