Do Not Cite RT

[AlicetheKurious]

Following Britain's example, Germany has banned Iran's PressTV.

[MayDay]

This thread reads like a transcript of the conversation about RT that's been going on in my head for months. Most importantly:

OMH said:
"We need alternative media in this country, but only that produced democratically and from our communities."

Nuff said. In the meantime, I'll keep watching relevant RT clips along with the rest of the trash media I consume, and with the same discriminating eye. I will continue to cite it when it is the only TV news source that's accurately covering a topic, although I will consider adding a disclaimer from now on. (BTW- thanks for the input, HMW.)

[8bitagent]

Putin's Russia staged the infamous and horrific Sept 1999 apartment bombings that killed over 300 Russians and was used as a false flag casus beli to massacre nearly 200,000 Chechens.
We know Putin's Russia is behind HUNDREDS of assassinations of whistleblowers, activists, journalists. We know they rig the elections. We know FSB intel works with pedo drug mobs to proside over whole areas. We know they installed a brutal Sharia law government in Chechnya, after they slaughtered a fourth of the people. We also have indication a lot if not all the "Chechen" terrorism over the years is FSB instigated.

So...we're suppose to "trust" this RT channel, just because it features some fringe conspiracy wonks who sometimes say things we agree with? Yeah. No thanks.

Russia's government can go to hell.

[AlicetheKurious]

So...we're suppose to "trust" this RT channel, just because it features some fringe conspiracy wonks who sometimes say things we agree with? Yeah. No thanks.

Straw man: nobody said anything about "trust". So, where do you get your global "news"?

[MayDay]

Putin's Russia staged the infamous and horrific Sept 1999 apartment bombings that killed over 300 Russians and was used as a false flag casus beli to massacre nearly 200,000 Chechens.
We know Putin's Russia is behind HUNDREDS of assassinations of whistleblowers, activists, journalists. We know they rig the elections. We know FSB intel works with pedo drug mobs to proside over whole areas. We know they installed a brutal Sharia law government in Chechnya, after they slaughtered a fourth of the people. We also have indication a lot if not all the "Chechen" terrorism over the years is FSB instigated.

So...we're suppose to "trust" this RT channel, just because it features some fringe conspiracy wonks who sometimes say things we agree with? Yeah. No thanks.

Russia's government can go to hell.

Wow, you really missed the point, 8bit agent. RT is doing a damned good job of reporting accurately on issues that the US media is either outright ignoring or spinning into complete disarray. Anyone who subjects themselves to mainstream western media reports should supplement with relevant RT reports, imo.

What we need to ask ourselves is this: what long term goals and objectives, if any, are the Russian Govt. working toward by gaining our trust through accurate reporting on issues that the other mainstream media outlets are attempting to obscure? What, indeed, is RT obscuring, if anything?

Just because these questions exist is not, imo, a good enough reason to toss the baby out with the bath water.

[8bitagent]

Putin's Russia staged the infamous and horrific Sept 1999 apartment bombings that killed over 300 Russians and was used as a false flag casus beli to massacre nearly 200,000 Chechens.
We know Putin's Russia is behind HUNDREDS of assassinations of whistleblowers, activists, journalists. We know they rig the elections. We know FSB intel works with pedo drug mobs to proside over whole areas. We know they installed a brutal Sharia law government in Chechnya, after they slaughtered a fourth of the people. We also have indication a lot if not all the "Chechen" terrorism over the years is FSB instigated.

So...we're suppose to "trust" this RT channel, just because it features some fringe conspiracy wonks who sometimes say things we agree with? Yeah. No thanks.

Russia's government can go to hell.

Wow, you really missed the point, 8bit agent. RT is doing a damned good job of reporting accurately on issues that the US media is either outright ignoring or spinning into complete disarray. Anyone who subjects themselves to mainstream western media reports should supplement with relevant RT reports, imo.

What we need to ask ourselves is this: what long term goals and objectives, if any, are the Russian Govt. working toward by gaining our trust through accurate reporting on issues that the other mainstream media outlets are attempting to obscure? What, indeed, is RT obscuring, if anything?

Just because these questions exist is not, imo, a good enough reason to toss the baby out with the bath water.

I strongly agree with some of the points Alex Jones makes too, but it doesn't mean I am into his cult of personality or am buying what he's selling.
Seeing images of Obama's little pow wow with the Russian leader was quite interesting. I don't trust any of these thugs. China, Russia, Israel, Saudi Arabia, the US, etc. To me they're all
just globalist mechanisms.

I like Democracy Now, Glenn Greenwald, Rawstory, etc. But I think all of us by now can see a mainstream reported news story and kind of see through the filtering and notice certain things.

