The Irony that is Russia Today - www.rt.com

   
So, good ol' Zzoott's not written much here in quite a long while. Could be that the blogosphere is just too clogged, what with a thousand thousand thousand voices all shouting at the same time, rather like the intro to U2's 1993 Zooropa  www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEIMqyHIwlQ. Trying to get a word of any kind in edgewise among all that din and clatter seems a futile effort most of the time - sort of like banging your heart against some mad bugger's wall - www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvZqLchakTo. But, well, the show must go on, and so, too, must the world of zooty things still be explored. Thus, Russia Today and the ironic enigma it presents is fodder for today's blogging effort.


If you have not yet visited Russia Today's website - www.rt.com - or watched any of its broadcast 'news' reports carried on any number of cable systems or available 'live' through its website, you are doing yourself a disservice. Not all that different than the initial iteration of Al Jazeera http://america.aljazeera.com/ in concept and scope (and Al Jazeera's come a long, long way since then, turning into a fairly comprehensive, mature, and objective - yes, objective - news point), Russia Today is a rollicking romp, cast in the guise of providing legitimate news, but so Pravdaesque in its presentation and production values as to appear much more Daily Show http://thedailyshow.cc.com/ or Colbert Report http://thecolbertreport.cc.com/ than PBS Newshour http://www.pbs.org/newshour/ . Lest you be skeptical, take a gander, for instance, at the following article in today's RT, regarding the poor, stranded, man-without-a-country Edward Snowden: http://rt.com/news/165468-snowden-courage-foundation-launch/


Read it - no, actually read it - amusing and astonishing at the same time, but, upon reflection, troubling in the same sense that the former USSR's Pravda http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pravda was so concerning back in the First Cold War's day: It provides a single-source point for 'news' coverage for, quite literally, hundreds of millions of folks who turn to no other news service, either because they can't or they won't. It makes even better watching fodder - and do yourself a favor and actually watch an entire broadcast - and you'll find it so much more reality television than legitimate news source. It's not bad stuff, really, from an entertainment standpoint; however, if one's trolling the channels or surfing the internet for actual, legitimate, objective news, well, RT is decidedly not that place.


Now, good ol' Zzoott's no prude to politicking, and not one for nationalistic chest-pounding or one of those 'Merica folks - http://merica-for-mericans.tumblr.com/ - but you have to recognize RT as it is, for what it is, rather than take it too seriously: a Russian propaganda tool, plain and simple.  That's what Al Jazeera was before it worked hard to reach legitimacy, and that's where RT lies right now in the spectrum of 'news' sources. It's in an infantile stage, and that goes a long way toward explaining its infantile content and presentation.


While lots of folks, including lots of legitimate news media sorts, have complained about RT and what it is and does, it is that kind of press that raises RT's stock as, the more fuss one makes about something the more likely it is to gain a better foothold by the act of that mention, no matter how denigrating the commentary or lop-sided the presentation. It's like a politician said to me once: "Zzoott," he said, "I don't care what they might choose to say about me in the newspaper, as long as they spell my name correctly." The same logic applies to Russia Today - it does not really matter what anyone might say, it only matters that they say it about Russia Today in order to drive their numbers up. And, I think it's safe to say Tsar Vladimir I approves of this message.