High-Profile Russian Journalists Quit Jobs over Ukraine War Disinformation

EUvs­Dis­in­fo, a dis­in­for­ma­tion watch­dog run by the EU for­eign ser­vice, report­ed last week that sev­er­al high-pro­file Russ­ian jour­nal­ists have quit their jobs fol­low­ing Rus­si­a’s inva­sion of Ukraine in Feb­ru­ary. Accord­ing to the EUvs­Dis­in­fo report:

March 17, 2022 A jour­nal­ist of Russia’s largest TV chan­nel per­formed an anti-war protest dur­ing a live broad­cast. Sev­er­al jour­nal­ists have pub­licly declared they are not tak­ing part in the Kremlin’s dis­in­for­ma­tion machine and left their jobs. But will the cur­rent exo­dus of jour­nal­ists affect the broad­cast­ing of the Krem­lin out­lets?  Last week’s pub­lic dis­play of defi­ance dur­ing the Nine O’Clock News of the Chan­nel One Rus­sia (Per­vyi Kanal) is just one exam­ple of jour­nal­ists on Krem­lin out­lets who even­tu­al­ly decide to cease lying. Mari­na Ovsyan­niko­va went on live TV with a pub­lic protest against the war. She was detained, fined and, of course, fired.  Zhan­na Agalako­va, Chan­nel One Russia’s cor­re­spon­dent in Paris and ear­li­er in New York, has declared that she is quit­ting. On a ques­tion from the inde­pen­dent agency Meduza(opens in a new tab), she replied: “I think the rea­son is obvi­ous”.  Sev­er­al oth­er high-pro­file jour­nal­ists of Krem­lin-con­trolled media are also leav­ing: Liliya Gildee­va, anchor on the nation-wide broad­cast­er NTV, trav­elled abroad before hand­ing in her notice. Ivan Urgant of Chan­nel One Rus­sia protest­ed against the war already in late Feb­ru­ary and left the chan­nel. Maria Barono­va, an RT host, also left the chan­nel almost imme­di­ate­ly after the war began. Barono­va was quot­ed as saying(opens in a new tab): “A week ago, I was writ­ing about NATO pro­pa­gan­da, Rus­so­pho­bia… They were right and I was wrong.”

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Inde­pen­dent Russ­ian media report­ed ear­li­er this month that at least 150 jour­nal­ists are believed to have fled Rus­sia since the inva­sion in Feb­ru­ary. Accord­ing to a report by Agents Media:

March 7, 2022 Over the past few days, jour­nal­ists have been leav­ing Rus­sia en masse — crim­i­nal pun­ish­ment for the so-called fake news about the war and mass media block­ing have done their job. We inter­viewed employ­ees from 17 edi­to­r­i­al offices and cal­cu­lat­ed that:  In total, at least 150 jour­nal­ists have left Rus­sia in recent days. In many media out­lets, a sig­nif­i­cant part of the jour­nal­ists left — for exam­ple, almost the entire Moscow edi­to­r­i­al office of Meduza — about 20 peo­ple. The jour­nal­ists of Dozhd, Ekho Moskvy and Novaya Gaze­ta also left. Some of our col­leagues announced their depar­ture pub­licly, for exam­ple, the edi­tor-in-chief of Dozhd Tikhon Dzyad­ko, the pre­sen­ter of the same chan­nel Mikhail Fish­man, the edi­tor-in-chief of the pub­li­ca­tion Repub­lic Dmit­ry Kolezev, film crit­ic Anton Dolin. [Trans­lat­ed with Google Translate]

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In March, Rus­si­a’s par­lia­ment passed a law mak­ing pub­lic actions aimed at “dis­cred­it­ing” Rus­si­a’s army ille­gal. The law also bans the “pub­lic dis­sem­i­na­tion of delib­er­ate­ly false infor­ma­tion about the use of the Armed Forces of the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion,” where­by devi­a­tions from the Krem­lin’s offi­cial state­ments are already clas­si­fied as “false infor­ma­tion.” For now, the Krem­lin’s media cam­paign appears to have ral­lied pub­lic opin­ion behind Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Putin among the Russ­ian population.

Although the EU and the US have banned sev­er­al Russ­ian state-backed media out­lets over their dis­in­for­ma­tion on Ukraine, Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da still reach­es glob­al audi­ences through a vari­ety of chan­nels.