‘We’re Lying’: RT Reporter Resigns Over Malaysia Airline Coverage

The Russian government-funded, English-language
news network RT (formerly Russia Today) today lost a correspondent
over its questionable coverage of the Malaysia Airline passenger
plane that was shot down in Ukraine yesterday.

Sara Firth, who worked for RT as a London correspondent for five
years,
told BuzzFeed:

“When this story broke I ran back into the newsroom and saw how
we were covering it already and I just knew I had to go,” she
said.

“It was the total disregard to the facts. We threw up eyewitness
accounts from someone on the ground openly accusing the Ukrainian
government [of involvement in the disaster], and a correspondent in
the studio pulled up a plane crash before that the Ukrainian
government had been involved in and said it was ‘worth
mentioning’.

“It’s not worth mentioning. It’s Russia Today all over, it’s
flirting with that border of overtly lying. You’re not telling a
lie, you’re just bringing something up. I didn’t want to watch a
story like that, where people have lost loved ones and we’re
handling it like that.

“I couldn’t do it anymore. Every single day we’re lying and
finding sexier ways to do it.”

Firth isn’t the first to resign in protest of
RT’s perceived bias. Anchor Liz Wahl
quit live on-air earlier this year, citing the network’s
“whitewashing” of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion and
annexation of Crimea.

RT shot back at Firth with a
press release:

We were not surprised by Sara Firth’s decision to leave … as she
has recently informed us that she was likely to take an offer from
another firm. …

Sara has declared that she chooses the truth; apparently we have
different definitions of the truth. We believe that the truth is
what our reporters see on the ground, with their own eyes and not
what’s printed in the morning London newspaper.

Exactly how yesterday’s airplane tragedy played out is still up
for debate, though Radio Free Europe has a good
fact sheet on the evidence at play so far.

For more Reason coverage of the ongoing crises in
Ukraine, click
here.