[Simulist]

(A) Listen to the various news agencies. (B) Realize they're ALL hip-deep in bullshit, to one degree or another.

Both "A" and "B" can work together.

(The same approach I use when dealing with relatives. )

[MayDay]

Someone brought up Alex Jones again. Nice.

[crikkett]

MayDay, I'm with you, but RT is so obviously biased that it's uncomfortable.

Have you ever had the feeling, where you're near a hornet's nest, but don't quite hear it? Where you're jumpy but don't know why, but think you'd better trust that feeling for your own good? And because of that you look around, and spot it, and thank goodness that disaster is averted but then, you have to resign yourself to the process of justifying the slaughter of an entire colony of beings that might just be sentient and only tending to their own business? For the good of everyone?

That's how RT makes me feel. Fox too, by the way. Except all I have to do to fix this problem is ignore it: Change the channel, don't pass on the links, think twice about clicking them.

[Ben D]

Putin's Russia staged the infamous and horrific Sept 1999 apartment bombings that killed over 300 Russians and was used as a false flag casus beli to massacre nearly 200,000 Chechens.

We know Putin's Russia is behind HUNDREDS of assassinations of whistleblowers, activists, journalists. We know they rig the elections. We know FSB intel works with pedo drug mobs to proside over whole areas. We know they installed a brutal Sharia law government in Chechnya, after they slaughtered a fourth of the people. We also have indication a lot if not all the "Chechen" terrorism over the years is FSB instigated.

So...we're suppose to "trust" this RT channel, just because it features some fringe conspiracy wonks who sometimes say things we agree with? Yeah. No thanks.

Russia's government can go to hell.

Well that's fine 8bit, but to be consistent, shouldn't you, given the long list of infamous crimes perpetrated by the US government/CIA also be saying..."So...we're suppose to "trust" this '(substitute any msm)' channel because it features some fringe conspiracy wonks who sometimes say things we agree with? Yeah. No thanks.

The US government can go to hell."

In which case, to save time typing in a caveat each time, let's just leave it up to the reader to discern for themselves what is b/s.

[MayDay]

http://rt.com/usa/news/rt-government-br ... ing-radio/
This doesn't make RT okay by me, but it is certainly relevant to this conversation. From the horses mouth and all.

I feel you there, Crikkett. Many of my friends have gotten the same vibe from RT. Still, I am rarely able to sit through any TV news other than RT. If something is going on that I want to see, and it's being covered by the various msm outlets, RT is invariably going to be my source. Thankfully I prefer reading the sort of analysis found here on RI to anything TV news currently offers. I can't say anything for sure about RT- all I've seen of it is the links that have been sent to me- I've never actually watched the full programing.

[8bitagent]

Putin's Russia staged the infamous and horrific Sept 1999 apartment bombings that killed over 300 Russians and was used as a false flag casus beli to massacre nearly 200,000 Chechens.

We know Putin's Russia is behind HUNDREDS of assassinations of whistleblowers, activists, journalists. We know they rig the elections. We know FSB intel works with pedo drug mobs to proside over whole areas. We know they installed a brutal Sharia law government in Chechnya, after they slaughtered a fourth of the people. We also have indication a lot if not all the "Chechen" terrorism over the years is FSB instigated.

So...we're suppose to "trust" this RT channel, just because it features some fringe conspiracy wonks who sometimes say things we agree with? Yeah. No thanks.

Russia's government can go to hell.

Well that's fine 8bit, but to be consistent, shouldn't you, given the long list of infamous crimes perpetrated by the US government/CIA also be saying..."So...we're suppose to "trust" this '(substitute any msm)' channel because it features some fringe conspiracy wonks who sometimes say things we agree with? Yeah. No thanks.

The US government can go to hell."

In which case, to save time typing in a caveat each time, let's just leave it up to the reader to discern for themselves what is b/s.

Well yeah, I mean MSNBC, the "liberal station"=GE(weapons manufacturing as Hugh would point out)

I think the overriding point people are making is "take what you like, leave the rest". Heck even I'll watch Fox News clips on youtube now and then.
I still maintain Fox made one of the best 9/11 documentaries last year with "Secrets of 9/11". I also enjoyed Glenn Beck's communist genocide documentary, even tho he makes my skin crawl.
If Im going to be honest, MSNBC is my main mainstream news source. It's true. Or just whatever AP /Reuters feed. Even some of the fringe news sites seem like they put too much spin on things.

Now sites I absolutely can't stomach are WND, Dailykos, CrooksandLiars, Drudgereport, Hotair, etc.

[8bitagent]

I wonder if RT would ever show "Disbelief"(2004 award winning documentary exposing the 9/99 false flag and horrors of the Chechen war)
or the documentary about Russian neo Nazi terror groups. I just find it ironic RT always has the usual truther brigade personalities on yet Russia itself is a walking conspiracy theory.

