A presenter on Russia Today, the Kremlin's propaganda arm, has denounced the Russian invasion of Ukraine live on air.
A presenter on Russia Today, the Kremlin’s propaganda arm, has denounced the Russian invasion of Ukraine live on air.
Breaking the Set host Abby Martin ended her show on the American version of the channel by saying that she “cannot stress enough” how strongly she feels about Russia’s invasion of Crimea.
“Just because I work here, for RT, doesn’t mean I don’t have editorial independence and I can’t stress enough how strongly I am against any military intervention in sovereign nations’ affairs,” she said, adding that “What Russia did is wrong”.
“I will not sit here and apologise for or defend military action,” she said.
She also criticised the media’s coverage of the Russian invasion of Crimea as “disappointing” and “rife with misinformation”.
“All we can do now is hope for a peaceful outcome for a terrible situation and prevent another full-blown Cold War between multiple superpowers. Until then, I’m telling the truth as I see it,” she added.
The video is rather surprising, for as Left Foot Forward has previously noted, RT is engaged in a wholesale misinformation campaign aimed at bolstering the authority of Russian President Vladimir Putin and discrediting enemies of the Russian state at home and abroad.
To reach hundreds of thousands of new readers and to make the biggest impact we can in the next general election, we need to grow our donor base substantially.
That's why in 2024, we are seeking to generate 150 additional regular donors to support Left Foot Forward's work.
We still need another 124 people to donate to hit the target. You can help. Donate today.
8 Responses to “Video: Russia Today anchor Abby Martin slams Russian invasion of Ukraine”
RogerMcC
As the continued existence of the Moscow News shows Putin is clever enough to license some dissent particularly in the English language Russian media.
What will get you arrested on trumped up charges (or just bumped off) is any action which might sway actual Russians in the street.
Anne Applebaum has argued that there is an actual tipping point which will get you closed down – a few hundred or thousand mostly passive readers can be tolerated but the moment you get real popular interest you are shut down in one way or another.
And this will be confirmed if a new bill from Putin’s puppet Duma is passed which will define every Russian blogger or website with more than 10,000 page views as a ‘journalist’ subject to all of the restrictions the Russian authorities operate to keep journalists broadly in line.
Jim Denham
Brave woman!
Matthew Blott
Good points. But I still think the Kremlin values its Western propaganda machine and it will be interesting to see how long Abby Martin remains on the channel.
RogerMcC
Surely she is angling for dismissal which would be an excellent career move given that the way this all may play out any Western journalists who stay with RT may find themselves even more unemployable elsewhere – but if she’s sacked I can see her walking straight into a new job at MSNBC (and come to think of it she does look and sound a lot like Rachel Maddow who is MSNBC’s star liberal presenter).
Matthew Blott
I tuned into RT (as it likes to call itself) the other day as I’d not watched it for a while and was interested in how it was covering events in the Ukraine. The propaganda in the past was subtle and the bias easily missed if you were unfamiliar with the channel but the reporting now is so brazenly pro Putin it is hard for anyone who works at RT to credibly call themselves a journalist.