DISINFO: RT France for the Kremlin is the same as France 24 for the Elysee
DISINFORMATION CASE DETAILS

DISINFO: RT France for the Kremlin is the same as France 24 for the Elysee

SUMMARY

RT France TV channel is still not accredited with the Elysee, 3 years after its creation, whereas France 24 channel is accredited with the Kremlin.

RESPONSE

Recurrent narrative presenting RT as the equivalent of France 24, Deutsche Welle or the BBC.

However, such a comparison doesn't make any sense as showed by researcher Maxime Audinet in La revue des médias. Such a comparison is whataboutism and when such channels are really compared in details the differences are obvious:

The network’s skeptical motto, Question More embodies this "ethical project". The resulting relativism innervates the contents of RT. It manifests itself in a clear denial of journalistic objectivity and in the relentless use of sarcasm and irony to ward off criticism. The systematic equivalence of more or less reliable accounts, with a weak contextualization of the facts, is finally a trademark, in particular when the reputation of Russia is undermined. The objective, clearly manipulative, is to confuse the reader, to prevent him from distinguishing the true from the false, the credible from the doubtful, by drowning him in a deluge of "alternative" versions.

RT editor-in-chief has direct contact with the inner circles of the Kremlin and she and her family participated in personal enrichment schemes from public funding that have no equivalent in France 24.

RT is a state tv channel and an arm of the Russian authorities, like a Russian “defence ministry”, as RT’s chief editor has put it. Read more here.

The France 24 operates independently at arm’s length from the French government and in observance of a set of editorial guidelines.

Read similar cases: In the West, there is censorship like in the Soviet Union in Solzhenitsyn times, RT France is a French channel, It is rather nice for a journalist to work in Russia, unlike in Europe.

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Disclaimer

Cases in the EUvsDisinfo database focus on messages in the international information space that are identified as providing a partial, distorted, or false depiction of reality and spread key pro-Kremlin messages. This does not necessarily imply, however, that a given outlet is linked to the Kremlin or editorially pro-Kremlin, or that it has intentionally sought to disinform. EUvsDisinfo publications do not represent an official EU position, as the information and opinions expressed are based on media reporting and analysis of the East Stratcom Task Force.

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