Wednesday, 16 March 2016

Russia Today

I've sent this letter to the Herald today in reply to a column on Tuesday. Doesn't matter if they don't print it!

David Leask’s column on Tuesday (Steering clear of Kremlin’s weapon of mass deception) made interesting reading. His suggestion that RT (Russia Today) is biased, and dangerously so, makes me wonder if Mr Leask first of all thinks that politicians like Alex Salmond and Jeremy Corbyn are so dim they will let themselves be taken advantage of, or that viewers are so dim they will not realise that RT news programmes are spun with a Russian slant. And can he also really believe other news outlets – both TV and press – available to us are unbiased?

I occasionally watch RT and Al Jazeera news to hear what other broadcasters have to say about stories being covered by UK-based TV stations. I’m in no doubt that Sky, the BBC and ITV news all have particular agendas. For one thing, none of them have a world or a UK-wide view. C4 news is better in that regard but for EU news I watch Eorpa, the BBC Gaelic magazine programme, the only outlet to give any kind of insight into issues affecting communities in the EU. Alarmingly, the practice of analysing the news seems to have disappeared. All we get now are ‘broad brush strokes.’ And many of the UK- based news broadcasts are London-biased: it’s a red letter day when a London-based journalist manages not to mention Boris Johnson, let alone gets out of the capital.

Maybe it’s worth remembering that only a small proportion of the population read a newspaper or watch TV news. And it might be good if journalists remember that the only people who think they are important are themselves.


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