Please read this article:
http://www.reuters.com/...
Putin is strengthening his hold on state-sponsored media and building a new agency from the ground up:
"The main focus of ... Rossiya Segodnya (Russia Today) is to highlight abroad the state policy and public life of the Russian Federation," said a decree signed by Putin.
Notice they have changed it from 'RIA Novosti' to Rossiya Segodnya, which unless Reuters has mistranslated, means 'Russia Today' (the same thing that the acronym 'RT' stands for).
It's my position that we, as a community on Daily Kos, should reject citations from RT (english-language) to justify anything we are attempting to communicate as 'fact' or 'truth'. It is, again in my opinion, impossible for such an authoritarian-held news organization to be credible, even if they are occasionally right when it serves their own interests. AT THE VERY BEST it's Fox News, with full state power behind it.
Here's the money quote from the article that it seems some of the commentors in the thread have missed:
The Kremlin already funds an English-language TV channel called RT which was initially known as Russia Today. It is not clear whether the two will operate separately and RT's head, Margarita Simonyan, said she had been unaware of the move.
The Guardian is still out there. Al-Jazeera, while owned by feudal lords, is IMO still a money-making venture first and foremost and therefore more reliable on most events than RT (or most of the US media when it comes to non-Western reporting, for that matter). Agreeing to no longer use RT as a source, and for the more 'notorious' kossacks who occasionally feature on RT to refuse to take part in their broadcasts, should be a no-brainer with the above-linked news.
Are you in?