'Be ashamed, Alex': Salmond courts controversy with RT

Guests from the worlds of politics and the media gathered at the top of Millbank Tower in London last Thursday night for a glitzy event, but little did they know it was to celebrate the latest stage of RT’s controversial growth in the UK.

Alex Salmond, the former first minister of Scotland, had invited people to the launch of the Alex Salmond Show after a successful run at the Edinburgh festival. Details were kept secret in advance, with questions regarding what the show was about and if it would be broadcast on television politely rebutted.

Guests were surprised, therefore, to arrive at the event and find it was a new political chat show for RT, formerly known as Russia Today. Iain Dale, a colleague of Salmond at the radio station LBC, said: “I try my best not to slag off LBC colleagues but I’m going to make an exception. I accepted an invite to the launch of Alex Salmond’s new TV show. Just found out it’s for RT. Be ashamed, Alex. Be very ashamed.”

Amid the canapes and cocktails, Salmond quickly found himself fending off questions about why he was working for a Kremlin-backed channel that James Clapper, the former US director of national intelligence, described as “a mouthpiece of Russian governmental propaganda”.

Salmond defended the show by saying he would have editorial control as it was made by his production company, Slàinte Media, and pointed out that dozens of Conservative, Labour and SNP MPs had appeared on RT since it opened a UK studio in 2014.

MPs can receive a substantial fee for appearing, as revealed in the parliamentary register of interests. In the last month alone, the Conservative MP David Davies declared £1,500, while Labour’s Rosie Duffield and Chris Williamson received £500 and £1,000 respectively for appearing on Sam Delaney’s News Thing, a Saturday night satire show.

However, Salmond’s first show on RT on Thursday immediately sparked criticism. It featured an interview with Carles Puigdemont, the deposed Catalan president, in the week that Spain’s defence and foreign ministers claimed they had evidence that state and private sector Russian groups were promoting Catalan independence in an attempt to destabilise Spain.

The Labour peer Helena Kennedy and the Tory MP Crispin Blunt were also interviewed, with Blunt expressing support for LGBT rights. Given that Russia has been heavily criticised by the international community for its lack of LGBT rights, Salmond’s supporters claimed Blunt’s appearance showed the former Scottish leader had not become a Kremlin stooge.

Nonetheless, Salmond is launching his show at time when western security services and governments have started openly criticising Russian interference in national elections and suspicion of RT has reached a high.

RT has been seen as an example of Vladimir Putin attempting to expand Russia’s “soft power” since it launched in 2005. Putin has said RT’s aim is to “break the Anglo-Saxon monopoly on the global information streams” – making it Russia’s answer to the BBC World Service and CNN.

However, in recent weeks the focus on RT has grown: the US Department of Justice ordered it to register as a “foreign agent”, Twitter stopped taking advertising from the broadcaster and Theresa May accused Russia of trying to “weaponise information” and “deploying its state-run media organisations to plant fake stories and Photoshopped images in an attempt to sow discord in the west”.

Russia Today launched internationally in 2005 and has rapidly expanded. It rebranded as RT in 2009, launched RT America in 2010, and opened a UK version in 2014. According to Ofcom, the UK media regulator, RT is funded by the Federal Agency for Press and Mass Communications, part of the Russian government.

The UK channel features a mix of news, current affairs, documentaries and sport. Figures from the research firm Enders Analysis show that in 2017 it has reached an average weekly audience of 629,000 – a fraction of the 8.5 million who tune in to BBC News and the 5.4 million who watch Sky.

It is based in Millbank Tower – a few floors below where Salmond’s launch event took place and down the road from the Palace of Westminster. Although its UK television audience may be small, RT claims it is watched by 70 million people in 38 countries and is the number one news network on YouTube with more than 5bn views.

Even before the launch of the UK channel, RT was generating controversy. The London-based correspondent Sara Firth resigned over its coverage of the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over Ukraine – accusing it of the “most shockingly obvious misinformation” – while the Washington-based correspondent Liz Wahl quit over its “whitewashing” of Russia’s military intervention in Crimea.

Since 2005, Ofcom has ruled 14 times that RT breached the broadcasting code in Britain, including on issues such as due impartiality and graphic images. There were two breaches last year – one for bias against the US and the west in a show that described Nato as the “ultimate backdoor for American hegemony in Europe”, and another for breaching impartiality rules in claiming that the Turkish government was overseeing the genocide of the Kurdish community.

Despite these breaches, which led to RT being summoned to a meeting at Ofcom to discuss compliance, the broadcaster remains on-air in Britain and has relatively prominent slots on TV channel guides, including number 113 on Freeview.

Tom Watson, the Labour deputy leader, said Britain should consider whether it needed a tougher regulatory regime to deal with the channel. “RT has been repeatedly sanctioned by Ofcom for broadcasting inaccurate and misleading information, including a claim that the BBC staged a chemical weapons attack by President Assad’s forces in Syria,” he said.

The claim about the staged attack was made in an episode of RT’s Truthseeker series shown in 2015.

Watson added: “The combination of false or inaccurate stories and the alignment of editorial policy to that of President Putin’s Russian state lends itself to a discussion about whether we need a tougher regulatory regime to deal with the problem.”

Internal Ofcom figures show it has received 67 complaints about RT since 1 January, compared with 61 for Fox News, 803 for Channel 4 News and 5,217 for Sky News. A spokesperson for the regulator said: “All broadcast licensees must observe Ofcom’s strict rules, including due accuracy and due impartiality. If broadcasters break those rules, we take swift action to protect audiences.”

However, there are clear signs that RT has become increasingly confident, launching an audacious advertising campaign. It includes posters on the London Underground saying: “The CIA calls us a ‘propaganda machine’. Find out what we call the CIA,” and: “Watch RT and find out who we are planning to hack next.”

The Advertising Standards Agency said it had received seven complaints about the adverts, but had decided not to launch a formal investigation.

Anna Belkina, the head of communications at RT, said the channel was being criticised because it offered an alternative view to the “mainstream media echo chamber”. “RT is an editorially independent organisation,” she said. “False labels are often spuriously attached to anyone who doesn’t fit the mould, but our viewers around the world tune in to RT because they see it for its genuine and differentiated take on current affairs.”

However, despite Belkina’s comments and the ASA clearing its adverts, RT is likely to remain in the spotlight for Ofcom and government bodies, with the Foreign Office (FCO) understood to be keeping a close eye on the broadcaster.

An FCO spokesperson said: “Ofcom’s broadcasting code contains stringent rules to ensure that news, in whatever form, is reported with due accuracy and impartiality. Rulings made by Ofcom in respect of RT’s broadcasts highlight its biased and subjective reporting. Ultimately, the best defence against disinformation is a robust, free, wide and varied media landscape.”