Presented with little comment, suffice to add former Washington DC RT correspondent Liz Wahl's comments that "personally she cannot be part of a network funded by the Russian government that whitewashes the action of Putin..." At least RT was correct [4]when it said yesterday that "Contrary to the popular opinion, RT doesn't beat its journalists into submission, and they are free to express their own opinions, not just in private but on the air." One wonders if Ms. Wahl's next stop will be MSNBC, FOX or CNN, where the truly unbiased coverage can be found.
Today's drama takes to a entirely new level the statement voiced by another RT presenter [5]who also denounced as "wrong" Russia's military intervention in Ukraine.
"I can't stress enough how strongly I am against any state intervention in a sovereign nation's affairs," Abby Martin declared in her news programme.
RT said it respected Ms Martin's views, and that she would not be reprimanded.
Ms Martin made her remarks at the end of her Breaking the Set show, broadcast from a studio in Washington.
"Just because I work here doesn't mean I don't have editorial independence," she said, adding: "What Russia did was wrong."
The outspoken presenter admitted that she did not possess in-depth knowledge of Ukraine's history or "cultural dynamics", but insisted that military intervention was not the answer.
"I will not sit here and apologise for, or defend, military aggression," she said.
RT responded as follows:
In response to the journalist's on-air statement, the Russian TV channel said: "Contrary to the popular opinion, RT doesn't beat its journalists into submission, and they are free to express their own opinions, not just in private but on the air."
The broadcaster added that it would send Ms Martin to Crimea to "give her an opportunity to make up her own mind from the epicentre of the story".
So far Ms. Martin has not taken up RT's offer to provide unbiased reporting from the "epicenter" of the story.
And now back to the US mainstream media's expansive coverage of the story of the day that it may well have been Kiev's current post-coup and US-supported acting government ordering the murder of its own civilians in an apparent provocation to escalate the regime change. Wait what?