Stay Far, Far Away from RT! Listen to Pentagon Contractors on CNN Instead

RT is poisoning young minds with insidious YouTube videos. We must appeal to trusted Pentagon analysts on CNN for guidance during these deeply uncertain times...

Riley Waggaman

16 hours ago

You can trust them, they're generals!

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RT has always been an object of ridicule among respectable journalists who write serious stories about incubator massacres, aluminum tubes and other fairytale horrors used to rationalize white phosphorous attacks on brown people countries.
But recently the Kremlin-funded news organization has received more unwanted attention than the prettiest girl at the debutante ball — especially from NATO, which in this stretched metaphor is the greasy guy in the corner who can't dance.
The latest "RT is a sneaky strumpet" diatribe is a hard-hitting Washington Post exposé, "How Russia Today is using YouTube". We don't want to sound presumptuous, but we're pretty sure RT is using YouTube for...posting videos? Is there any other way to use YouTube? (Spoiler alert: No.)
The article, written by scholars at George Washington University's Center for YouTube Studies, features many bar graphs and thought-provoking factoids ("the RT Arabic channel, since its inception in December 2014, blasts out approximately 125 videos every week"). Yes, because Russians don't upload videos — they blast them with GRAD rockets.
The WaPo investigation never actually identifies concrete examples of RT Misinformation (only that it rudely reports on Ukraine, and African Americans getting shot by the police), because it is already well-established that RT's YouTube videos are secret prayers to Moloch. So which television broadcasters can we trust? Any news program that allows Pentagon contractors to pose as concerned citizens is a safe bet.
As The New York Times reported in 2007:

Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity...is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found.
The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air.

...
Records and interviews show how the Bush administration has used its control over access and information in an effort to transform the analysts into a kind of media Trojan horse — an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks.

But the Pentagon "analyst" program didn't end with Bush! As The Nation recently documented, retired military officers like General Jack Keane still appear on television as pragmatic advocates for cluster-bombing Muslims:

Left unsaid during his media appearances (and left unmentioned on his congressional witness disclosure form) are Keane’s other gigs: as special adviser to Academi, the contractor formerly known as Blackwater; as a board member to tank and aircraft manufacturer General Dynamics; a “venture partner” to SCP Partners, an investment firm that partners with defense contractors, including XVionics, an “operations management decision support system” company used in Air Force drone training; and as president of his own consulting firm, GSI LLC.
To portray Keane as simply a think tank leader and a former military official, as the media have done, obscures a fairly lucrative career in the contracting world. For the General Dynamics role alone, Keane has been paid a six-figure salary in cash and stock options since he joined the firm in 2004; last year, General Dynamics paid him $258,006.

Or as Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) discovered in a recent study of American TV talk shows, from September 7 through 21, "205 sources appeared on the programs discussing military options in Syria and Iraq. Just six of these guests, or 3 percent, voiced opposition to US military intervention."
Confused? Don't be.