RT vs. the mainstream media
In an interview on NPR a guest from Globalmediawars.com, Nathanael Massey, described RT's coverage for on "On the Media," as entertainment news without substance.
“The gist of that entertainment is making fun of the United States…their content doesn't try to take itself that seriously,” he said. NPR's interviewer Bob Garfield kept the seemingly disparaging note when he at one point laughed about RT's Osama Bin Laden coverage, saying RT was "maybe thinking the whole thing would just blow over.”Globalmediawars.com's analysis of RT continued that “RT’s high production values cannot hide its lack of substantive journalism.”To be fair, we checked this out with some pollsters.Pew Research tracks the top mainstream media stories week by week and so you can see a breakdown of the top five stories. And looking back there is a really great example where we totally missed one of the five biggest stories of the week covered by the mainstream media. We missed Charlie Sheen! Just to compare, we looked back at what some of our top stories were that week on RT.RT covered Libya, labor protests in Wisconsin, and the impact of Middle East and North African unrest on oil prices. You decide which is more newsworthy.To be fair, that was a big week for Charlie Sheen, we just wanted to look back at one day at another big story we missed when it broke. We missed one of the biggest newsmakers of the week; number three according to Pew Research.What were some of our top stories that day when the news of Schwarzenneger's love child rocked the news cycle?Commodity prices, war, the dollar as the reserve currency. No Arnold. And just to look at what today is one of the big stories on the cable news networks – Casey Anthony. Dissecting every bit of information in a criminal trial that affects one family, but which is expected to draw as much attention as the O.J. Simpson trial and where reportedly 600 members of the press have been credentialed. Today we are covering the debt ceiling, inequality in the US, the US war in Aghanistan and the factors that have led one million people to apply to McDonald's only for the majority of them to be turned away. You decide which affects more people, is more newsworthy, contains more substantive journalism, and qualifies as entertainment.Following an outpouring of opinion on the Internet regarding RT, we wanted to share wit hyou some of the views of your audience via YouTube comments:"RT tells more truth about America than CNN, FOX, ABC, CBS, MSNBC, and all the newspapers combined. That in itselt makes RT a saint compared to the trash fed to Americans and the rest of the world. That’s why the attack dogs are out in force to try and discredit RT. I am very pleased with the truth RT uncovers, or at least, asks the questions no one else is asking in the media.”- Pirell“I worked for CBS, NBC, ABC, and PBS in a 26 year career in news and network programming from journalist to news producer. I was fired for trying to expose the lies within the military industrial media complex about Iraq and other endless cover-ups. RT is not perfect but they're far more truthful than the traitors, liars and media whores that I experienced first-hand.”-AffinityNetNews
