“The truth is dissolved”: Under cover in RT’s newsroom

The TV channel RT (Russia Today) is a place where “the truth is dissolved.”

This is the conclusion of German journalist Martin Schlak after he spent three weeks undercover in RT Deutschland’s editorial team in Berlin. Mr Schlak, who works for the news magazines Spiegel, Stern and NEON, posed as an intern to gain access to the German branch of the TV station funded by the Russian authorities.

Confirming the audience’s pre-conceived world view
Behind the usual office façade, he discovered a world where coverage is so selective that it confirms the audience in its already existing world view: basic anti-Americanism, the existence of a global conspiracy against Russia, mistrust against what RT labels as “the mainstream media” are the basic themes.

“Wherever possible”, says Mr Schlak, “RT’s coverage sows doubts about Germany as a “country that works by the principles of the rule of law”. Mr Schlak’s proposals to cover facts that could be unwelcome news to Russian authorities are ignored by RT’s editor. Certain articles are qualified as “requests from Moscow” by the editorial team.

Mr. Schlak sees the real danger of RT in the fact that it is designed to confirm the audience’s pre-conceived world view, instead of looking for facts.

RT reacts with more selective reading
RT reacted to the publication of Martin Schlak’s article by claiming that Mr Schlak changed his views during his stay at RT and started to doubt mainstream media.

This is typical for the way the medium works, says Mr Schlak. While he indeed describes his doubts in the article, he also at length goes into the psychological factors behind group thinking and describes how he discards his questions in the end – facts, which RT largely ignores in its reaction.

Martin Schlak’s original article in the German magazine NEON available behind a paywall on Blendle.