Russia Today Launches Large Scale Ad Campaign in Britain

The Kremlin-funded 24 hour English-language russian television news channel, which is already widely available across the United Kingdom has commenced a large scale advertising campaign on roadside billboards around the country.  The channel, which is seen by some as a Russian propaganda outlet, is available on the Sky satelite platform as well as the UK's digital terrestrial platform, which is soon to become the default way viewers in the country recieve their television pictures after the digital switchover is completed.

The Guardian newspaper's Luke Harding writes;

Two decades after the demise of Pravda, the Kremlin's 24-hour English language TV channel, Russia Today (RT), is launching its first major advertising blitz across the UK. Dubbed North Korean TV by its detractors, the channel, available on satellite and cable TV, gives an unashamedly pro-Vladimir Putin view of the world, and says it seeks to correct the "biased" western view offered by the BBC and CNN.

"What we see as black and white might not be black and white. It's making people question their own stereotypes," Margarita Simonyan, RT's 29-year-old editor-in-chief, explains. "We offer an alternative to the mainstream view."

Certainly, RT's advertising campaign is provocatively contrarian – casting doubt, for example, on climate change in the week of the Copenhagen summit, and comparing a British bobby to a tattooed football hooligan.

But is anyone actually going to watch it? "I don't believe in unbiased views. Of course we take a pro-Russian position. The BBC says it openly promotes British values," notes Simonyan.

Next year the Russian government will spend $1.4 billion (£866m) on international propaganda – more than on fighting unemployment. In January RT launches a Spanish service aimed at Latin America, a region of growing Kremlin geopolitical interest; RT already broadcasts in Arabic.

Read the full article here.