Combating Russia’s Global Disinformation Campaign

Now, Russia—with its eye particularly trained on the Global South—seems intent on advancing its own mirror image of Western journalism training, one in which Russian media practices are portrayed as the gold standard. Simultaneously, Moscow is challenging the world’s largest fact-checking coalitions by creating a new fact-checking network under a similar-sounding name, aiming to unite fact-checkers “who share our views and values.”

RT Academy, launched in February, initially focused on training journalists in South and Southeast Asia. Nearly 300 students completed an initial course, with some winning internships at RT’s regional bureaus, according to a press release. A course for African journalists was scheduled to begin in October. A video promo for the Africa course portrays Western media as fixated on the “same narrative” of climate change, sanctions against Russia, and LGBT issues, as compared to RT’s “alternative perspective” concentrating on day-to-day African news and Russia’s role in the region.

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Rossotrudnichestvo, a Russian foreign aid agency that is assisting the academy, said the September training “used fresh examples to show how famous news agencies like CNN, the BBC, and Deutsche Welle use fake news and spread this information worldwide, deceiving millions of people and giving them a false understanding of events in other countries.”

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Last month, Russia took more direct aim at the established fact-checking world through the creation of the Global Fact-Checking Network. The name promises confusion with the  International Fact-Checking Network, headquartered at the Poynter Institute in Florida, and the Paris-based European Fact-Checking Standards Network.

The sponsors of the embryonic Russian organization are the state news agency TASS and ANO Dialog, a Russian communications conglomerate that has been sanctioned in Europe and the United States. The sponsors’ announcement did not indicate who might join the network. However, it was issued at a “Dialogue on Fakes” forum in Moscow, which organizers said involved participants from sixty-five countries.

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Whether Russia’s latest journalistic tactics are successes or not, they follow decades of effort by Moscow to ingratiate itself with journalists, especially in the Global South. Soviet officials promoted news exchange agreements between TASS and local news agencies and brought thousands of journalists to Russia for training. Eight years before the start of the RT Academy, Sputnik began its SputnikPro training program, which it says has reached more than 10,000 journalists from eighty countries.

Sputnik denies that its training has any “political or ideological overtones” but says its work “has helped balance the situation” in post-Soviet countries where Westerners have done much journalistic training.

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Thomas Kent is the senior fellow in strategic communications at the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington, DC. A former president of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty [CIA-funded propaganda] and a senior editor at The Associated Press, he consults for governments, NGOs, and news media on disinformation and journalistic ethics issues.

American Foreign Policy Council – WikiSpooks

The Council provides information to members of the US Congress and influences the development of the US foreign policy strategy. Research papers published by it staff are regularly discussed in the US Congress, the academic community of US political scientists, as well as world leaders from other countries.

American Foreign Policy Council – SourceWatch

Example funders:

Carthage Foundation
Earhart Foundation
Sarah Scaife Foundation
Smith Richardson Foundation [CIA partner – see CIA Front Companies, Proprietaries & Contractors by Wayne Madsen]
William H. Donner Foundation

Related:

09-04-2024: RT ACADEMY LAUNCHES FIRST EDUCATIONAL COURSE FOR AFRICAN JOURNALISTS:

Launched in February 2024, the RT Academy international educational project initially focused on journalists from ASEAN and South Asian countries. Nearly 300 students have already completed the course, with many securing internships at RT’s regional bureaus.

RT established its educational program for aspiring journalists and bloggers – RT School – in Moscow in 2016. Today, it offers in-person courses for media enthusiasts, while its project RT School Online provides specialized Russian-language training and webinars accessible globally. RT Academy serves as the international educational project offering courses in foreign languages. Since its founding, over 2,000 individuals from more than 20 countries have been trained through RT School’s competitive programs, with many graduates joining the RT team.

11-20-2024: Dialogue on Fakes 2.0 Forum Presented Concept of International Fact-Checking Association

05-27-2019: How “Russia Today” created an educational project for foreign media (original)

Recently, the international news agency and radio Sputnik held its first master class of its educational project SputnikPro. This time – for Moldovan journalists and media executives. Moldova became the 14th country in which thematic modules were held in the year since the beginning of the implementation of this program. Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Sputnik, Head of the Directorate of Multimedia Centers in the Near Abroad and the Baltic States Andrei Blagodyrenko told RG about the first achievements and prospects of the project.

