27/03/2022
LGBTQIA media activists broadly welcomed the decision by the UK’s broadcast and telecommunications regulator, OFCOM, to revoke the license to transmit from the television network Russia Today, which was owned by the Kremlin. The formal notice that Russia Today is in the words of OFCOM, “not fit to hold a broadcast license” is in some ways a formality, as it comes some weeks after EU sanctions removed the channel from cable and satellite platforms across the continent. The channel, which broadcast as “RT”, had many investigations opened against it, for its mendacity and manipulative coverage of current affairs, designed to undermine and weaken democratic countries. It had also been fined a quarter of a million pounds in 2019 for breaches of the Broadcast Code’s requirement of due impartiality. Supporters of “RT” had said that the UK should leave it on the air, in the same manner as no attempt was made to jam Radio Moscow during the Cold War. The British, the argument went, could be trusted to see through the propaganda and lying of the channel. We asked our own media watchers for their analysis. Terry, who has been involved with community broadcasting, summarised it thus - “In the old Cold War days, Radio Moscow, Radio Prague, Radio Tirana and so on were direct in their anti-democratic propaganda. But Russia Today was more subtle. It would publicise left wing groups some days, the far right in other situations. And on others, plain moonbat crazy conspiracies. Basically, anything that would encourage dissatisfaction with democracy”.
