Russian Propaganda is the Best News on TV
Prior to 2018 I generally got my news from internet sources, youtube videos, and occasionally print media. Last year I got DirectTV and as a result ended up watching a lot of CNN. During the 2016 election I enjoyed some of CNNs coverage, particularly CNN Tonight with Don Lemon. I thought he did a good job of presenting issues in an intelligent manner. Having DirectTV gave me 24/7 access to CNN and I ended up watching it about 3 hours a day, at first it was nice, I enjoyed Jake Tapper and Wolf Blitzers programs in particular. But after a while I began to notice a certain narrative being spread. This narrative involved a few things: 1. America was perfect and moral before January 20th 2017, and 2. The military and intelligence community is to be trusted at all times. And 3. There were no disagreements before Donald Trump became president. MSNBC followed a similar narrative. Fox News is different but uses the same tricks, instead of blaming everything on Trump they blame everything on republicans.
As I learned more about history and politics the news became harder and harder to watch. The same people that told me that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and that failed to report on the Bush and Obama administrations attacks on civil liberties, are still on the air. What is worse is often times former Bush and Obama politicians (as well as FBI and CIA agents that lied to us) are paid contributors to these channels.
So I looked to alternative sources, which lead me to RT (Russia Today). RT is a news channel funded almost entirely by the Russian government with the clear goal of pushing American civil discourse to benefit Russia, and introducing or increasing distrust in America’s political establishment for the benefit of the Putin regime.
Despite all this RT is a way more informative and intellectually stimulating news source than most of what you will find on CNN. “Boom Bust” for example is a 30 minute business and economics program that focuses on cryptocurrency, the coming recession, and the current state of the stock market. Three things American news media today rarely covers, unless of course it is being used as an anti-Trump punch-line. Another favorite of mine is “Worlds Apart” hosted by Oksana Boyko. It’s your typical interview show, except Boyko is a lot more combative than your average host. Usually the guest is a former politician from an Eastern European or an Asian country.
Overall RT is not perfect, their coverage of the United States while often accurate is done to disenfranchise Americans and push beliefs that benefit Vladimir Putin. The channel is also extremely repetitive (which is not surprising since it is almost entirely government funded and probably does not have much money to burn) and will often repeat some of the same programming for months. The best thing to do is to just watch thirty or so of programming a day, in addition to getting your news from other sources. RT has its issues but if you want coverage that’s a little different RT is a good place to start. However the reality is that we should not have to watch Russian propaganda to get a good news story.
