Al Jazeera's Arabic channel is wildly popular in the Middle East, and its English-language station has expanded on that influence by becoming - because of its heavy emphasis on the region - the go-to channel for many Western journalists and diplomats based in the area.īoth the English and the Arabic versions have fought accusations that they harbour an anti-Israel and anti-American bias. Regardless of how many people end up tuning in to such channels in Canada, they carry wide influence in markets that are very dear to their owners. Power Aid" lingered over the bottom fifth of the screen through much of RT's coverage. RT News highlighted a French minister's comment that the aid operation should be "about helping Haiti, not about occupying Haiti," playing it up in newscasts long after Paris and Washington had moved to quell a row over which flights would be allowed to land at Port-au-Prince. helicopters landing on the earthquake-hit island. Hijab-clad Press TV anchor said over footage of U.S. "The troops are taking control of the palace, but the people camped outside are hoping they're going to distribute aid," a Médecins sans frontières and other organizations complained of aid flights being diverted away from the Port-au-Prince airport after it came under U.S. military had other aims in Haiti, especially as RT News and Press TV, on the other hand, repeatedly questioned whether the U.S. For example, CNN covered the deployment of more than 10,000 American soldiers to Haiti as a straight-up aid operation to a disaster-stricken country, with Anderson Cooper and other anchors reporting live from the scene as American rescuers dug through the rubble for survivors. The change in emphasis from station to station is anything but subtle. networks such as Fox News and MSNBC (which is nearly as fond of the Democratic Party as Fox is of Republicans), the new propagandists are more notable for the perspective they bring than the reporting their correspondents do. Music drips over flashy graphics illustrating the weather around the world.īut, following the path cleared for them by opinion-heavy U.S. Up-to-the-minute news flashes scroll across the bottom of the screen. Deep-voiced anchors read the headlines seriously and banter with correspondents covering lighter topics. Indeed, the new propagandists have deliberately made it hard to tell that you're watching anything other than just another news channel. "They look no different from CNN or Fox or CBC or BBC or anything to that effect." "I wouldn't say they look like government-run channels, propaganda like we're used to," he says. He says there is demand in Canada for these different perspectives, especially in immigrant communities. RT News is the voice of Russia," says Slava Levin, president of Ethnic Channels Group, the company that sponsored the arrival of both RT News and Al Jazeera English in Canada. "You stay in any hotel in Russia and you turn on the television and there's CNN giving you the voice of America on things. Yet many see nothing wrong with being able to look at world events through various sets of eyes. But it's not sophisticated in anything but style. "Technically it is high-class and the English of the presenters is impeccable. "Russia Today is like watching the Brezhnev TV of my youth 30 years ago," Mr. But it can now beam its message into homes in Western Europe and North America that may have no idea that they're watching Kremlin TV, a channel dedicated to promoting Moscow's world view, and where criticisms of President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin are rarely, if ever, allowed to air. RT News is funded by RIA Novosti, a state-owned, direct descendent of the Soviet Information Bureau founded as the official bugle of Joseph Stalin's USSR in 1941. The Kremlin's channel jostles for space on the upper reaches of cable and satellite packages with the similarly polished English-language networks of Al Jazeera (owned by the emir of the Persian Gulf state of Qatar) and France 24 (launched by former president Jacques Chirac with the explicit goal of giving a French perspective on the headlines). Two decades ago, as CNN won over audiences worldwide with its dramatic 24-hour coverage of the first Gulf War, walls were crumbling in Eastern Europe, dramatically curtailing the control of authoritarian states over what citizens read and heard.īut now, as the private conglomerates cut back on international news, throwbacks to the old days of state-run media are pouring billions into reporting with a very definite point of view. But where the Atlanta-based network worries about maintaining journalistic merit while pleasing viewers and advertisers, RT's editorial bigwigs have only one master: the Kremlin.Ĭall it the return of the propagandists. The slick, modern news service deliberately looks and sounds a lot like CNN.
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