RT — the channel formerly known as Russia Today — is a journalistic and ethical travesty, too often deployed to broadcast apologia for a murderous dictator. No one should appear on it, no one should work for it and absolutely no one should trust it. In 2019 it was fined £200,000 for a “serious breach” of impartiality during reports of the Skripal poisoning.
That doesn’t mean that the UK should ban it.
The possibility of a ban was renewed yesterday when Liz Truss, the Foreign Secretary, said that the media regulator Ofcom should reassess whether RT was allowed to broadcast in the country. There would certainly be some merit to shutting it down — RT has routinely breached Ofcom rules and has faced significant fines for breaching rules on impartiality. The regulator has always stopped short of banning RT before, however, and the timing would be dire if it were to do so now.
Content from our partners
