Political PR: Russia Has The Right To Tell Their Story on Iran Nuclear Deal

In the aftermath of the admission from top Obama adviser Ben Rhodes that the administration essentially lied to the American public in creating an “echo chamber” of experts to sell the controversial Iran nuclear deal, the Kremlins propaganda arm, Russia Today is lashing out at European and American government funded media operations.

We agree with Russia Today that the Russian government has the right to use modern day media methods to tell their side of the story. In today’s world controlling content is what smart countries, brands and people do. 

In an op-ed published today, Russia Today notes “Eurocrats are finding it more difficult these days to blame every negative event and situation in Europe on Russia. That doesn’t stop them trying. Recently, they’ve been hard at work linking Moscow to the – predominantly Libyan, Syrian, Afghan and Iraqi (in origin) – migrant crisis, despite the fact that Russia only intervened in one of those countries [with its blessing] and America and its NATO appendage bombed all four and invaded two [without].”

The piece continues: “Once upon a time, it was all so simple for the Western establishment. And it came with sound, rather than vision. America’s CIA had its Radio Liberty, broadcasting Washington’s ideology to the Communist world. Britain’s BBC and its World Service commended itself on impartiality and promotion of democracy while maintaining vast colonial presence.”

The Russian funded government outlet notes that in the ‘80’s CNN “revolutionized journalism by pioneering rolling news” and along with non stop news, many different media outlets were created.  In a world where everyone can define news as they see fit on social media, along with Fox News and CNBC, there are many government funded media outlets worldwide.

As Russia Today – rightfully – notes, “RT was launched in 2005. It’s now part of a crowded field of rolling news organizations from non-Anglosphere countries – such as Al Jazeera (Qatar, 1996), CCTV (China, 2000), Press TV (Iran, 2007), DW (Germany, 2001) and France 24 (2006). The latter pair have an almost identical editorial line to the BBC, CNN and the others from the myriad of Western NATO-zone broadcasters.”

While American government funded organizations like BBG noted that they are“in the business of trying to influence people to feel better about America,” why is Russia denied the right to do the same thing?

BBC does it, Qatar does it, America does it, and so does – and should – Russia. BBG – whose board members include Michael Kempner of MWW PR – absurdly last year compared Russian propaganda to ISIS and Al Qaeda.  With an outlook like that how could one not expect Russia to tell their viewpoints to the world?

As Russia today concludes, “RT was founded in response to overwhelmingly constricted and partial coverage of Russia across the Western corporate media and state-funded apparatuses, like Radio FreeEurope/Radio Liberty, (RFE/RL) Voice of America (VoA) and BBC. This network has been massively successful on traditional platforms (70 million weekly TV viewers in 38 countries, according to Ipsos) and in digital (over 100 million unique monthly visitors to RT.com websites – more than Euronews, DW, France 24, Al Jazeera and all of the BBG outlets combined) and social media (world leader on YouTube, with 3.3 billion views and counting).”

Like their viewpoint or not, Russia understands the world of media and public relations – and their editorial is accurate and right.