Ofcom's double standards and hypocrisy just staggering as it censors Russia Today

WHERE IS THE ‘WIDE RANGE OF SIGNIFICANT VIEWS’ ON UK MAINSTREAM?

By Liz Baker

READ this quote from media regulator Ofcom and see if you can guess who they are talking about: “... may have failed to represent a “wide range of significant views.”

Remember the in-depth coverage of the UK-wide protests on the BBC, ITV, Sky and in all the national newspapers?

Remember the unrivalled coverage of the Canadian Freedom Convoy those cutting edge bastions of free speech delivered to your door, smartphone, laptop or TV?

And who can forget the hours of investigate journalism put into unearthing the countless Covid jab injuries by those same news outlets?

Not to mention the questions over the lack of efficacy in masks, the questioning voices over the harms of lockdowns etc etc.

No? Well that is because this wide range of significant views was censored.

Only, Ofcom’s quote is not referring to any of these organisations. It is referring to television network, Russia Today [RT].

So while the mainstream media is full of reports on Russian attacks on Ukrainian sites and of outrage from ministers and commentators alike at the war, anyone genuinely interested in the conflict and its causes might wish to hear the other point of view to make a truly informed judgment. Anything else falls under the umbrella of censorship, right?

If so, that is going to be harder now since Sky, Virgin, Freeview and others today summarily removed RT from their lists. It was also removed from YouTube and other social media platforms, making it pretty much impossible for the channel to broadcast.

One could see the move as part of the sanctions imposed against Russia, or as Western attempts to control the narrative. An article in the Times yesterday reported that Ofcom had opened 15 investigations into the ‘Kremlin-backed channel’, saying, as we have already outlined, that the regulator believed RT’s coverage may have failed to represent a “wide range of significant views”.

Well, it may indeed have failed in that direction. All of our mainstream media failed to represent a ‘wide range of significant views’ during the last two years of intensive Covid coverage because OfCcom itself penalised outlets that dared to try to represent just such a range of significant views on the subject.

The questions that come to mind are:

• Wouldn’t it help UK viewers and ministers to hear some of the arguments from the Russian side so that a more balanced view can be taken and so that we (and particularly Government ministers) can be forewarned of its intensions?

• Won’t there be a backlash in Russia? It would make sense now for them to remove the ‘Westminster-backed’ BBC World Service channel which would deprive the Russian public of the Western European view of events.

• Although removing this conduit for Russian propaganda should hold them back a little, at least when it comes to winning hearts and minds in the West (assuming the country is aiming for that), it is unlikely to stop them disseminating their message in other ways. As we now know, both Russian and Ukrainian hackers are brilliant at manipulating social media, emails and chat rooms to their advantage.

So who is creating the biggest problem here? Russia Today? UK mainstream news?

Or Ofcom itself...?