{"id":187779,"date":"2019-05-04T04:36:10","date_gmt":"2019-05-04T04:36:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=187779"},"modified":"2019-05-08T04:16:03","modified_gmt":"2019-05-08T04:16:03","slug":"jeremy-hunt-russian-tv-station-a-weapon-of-disinformation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=187779","title":{"rendered":"Jeremy Hunt: Russian TV station a ‘weapon of disinformation’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Patrick Wintour, Jim Waterson \u2013 The Guardian May 2, 2019<\/h1>\n
\"\"<\/a>

UK Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt knows all about “disinformation” He met with Raed al-Saleh, head of the Syrian White Helmets who have been linked with Al Nusra and Al Qaeda, in 2018. A known disinformation outfit, the White Helmets at one time regularly staged “poison gas” and “chemical weapons” attacks that were then blamed on Russia and Syrian government forces. RT was one of the media outlets that exposed this, which is why Hunt has now labelled RT a “weapon of disinformation”. See UK “Foreign Secretary Hunt Meets the Head of the Syrian White Helmets” (linked).<\/p><\/div>\n

Foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt<\/a><\/strong><\/span> will on Thursday declare the Russian government-owned TV station RT to be a \u201cweapon of disinformation\u201d in a speech to mark World Press Freedom Day.<\/span><\/p>\n

The comments, to an audience in Ethiopia, mark an escalation of a British ministerial assault on the standards of the Russian broadcaster, originally known as Russia<\/a> Today, which had faced repeated investigations into its output by the media regulator Ofcom.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAfter the Russian state carried out a chemical attack in the British city of Salisbury last year, the Kremlin came up with over 40 separate narratives to explain that incident,\u201d he is expected to say in Addis Ababa.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cTheir weapons of disinformation tried to broadcast them to the world. The best defence against those who deliberately sow lies are independent, trusted news outlets.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The foreign secretary said it remained a matter for Ofcom to independently decide whether the station should be closed down. At the end of last year RT was found guilty<\/strong><\/span><\/a> of seven breaches of the British broadcasting code in relation to programmes broadcast in the aftermath of the Salisbury novichok poisoning<\/strong><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

A spokesperson for the media regulator reaffirmed its independence and said it has yet to decide on a punishment, which could include fining the network or removing its licence to broadcast in the UK, although the latter option is considered highly unlikely.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hunt\u2019s comments could exacerbate the high-stakes dispute. Russia has retaliated by opening an investigation<\/strong><\/span><\/a> into the BBC\u2019s right to operate its Russian service out of Moscow, while RT is seeking a judicial review of the Ofcom decision in the British courts.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Conservative politician has made media freedom one of the signatures of his tenure as foreign secretary and is hosting a ministerial conference on the issue on London later this year, in addition to enlisting the help of human rights lawyer Amal Clooney to act as his special envoy on media freedom. Earlier this week Hunt was photographed<\/strong><\/span><\/a> with undercover Ghanian journalist Anas Aremeyaw, who does not show his face in public.<\/span><\/p>\n

The foreign secretary will use his speech to accuse the Russian state of \u201cmanipulating the media, spreading fake news\u201d and say thatRT is a key part of that effort.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cChannels like RT<\/strong><\/span><\/a> \u2013 better known as Russia Today – want their viewers to believe that truth is relative and the facts will always fit the Kremlin\u2019s official narrative,\u201d he will say.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cRussia in the last decade very disappointingly seemed to have embarked on a foreign policy where their principal aim is to sow confusion and division and destabilise fragile democracies.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

He is also expected to reference a baffling interview conducted by RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan<\/strong><\/span><\/a> with the two purported Salisbury poisoning suspects, in which the Russians insisted they were visiting the Wiltshire city to look at the cathedral\u2019s famous spire: \u201cHilarious though it was when we had the interview with the Salisbury suspects, there was actually a much darker purpose behind all of this.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Explaining his broader thinking, Hunt will say media freedom is not a \u201cwestern\u201d value but instead a \u201cforce for progress from which everyone benefits\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

The UK recently rose to 33rd on Reporters Without Borders\u2019 World Press Freedom index, although the report\u2019s authors warned that the country remains one of the worst-ranked western European countries<\/strong><\/span><\/a> \u201clargely due to a heavy-handed approach towards the press, often in the name of national security\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UK Foreign Secretary ups the ante in the info war with Russia, accusing RT of being a \u201cweapon of disinformation\u201d. Although that equally applies to the Western media<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[53,91],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-187779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mind_control","category-russia"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=187779"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187779\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":187786,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187779\/revisions\/187786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=187779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=187779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=187779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}