With the start of Russian military operations in Ukraine, a significant number of journalists from different parts of the world working for Russian media such as RT (Russia Today) and Sputnik resigned from their posts, such as English correspondents Shadia Edwards-Dashti and Jonny Tickle and Russian editor-in-chief and activist Maria Boronova.
In fact, unlike the majority of Spanish-speaking journalists from these media who remained in their positions accepting the editorial line of the Russian government, Inna Afinogenova, one of the most popular youtubers and journalists in Spanish, resigned from RT due to her disagreement with the war and the propagandistic role of the media in which he worked.
The side effects of conflicts in the Russian press are not new. In fact, in 2014, RT’s American presenter Liz Wahl resigned mid-air for similar reasons. However, the stance of these journalists contradicts Vladimir Putin’s assertion that RT is “a fully independent broadcaster, despite being financed by the state”.
The creation of these types of communication projects is not something new in the world. Particularly, but not exclusively, non-democratic states have been characterized by employing these agencies politically and militarily with the aim of influencing foreign audiences, supported by slogans of supposed editorial independence.
If you’re not with me, you’re against me
Inna Afinogenova’s journalistic credibility has always been questioned by the traditional media in the region for working for RT.
Since 2017, the Russian journalist has already been criticized by the director of the Colombian magazine Semana, Vicky Davila, the journalist of El Financiero de México, Fernando García, and even by the editor of the Spanish newspaper El País, David Alandete, who claimed that the content of the The means of communication, being financed by the Russian state, favored its allies in the region, such as Venezuela and all the leaders or political parties classified as left-wing.
Furthermore, on repeated occasions, criticisms suggested, without sufficient evidence, that Russian media publications were inorganic and that they were disseminated and viralized by an army of fake accounts. Therefore, his work was not journalistic, but a tendentious and highly politicized propagandist product.
However, the Russian journalist consistently maintained that the content she produced was unaffected by the Russian government’s political goals. And, in fact, she has suggested several times that the discomfort it causes in these Spanish-language media was due to the low quality of their journalism, which evidently served the interests of traditional Latin American political parties close to the interests of the United States.
In this sense, the comments section of her publications was a fervent space for interactions in which her believers mostly congregated, who thanked her for being a beacon of light in the midst of the limited journalistic analysis of Latin American political and social phenomena.
With the escalation of the Ukrainian conflict, the analysis of the Russian journalist began to distance itself from the editorial line of the Russian government and, therefore, from RT, since it was evident that she disagreed with both the actions of NATO and its allies, as well as those of the Russian State. .
Later, their content was censored and removed from the social network YouTube, like much of the pro-Russian content. But at the same time, the journalist suddenly disappeared from the Russian channel. In her reappearance, months later through a video on her own YouTube channel, the journalist explained that she had been absent, among other things, due to her dismissal from RT due to editorial differences. This caused her accounts to lose followers.
“Independent” bias
The example of Russian journalist Inna Afinogenova highlights the high polarization that exists between media financed by non-democratic states, such as Iran’s RT or HispanTV. These are media that employ slogans such as “question more” or “show an alternative point of view” to offer a type of journalism close to the “truth”. However, these are information weapons that polarize and favor particular interests.
But this phenomenon is not unique to these types of regimes. Western media in democratic countries also claim to be “independent” and, in the end, their reach and depth are limited by private economic or political factors. Therefore, informing society is not its only objective.
In this context, if we assume that the Russian journalist’s decision to leave RT is not a media strategy to increase her number of followers on social networks, her dismissal would be a lesson in journalistic integrity. Especially at a time when the digital age, monetization and popularity prevail over informative coherence.
Finally, what the case of the Russian journalist highlights is the gap that exists between the editorial line of journalists working for the big media and the media themselves. Therefore, if what we are looking for is authentic independence, it seems clear that it will be easier to find it among people who dedicate themselves to journalism than among the media.
