RT America

During the recent United States' presidential election campaign almost the entire mainstream was heavily biased against Donald Trump, and in favour of Hillary Clinton. Surprisingly, given Hillary Clinton's repeated claim that Donald Trump was a puppet of Vladimir Putin, the Russian news service RT America was also strongly biased against Donald Trump. Whilst it would be wrong to conclude from this that Clinton was actually Putin's puppet, rather than Trump, how was it possible for a Russian taxpayer-funded news service to act against Russia's own interests by promoting the russophobic Clinton?

Presenters Tyrel Ventura and Tabetha Wallace and their guest, Ed Schultz, presenter of RT America's news service, were savagely critical of Donald Trump in their show Now on to election night: 3rd and final debate with Ed Schultz (21/10/16). Guest, Ed Schultz, predicted that Donald Trump would lose. Whilst I thought, as did many American voters, that Donald Trump clearly won the third Presidential election debate, as well as the second, all three in that discussion on Watching the hawks agreed that he had lost that debate. (There was a small facade of criticism of Clinton from Schultz and Ventura, possibly because they may well have understood that failure to see some fault in Clinton could have caused their credibility to suffer too much.)

Also mirroring the mainstream media's 'reporting' and commentary, the rest of RT America spent nearly all of its coverage of the election attacking the alleged bigotry, racism, xenophobia, and temperamentalism of Donald Trump, whilst omitting discussion of the substantial policies, both domestic and international, that were at stake, and ignoring the mountain of evidence that should have damned Hillary Clinton years ago.

That evidence includes Hillary Clinton's complicity, since 1990, in the deaths of hundreds of thousands in Central Asia, the Middle East and the former republics of Yugoslavia, plus the cover-up of sexual misconduct and rape allegations against her husband, the former United States' President, Bill Clinton.

RT America programs, which, in this way, also sided with Clinton, include News with Ed Schultz, Lee Camp's 'comedy' show Redacted Tonight and Watching the Hawks.

In an example of Redacted Tonight,"Trump cabinet is horrifying, get rid of Electoral College, and TPP is dead," (19/11/16), the promotional summary states:

In this week's episode of Redacted Tonight, Lee Camp covers the latest news on Trump’s cabinet, which already has people panicking. What should we fear most about Trump's cabinet picks? Is he really draining the swamp?

In what seems like an attempt to cover their tracks following Donald Trump's victory, Ed Schultz and the producers of Watching the Hawks now appear to be backing away from the pro-Clinton bias they displayed during the election campaign. However, Redacted Tonight and The Big Picture continue their savage attacks on Donald Trump. Post-election examples of this in The Big Picture include: Why Trump's cabinet is a basket of deplorables (21/10/16) and Will Tulsi Gabbard go from Bernie to Trump?.

Comments after the second show listed above include:

"Is Thom channeling George Soros now? Honestly, he used to have quite an amusing program due to allowing some intelligent and witty right wingers on his panel. Now it is all straight propaganda for the faux left."

"Yep. The show is embarrassing."

"comic-relief?"

"RT should bin 'The Big Picture'. The episode with Lawson and Badawi was truly awful. If we wanted to listen to all this rabid globalist propaganda we could tune in to any of the mainstream media news channels. RT should be presenting the benefits of a MULTI-POLAR globe, not pushing the narratives of the American globalisers. What next? Is RT planning on promoting the Democrats view that the US should punish Russia for existing?"

Quite possibly Thom Hartmann and Lee Camp are banking that the various moves now underway in America to overturn Donald Trump's victory and declare Hillary Clinton President will succeed and restore some of their credibility.

The Russian government set up RT back in 2005. It recognised that it had failed to challenge the Western mainstream media's narrative about the former Yugoslav republic of Serbia. The lack of any strong media to challenge those western media lies then had permitted the United States and its European allies to bomb that country and overthrow its government in 1999.

Since then, RT and other national news services such as Iran's PressTV have helped to counter the Western mainstream media's lying narrative on Libya, Syria, Ukraine, and Yemen. Perhaps in part, consequently, the United States' and its allies' regime-change plans for Syria and Yemen have yet to succeed. These plans have also to contend with the support of the Russian air force, the Lebanese Hezbollah movement and Iran for Syria, along with the resilience of the Syrian people themselves.

RT should not rest on its laurels, however. Its success invites subversion. The apparent (failed) attempt by RT America to make Hillary Clinton President of the United States illustrates that RT America should be thoroughly overhauled with new journalists and a charter that requires RT America to give both sides of the story wherever that story is seriously disputed.

The same comment applies, of course, to the mainstream western media.

NOTES

The above article was adapted from a comment posted by 'Don't Get Fooled Again' beneath an article worth reading, Trump's Media Summit Was a 'F−−−ing Firing Squad' (22/11/16) by Emily Smith and Daniel Happer | Information Clearing House.