Russia Today, Sputnik and The Sun: who’s to blame for media manipulation?

“Bloody legacy – Cancer-stricken Putin’s body language ‘reveals he’s in crippling pain’ – as despot rushes to cement his place in history” – The Sun, 1 Oct 2022. How can you tell the media you’re reading is a trustworthy source (and is Putin really sick?)? This article looks at the EU-wide ban of Russian state-owned media Russia Today and Sputnik and reflects on the extent to which media sources can be considered as independent.

Author: Daniel Bridgeland

Copyrights: "Vector of Fake News" by sjrankin is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/?ref=openverse.

On the 27th of February 2022, three days after the start of the war in Ukraine, Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission’s President, banned Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik from operating in the European Union (EU). Both Russian media were accused of spreading lies about Ukraine, the Russian aggression, and the response from the West. RT is a state-owned Russian international television network and publishes articles on internet. Although the media has produced critically acclaimed reports, it also has been sanctioned multiple times by the Ofcom, the British government approved media and competition regulatory authority. It has been accused of impartiality, with notable examples, such as the way it covered the Syrian Civil War or the Salisbury poisoning case. Similarly, Sputnik is a Russian state-owned news agency created in 2014 and which also has (surprisingly…) been accused of spreading disinformation.

At the beginning of the War in Ukraine, both media claimed that the newly proclaimed independent (although very much contested) People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk covered the whole of Ukrainian Donetsk and Lugansk administrative regions, as opposed to being much more recent acquisitions. Other examples include how the US and European democracies are portrayed, with a focus on issues of political and social disfunctions, such as the negative impact of immigration. RT even paid to feature in the London Underground, in an advert with refuted claims that Russia was trying to influence the result of political elections in European countries.

Through these examples and their general behaviours before the ban, it is possible to observe a pattern of impartiality regarding Russia’s alleged and proven aggressions against foreign actors. The European Commission has therefore argued for the necessity to ban them, as they instrumentalise the conflict and play an essential role in facilitating Russia’s aggression towards Ukraine. Up to now, this article makes sense: the EU bans a media that is considered as a Russian propaganda tool. However, and this is where it gets interesting, is that although it has been established that RT and Sputnik are biased and misleading, questions are raised about whether they should be banned. Their audiences in Europe are relatively low, with 43 million listeners/readers/viewers in 2020, compared to BBC News’ audience of 468 million. Even France 24 boasts an audience of 98 million, twice as much as both Russian media. Furthermore, the Salisbury poisoning saga has shown that even their own audience buys their line up to a certain extent. Banning them would reinforce their argument that they suffer from a ‘Western bias’ and it could give credits to their supporters. Moreover, it is possible to ban a website, but what about their social media platforms? As of the 6th of May 2022, Twitter failed to remove 47 accounts linked to RT and Sputnik, Instagram had blocked or removed only 28 out of 72 accounts and YouTube still had 44 active channels. It looks like banning them is relatively ineffective and disinformation is still widely spreading (“Russia does NOT bomb civilians”…).

This whole saga raises another interesting point which this article considers as even more important than the ban of RT and Sputnik: what should be done with Western media doing the same and what does this tell us about media independency? Fake news is not just coming from Russia, it originates from everywhere and any type of media (even the “most reliable ones” sometimes make mistakes). As of 2021, British newspaper readers named the BBC as the most impartial news website, while The Sun came last. In Liverpool, for example, The Sun is extremely unpopular in some parts of the city, due to how it falsely accused the Liverpool F.C. supporters of being responsible for the Hillsborough Stadium disaster, a fatal human crush killing 97 people in 1989. Therefore, just like the EU banned Russian media for spreading fake news, shouldn’t we also ban The Sun? What about Fox News in the US?

Although these media do not spread fake news per se, they do adopt a journalistic approach which does not resemble what ‘conventional’ media have made their readers accustomed to. Tabloids will never willingly write about a fake news (mistakes – which seem to be frequent… - do exist however), but they will make sure to transform a story to the point where one cannot really draw the line between what is true and what is less true. Their aim is for readers to click on that link, which says “you will not believe what just happened!!!”, and read it until they realise what they are reading is overly exaggerated. RT and Sputnik news do not only pursue sensationalism, but they also spread disinformation, and this is where the line is drawn. As Padraig Reidy, the editor of Little Atoms, declared: “the point is not to utterly convince of the truth of any story, but rather to make them think the story is possible”. Reporting every protest in a country does create the feeling of a very unstable society, even though protests are a weekly if not daily occurrence in many democracies over the world.

Although The Sun does probably portray a society that is very different from how The Guardian writes about it, it does not purposefully aim the dissemination of selected stories, to widen social fissures. Some Russian media enthusiasts may argue that the BBC is doing the same as RT and Sputnik and tries to spread ‘Western’ democratic values, but the main difference (which is a big one) is that the BBC is publicly funded and not controlled by the UK government. The latter may try to exercise pressure over the former, but it will still not be able to dictate the editorial line. Same goes with Rupert Murdoch: he has an influence over the media he owns, of course, and has the power to sway public opinion to protect his own agenda and damage its political enemies, as seen with the 2019 Sunshine Coast Daily’s disastrous headline “Anna, you’re next” (https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiskKPotLD6AhXmgv0HHeZVDs8QFnoECCEQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fmedia%2F2019%2Fmay%2F21%2Fnews-corp-paper-refuses-to-apologise-for-putting-queensland-premiers-face-in-crosshairs&usg=AOvVaw3VOr07uwxKdatqaqv5_yqS). However, the major difference is that Murdoch is not a state and does not target another state or an ideology, which is an important nuance.

Of course, Western bias in the media does exist as well, and it does exist against other states, which shows how media become a tool that can be instrumentalised in times of conflicts. Many Afghans and Iraqis are denouncing the coverage of the situations taking place in their countries, which are analysed through the prism of what we can consider to be ‘Western propaganda’. This has even led to accusations of double standards, when compared to how the conflict in Ukraine is depicted. Al Jazeera and its reporter Peter Dobbie had to issue an apology after he claimed the following, when talking about Ukrainian refugees fleeing to Europe: “[they] are not obviously refugees trying to get away from areas in the Middle East that are still in a big state of war; these are not people trying to get away from areas in North Africa, they look like any European family that would live next door”. Wherever we will be, whether it is regarding our geographical position, where we position ourselves politically/ideologically and even more what we read, we will always be influenced one way or another and we cannot escape that. Even though Russian state-owned media are trying to destabilise European societies, and Western media can be considered biased as well, it remains difficult to compare their degrees of influence and even more so in the case of the Ukrainian conflict. Maybe I am completely biased by the West, but it does seem quite clear that Russia invaded Ukraine and is the aggressor. Some may claim Russia is protecting itself from NATO’s influence, it still has launched a full-scale military invasion. In this context, reliable media sources need to become the norm, and social media posts about “what is happening in Ukraine” should not be taken too seriously. Make use of your critical mind and double check any statements that do not seem realistic (and that includes Zelensky claiming Ukraine has killed more than 55,000 Russian soldiers!). If you are unsure, use tools to see if a source is fake or not:

· Social media comments (but be careful with that, some comment sections are not reliable at all)

· Independent news checker (CheckNews, in French)

· Check the sources – can you find them? Are they available? Who wrote the article? Who owns the media in which it was published? So many questions to ask

And when in doubt, do not share the news!