Russia Today Anchor: What Russia Did in Ukraine Was Wrong

Abby Martin, an American anchor at the Russian
government-sponsored cable network Russia Today, slammed Russia’s
military intervention in the Ukrainian region of Crimea at the end
of her show last night. “What Russia did is wrong,” she told her
viewers, admitting she didn’t know as much as she should about the
history and cultural dynamics of the region, but that nevertheless
she did know that “military intervention is never the answer.”

In pointing out that American journalists and political
commentators who were some of the biggest cheerleaders for U.S.
intervention are now the loudest voices against Russian
intervention,
Glenn Greenwald notes that Martin’s “unapologetic denunciation”
of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on an “unquestionably”
pro-Russian network doesn’t quite have a parallel in the U.S.
Writing at the Intercept, Greenwald asks:  “was there even a
single U.S. television host who said anything comparable to this in
the lead-up to, or the early stages of, the U.S. invasion of Iraq?”
If Pat Buchanan had a show in 2003, the answer is yes.
Nevertheless, Pat Buchanan is not representative of American media
culture or politics.

Russia Today responded to Martin’s segment, and the hoopla
surrounding it, by
insisting it “doesn’t beat its journalists into submission” and
that they’re free to express their opinions, in private and on-air.
In its response, the network announced it would be sending Martin
to Crimea to “give her an opportunity to make up her own mind from
the epicentre of the story.”

Watch Martin’s segment below:

Disclosure: I’ve been
on
RT
several
times and have no complaints about those appearances. If I only
appeared on media outlets I agree with 100 percent, or even just
most of the time, I probably wouldn’t appear anywhere.