Where Do RT Reporters Come From?

by Tracy R. Walsh

Often straight out of J-school:

RT America, by the accounts of the former and current employees with whom BuzzFeed spoke, has a strategy of hiring very young reporters who are eager to break out of small markets and want to cover international news. And the channel pays relatively well, more than most 22- or 23-year-olds expect to make in journalism. One former employee said a correspondent starting out could make as much as $50,000 or $60,000. “They’ll hire really young people and you almost feel like you’re working in a mini-CNN-type situation,” the former reporter said. “You’re not covering snowstorms or the puppy parade. You’re doing stories that are a lot bigger and meatier.”

And in Rosie Gray’s telling, it doesn’t take long for disillusionment to set in:

Soon after joining the network, the current and former employees said, they realized they were not covering news, but producing Russian propaganda. Some employees go in clear-eyed, looking for the experience above all else. Others don’t realize what RT really wants until they’re already there. Still others are chosen for already having displayed views amenable to the Kremlin. Anti-American language is injected into TV scripts by editors, and stories that don’t toe the editorial line regularly get killed.

Chait cringes:

A tragically large number of left-wing Westerners in the 20th century deluded themselves about the horrors of Soviet communism. As awful and unforgivable as it was, the process by which they made themselves into dupes was at least explicable:

They loved socialism, and one country in the world was implementing socialism, so they persuaded themselves, and for a while, it was working.

Today’s Russia dupes are a smaller, more pathetic lot. Above all they are just plain weirder, because they lack a clear ideological motive for their stoogery. Soviet Russia not only commanded a vast propaganda network, but embodied a doctrine with international appeal (and which had originated outside of Russia). Vladimir Putin’s Russia follows no model except Russian nationalism. To the extent it employs a non-nationalist philosophy, its main idea is that gays have weakened Europe. And yet the dupes still come.

Meanwhile, Weigel wonders how the network will find guests:

After [Alyona] Minkovski left the network, I saw fewer credible pundits make the walk to RT studios. I know of at least one magazine that warned its staffers not to go on anymore. Without sitting and auditing all of RT’s coverage, it seems like the network’s American opinion took more cues from the fringe.

This is where Abby Martin, a 9/11 truth activist and artist came in. In 2010 RT was getting exclusives with Rand Paul; in 2012 Martin was ambushing Paul to challenge his endorsement of Mitt Romney – a “Goldman Sachs, Bilderberg puppet.” It was Martin’s on-air denunciation of the Ukraine incursion [seen above] that woke up the media, again, to the strangeness of RT. It was anchor Liz Wahl’s on-air resignation and Martin’s quick back-peddling that deepened the strangeness, and brought new media attention, and will probably make it even harder for RT to book top guests. No secret here: D.C. (and New York) are in ready supply of pundits who want to go on TV shows and collect clips of themselves to show bookers for other TV shows. RT was a possible stop along the way, but some tanks in Crimea might have ended that.

Dish coverage of Wahl’s resignation here.