The Times is leading the charge to close down RT in Britain because the channel is “getting under their skin,” former MP George Galloway says. His comments come as the Murdoch-owned newspaper condemned an RT advertising campaign on the London Underground.
Labour MP Tom Watson has asked broadcasting regulator OFCOM to investigate the tongue-in-cheek ads, which pose ironic questions such as: “The CIA calls us a propaganda machine. Find out what we call the CIA,” and “Missed the train? Lost a vote? Blame it on us.”
Speaking to RT, Galloway said the advertisements have in fact been widely praised, and struck a chord with the majority of people who have seen them.
“The Times is owned by a billionaire American citizen [Rupert Murdoch] who controls more than 40 percent of the British media market, and they’d like to keep it that way.
“The fact that RT is making great strides in attracting viewers and participants from all parts of the political spectrum is what is really getting under their skin.”
Galloway also hit out at Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, who this week called it a “scandal” that Labour MPs appeared on RT. He was seemingly oblivious to the fact that many Tory MPs have come on the channel, and his own father Stanley Johnson appeared just last month to speak about his book.
“On my own RT show, something like 10 leading Conservatives - that is the governing party - have appeared as opposed to precisely two Labour opposition members of parliament,” Galloway said.
“His own members are roundly ignoring this foolish statement, which has more to do with Boris Johnson’s bid to become prime minister on the back of these Cold War idiocies than it has to do with RT.
“It’s only actually less than two years ago that the very same Boris Johnson in his newspaper column urged the government to get behind the Russian president Putin in Syria - to make an alliance with him, to join up with him.
“Mr Johnson has more faces than the station clock.”
Galloway also pointed out Watson’s hypocrisy in taking the RT ad complaint to OFCOM.
“Tom Watson negotiated with me for a long time to come on my RT show, and he only didn’t because we fell out over an internal Labour Party matter - namely his leadership of the coup against Jeremy Corbyn.
“So Mr Watson was more than happy to appear on RT. I have the written exchanges to prove it.”