Russia’s RT vows to challenge ruling by UK's media regulator on impartiality
Russian TV channel RT has announced it is still strongly opposed to a December ruling by British media regulator Ofcom, which said the UK-based branch of the media outlet broke impartiality rules while reporting on the poisoning of a former Russian spy in southern England last year.
“Ofcom investigated 10 RT programs, and decided that seven were in breach; we firmly believe that none were in breach. RT is left with no choice other than to seek judicial review of the matter,” RT said in a statement Thursday.
The statement added that the Moscow-backed media organization “will be seeking judicial review of Ofcom's decisions and process in its breach findings of 20 December against the network”.
The Ofcom said in its ruling that RT had failed to give sufficient weight to a range of views in seven of its programs about the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury in March, an incident that sparked massive diplomatic expulsions between Russia and Western countries after British authorities blamed it on Moscow.
Russian authorities have roundly rejected allegations of involvement in the case. Some senior officials in Moscow have even accused the British intelligence agency MI6 of fabricating the attack for political reasons.
Russia’s own media regulator announced after the Ofcom ruling on RT that it will launch a probe into the activities of the Britain’s main media organization BBC in the country.
Ofcom has repeatedly been accused of targeting certain foreign media organizations that approach political issues in a different way than the mainstream British media. In 2012, the regulator revoked the UK license of Press TV after it accused the Iranian TV channel of violating the terms of the Communications Act by receiving editorial oversight from Tehran.
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