Unfortunately, with the declining interest in leftist fringe radio(like Guns and Butter, 4ACloserLook, Pacifca radio) we seem to mostly have survivalist gun nut right wing and coast 2 coast type shows willing to cover the things we talk about on RI. Most this stuff is too hot too handle for even Democracy Now(whom I still greatly admire and like) I always wished there was a hard hitting
para-political show that came from a more leftist point of view than a "patriot militia DONT TREAD ON ME!" approach.

[AlicetheKurious]

I like Democracy Now, Glenn Greenwald, Rawstory, etc.

These are not news organizations, with correspondents in the field. RT, CNN, BBC, France24, Al-Jazeera, etc., break the news stories, gather the raw data and often carry live coverage, which makes them irreplaceable. The very fact that they have competing and sometimes mutually exclusive agendas means that they often fill in each other's blanks, covering stories that the others wouldn't. IOW, while each one by itself provides only a piece of the puzzle, taken together they provide a far more complete picture than you could ever get otherwise.

Even the fact that each one reflects the agenda of a particular player makes them very valuable: for example, the New York Times is unbelievably biased, but it's the best place to go to find out the US/Israel's real objectives are, as opposed to what they say they are. The same goes for all of them. Also, it's a lot smarter to let each party speak for itself, rather than trust others to accurately portray their opponent's views.

In contrast, DemocracyNow and the others mostly have analysts on, to interpret the news from one particular perspective.

If you like your news pre-cooked and nicely arranged on a dish for you, you'll rely only on such sources. That's like if I ask you where you do your grocery shopping and you name a few Italian restaurants. That's great if what you're looking for is to reinforce your existing biases and avoid any cognitive dissonance. What most of us are suggesting is that you widen your scope to include all the various sources of news AND analysis, and then use your critical faculties to sift through them. Only then can you consider yourself reasonably well-informed.

[JackRiddler]

I like Democracy Now, Glenn Greenwald, Rawstory, etc.

These are not news organizations, with correspondents in the field. RT, CNN, BBC, France24, Al-Jazeera, etc., break the news stories, gather the raw data and often carry live coverage, which makes them irreplaceable. The very fact that they have competing and sometimes mutually exclusive agendas means that they often fill in each other's blanks, covering stories that the others wouldn't. IOW, while each one by itself provides only a piece of the puzzle, taken together they provide a far more complete picture than you could ever get otherwise.

In contrast, DemocracyNow and the others mostly have analysts on, to interpret the news from a particular point of view.

The point about live coverage and correspondents is taken. However Democracy Now! has correspondents in the field. They've had an Egyptian-American reporter in Cairo since the beginning of the revolution and easily had the best field reporting from Egypt of any American source. They were covering the anti-SCAF protests daily last fall, when no other American source was bothering any more with Egypt. They have thoughtful, long-form interviews with newsmakers and some original reporting pretty much every day. Amy Goodman was on the plane with Zelaya when he succeeded in returning to Honduras! From listening to the live broadcast most mornings (it wakes me up) I'd say at least one-half of DN is DN-produced. (About three minutes a day seems to consist of flubs and tech failures.)

It very much matters what you choose to cover, of course you know that, and DN definitely gives more substantive and truthful coverage of more stories (albeit at least half second-hand) that matter than the once-mighty CNN, which fills 24 hours times 3 channels a day. But about 22 on each channel seem to be repeats, or Anderson Cooper, or the really disgusting Wolf Blitzer doing non-stop palaver about the usual bullshit, or celebrity porn. I don't watch CNN but it is always on at work and they have six hours a day of Republican primary bullshit, almost all of it in-studio palaver about the two or three politician soundbites of the day, just like FOX or MS-NBC. Plus six hours of murder-of-the-month (they're very slow about rotating the murder, it really is one a month). They've broken some ground in the Pathetic Department by getting heavily into Twitter commentary, FFS! They have cat video segments! The same applies to most of these networks. Consider also the common use of VNNs by the US networks, they just lift the footage as provided by corporations or the government.

In short, your point is relative. Are we talking about inside the G8 pig-out or the protest outside? Because BBC is only going to properly cover the inside. And NBC often as not is going to use someone else's footage. The best live and on-the-scene coverage of the Occupy protests, for example, has been provided by the Occupy movement. Hands down, and 99 percent. CNN gets the footage of pepper-spraying incidents off Youtube. Finally, although it gives a satanic amount of hours to the imperialists and cutthroats of AEI, I'd have to say the three C-SPAN channels produce an enormous amount of on-scene material just by pointing a camera.