The British media regulator’s investigations of RT’s news programs are part of political pressure on any outlet that exists outside the “echo chamber” of approved narratives, RT's deputy editor in chief and head of communications, Anna Belkina, said on Monday.
Though Ofcom is nominally independent, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson last Wednesday accused RT of “peddling” material that is “doing a lot of damage to the truth” and called for Ofcom to investigate the channel.
“We are not surprised by the announcement of Ofcom investigations, nor can we possibly divorce this action from the immense political pressure that had been placed on what is supposed to be an entirely independent regulator by the politicians both within and outside of the UK,” said Belkina.
“What we have witnessed over the last few days, be it comments from the President of the EU Commission or from the UK PM Boris Johnson, is that none of them had pointed to a single example, a single grain of evidence that what RT has reported over these days, and continues to report, is not true. Instead, what they have said is that the honest information that RT brings to its audience is simply not allowed in their supposedly free media environment. When it comes to the Russian voice, or just a different perspective from theirs, it is not allowed to exist in their space.
“This collective Western establishment seems to be terrified of a mere presence of any outside voice for the fear of losing their historically captive audience, if that audience encounters a different perspective. Yet what they fail to realise is that it is their own echo chamber that seeds the public mistrust that they have so long lamented. They will reap what they sow.”