Russians have long been dismayed at how foreign media characterizes their homeland. This week’s Time cover gaffe, in which the magazine mistakes a cathedral for the Kremlin, is the latest addition to a collection of confusion.

One of the primary reasons for the creation of RT almost twelve years ago was Russian exasperation at the dreadful Western press coverage of this country – a problem caused by a reliance on poorly trained correspondents in Moscow and willful ignorance from news desks back home. Not to mention a sort of hive mentality where individual outlets and reporters present stereotype as fact. 

This sad state of affairs has produced many low points, from ‘experts’ helping inspire rumors of Vladimir Putin’s death, to makey-uppy pieces on what he allegedly eats for breakfast. We’ve also had hacks suggest Russia is about to implode or take over the world, often in the same week. That said, I don’t recall anything as dumb as what Time magazine has pulled off on the cover of its latest edition.

...

You’ve probably seen the “artwork” by now. It shows the White House being consumed by Moscow’s Saint Basil’s Cathedral, a landmark Church on Red Square – an image which suggests Time is trying to portray how the Russian Orthodox Church has taken over the US presidency.

Except this, evidently, isn’t the publication’s intention. Because it’s clear they wanted to illustrate the Kremlin, not a house of the holy, dominating the US President’s residence. And this is certainly how the intention has been perceived by American media figures and organizations, such as NBC Senior Editor Bradd Jaffy (with his 2,800 Twitter shares) and USA Today.

To make things worse, Time author Massimo Calabresi is a former member of the Moscow “hack pack” – a title western journalists in the Russian capital have chosen for themselves. Thus, you’d think he’d know Putin doesn’t work in a church!

Or a mosque, for that matter. Which is how CNN presented the cover when it described the building’s onion domes as “minarets” – presumably because the Orthodox Christian religion isn’t scary enough for their agenda.

read more:

https://www.rt.com/op-edge/389125-time-white-house-kremlin/

Why are so many Americans so hostile to Russia? The question is powerfully evoked by a new BBC analysis of Donald Trump’s problems.

The 50-minute program, “Trump and Russia: A Long Relationship,” was first broadcast by the BBC World Service over the weekend and features extensive explication by several experts based in the United States, Russia, and the United Kingdom. Although some of the participants ignored host Owen Bennett Jones’s exhortations to keep strictly to the facts, the program nonetheless generally avoided baseless innuendo and by comparison with recent U.S. mainstream media coverage seemed a model of impartiality. Certainly it was notable for avoiding the worst excesses of anti-Russian hysteria that lately has been so prevalent elsewhere.

As the BBC’s world affairs correspondent Paul Wood put it, “anything you can say about President Trump and Russia is still an allegation, not proven.” Wood went on to provide a useful summing up of the main allegations, enumerating them as follows:

1. The Trump campaign allegedly entered into a treasonable conspiracy with Russian intelligence to steal the election.
2. As a businessman who at times has been financially embarrassed, Donald Trump has allegedly been willing to take money from the Russian mafia.
3. Trump is allegedly vulnerable to Russian blackmail because of sex tapes recorded in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

To this list must now be added the charge that in remarks allegedly made to James Comey about Michael Flynn, Trump was guilty of attempting to obstruct the course of American justice.

Probably the program’s most important contribution was to highlight the distinctly puzzling role played by U.S. espionage agencies. On the one hand, these agencies have been unanimous in claiming that it was indeed the Russians—and no one else—who hacked the Democratic National Committee and supplied embarrassing emails to Wikileaks; on the other hand, however, they have refused to provide hard evidence, suggesting that to do so might compromise their sources.

Yet it is not as if the American espionage services seem particularly deserving of our trust. After all, these are the same organizations (and indeed in some cases even the same individuals, with James Clapper as an example) that played such a notorious role in facilitating George W. Bush’s rush to war with Iraq in 2003.

read more:

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/trump-and-the-russians-t...

"We know the Russians are engaged and active, both in the over sense through the use of RT, the Russian Kremlin-sponsored television station, through Sputnik and other information sources, which now seem to be the favored go-to sources in the White House press room," Podesta told The Washington Post during The Daily 202 Live.

He added that "even" Sputnik and RT "ask tough questions these days, I guess."

Podesta was asked about the Russian alleged interference in the 2016 US presidential election and US President Donald Trump response to it, as well as the ongoing probe into the so-called "collusion" between the Trump campaign and Moscow.

Interestingly, by answering the question in such a way, Podesta, thus, indirectly confirmed numerous Trump's statements on the ongoing "Russia story." As Trump believes, the accusations of his campaign's collusion with Russia are just an excuse for the Democrats to justify Hillary Clinton's loss in the election she had been predicted to win.

read more:

https://sputniknews.com/us/201705241053950577-podesta-rt-sputnik-white-h...