In Russia, the media
looks like the media of the West but operates differently. RT, formerly Russia Today, is the most visible example of this as the Kremlin’s network for foreign audiences. The famed news source is state funded, state directed and incredibly bizarre.
The Kremlin has a point of view and spreads it across the globe via RT. Here’s the thing though — the network doesn’t hide that it’s state controlled and funded. It is also ideologically flexible and a purveyor of conspiracy theories, which often contradict each other. “
Every single day we’re lying and finder sexier ways to do it,” said Sara Firth, a former RT correspondent who resigned in 2014.
This is part of an elaborate system where the Kremlin has kept its opponents off balance by undermining truth. Vladislav Surkov, a personal adviser to Vladimir Putin, is the architect of this system. In various positions in Putin’s government over the past two decades, Surkov would fund human rights organizations then give money to skinheads and ask them to protest those same groups.