Russia Today risks punitive measures by Ofcom due to bias

Russia Today (RT), Russia’s state-run broadcaster which launched a UK version on 30 of October, could incur statuary sanctions by Britain’s media regulator Ofcom. According to an Ofcom bulletin released on Monday, in fact, it seems that the Russian channel did not cover Ukraine crisis with “due impartiality” at least in four specific cases.

In particular, the bulletin refers to some RT reports about Moscow’s annexation of Crimea in March that criticized Ukrainian government as illegitimate, having links to neo-Nazis, and intent on pursuing anti-Russian policies. According to Ofcom, the extreme views of Patriots of Ukraine were essentially presented as if they were “representative of the interim Ukrainian government as a whole”.

While it recognized to RT the legitimacy of reporting news from a “Russian perspective”, Ofcom pointed out that all relevant parties’ positions must be properly reflected in matters of major political controversy and it announced that it will therefore take punitive measures in case of future breaches of the rules. At the moment, no official response by Russia Today has been released.