Please tell us more about what SputnikPro is?

Andrey Blagodyrenko: SputnikPro is a school and master classes for local journalists, press secretaries and, in general, for everyone involved in the media. The project is aimed at exchanging experience with foreign colleagues, developing media communications and professional connections. Over the course of a year, more than 15,000 people from 80 countries have already taken part in it. SputnikPro modules, in addition to Russia, were held in various formats in nine other countries of the former USSR, as well as in Greece, India, Turkey, and China.

How did you come up with such a program?

Andrey Blagodyrenko: The idea for SputnikPro came about a year and a half ago, when the agency’s editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan suggested thinking about creating a program based on the example of the Moscow School of Journalism RT (Russia Today). We immediately decided that we would implement our project not only in Moscow, but also in 10 neighboring countries, where we have large editorial centers – the so-called “hubs” – with newsrooms, press centers and radio studios. This was important for us from a marketing point of view, because Sputnik is a fairly young media outlet for the market. We wanted to show off our products so that our colleagues from national media who come to these educational programs could see how everything is organized inside us, how well we are technically equipped, how organized we are, and how well our editorial processes are streamlined.

Who conducts master classes for journalists?

Andrey Blagodyrenko: The specifics of an information agency, among other things, consist in the fact that our stars, who have been awarded the highest Russian and international professional awards, are little known to the general public and young colleagues. That is why we initially focused on master classes and lectures by our golden talent pool: a recognized expert in new media and experimental formats Natalia Loseva, winners of the photography “Oscar” – World Press Photo – Vladimir Vyatkin and Vladimir Pesnya, the best sports journalist of Russia in 1992 and 1996, laureate of the Nikolai Ozerov Medal in 2005 and the Russian Ministry of Sports “Sports Parnassus” award in 2017 Elena Vaitsekhovskaya, former editor-in-chief of the Moscow bureau of Reuters Oleg Shchedrov, head of the department for work with language editorial offices, curator of online projects Mikhail Konrad, head of the Internet technology center Alexey Filippovsky and other luminaries. Their names have become magnets for the professional audience; editors-in-chief of leading media outlets from the countries where SputnikPro sessions are held have come and continue to come to them.

But we quickly realized that we needed to expand the palette and start attracting outside speakers from among well-known media personalities. The first of them was NTV “frontman” Vadim Takmenev with his lecture in our Yerevan press center on the topic “Television or Internet?”

So, it turns out that you are sharing secrets of how the media market works in Russia?

Andrey Blagodyrenko: We understand that we represent the Russian journalistic community abroad. And of course, we tell our local colleagues about how the Russian media market is structured, and we give Russian colleagues growth points and entry points into the country. Therefore, SputnikPro is not just an educational project, but also a humanitarian one in some ways. I would like to emphasize that the program does not have any political or ideological overtones. But due to the fact that over the past 20 years in the post-Soviet space, for example, training courses for journalists have been conducted exclusively by Western media and NGOs, such as Internews, which receives 80% of its funding from the US State Department, our project has helped balance the situation in local markets and expanded our presence in this area as well.

What are your plans? Will you expand?

Andrey Blagodyrenko: SputnikPro is a growing living organism. If in 2018 we held 25 modules, that is, approximately two per month, then this year the number of modules has increased many times – on average to 4-5 per month. Many of them are organized by editorial centers in the countries on their own. The structure of the sessions is constantly changing: these are not only master classes, but also internships, discussion clubs, and practices. We are constantly striving to diversify our modules, now as part of the project we have begun to interact with the RT School of Journalism. We plan to bring the best students at the end of the year to Moscow for additional classes, including with colleagues from RT, who will share their experience in television technologies and social media.

Washington’s Unstoppable Superweapon

Defending Against Washington’s Superweapon

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A similar package could be offered to help nations set up international media platforms like Russia’s RT or Sputnik and China’s CGTN as well as domestic educational pipelines for producing local journalists, educators, and future politicians and diplomats that reflect that nation’s best interests, not Washington’s and Wall Street’s interests as programs like the US State Department’s Fulbright and Young Leadership Initiatives do.

Manufacturing Consent: How the United States Has Penetrated South African Media