Monday 23rd of December 2024
Home » Blogs » Gus Leonisky's blog

democracy at work....

A Sky News journalist had snuck uninvited into Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s press conference at the G20 summit in Brazil. Once discovered, she was allowed to stay by a unanimous vote of the accredited reporters present.

Moscow’s top diplomat usually has the Russian press pool attend the conferences, along with reporters from host countries. Western journalists stopped getting invitations after their governments banned, sanctioned and denied accreditation to RT and other Russian outlets, however.

Speaking to Russian media on Wednesday about the incident Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova revealed that the unnamed “spy” was handled with professional courtesy.

“Colleagues, please vote. A Sky News journalist wants to take part in our press conference. We all know how Russian journalists are treated in the West. It’s up to you to decide whether to let her into Sergei Viktorovich’s press conference or not,” Zakharova told reporters. “There was absolute silence in the hall for a few seconds. And then everyone raised their hands – unanimous in favor of the lady staying. She blushed noticeably.”

“When you suddenly see real democracy, you blush,” RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan commented on her Telegram channel.

The British stowaway had taken a seat in the back row, holding a microphone with the BRICS logo, according to a reporter for the Russian outlet KP. Once she was identified as an outsider, the woman approached Zakharova and introduced herself properly. The Foreign Ministry spokeswoman then called for the vote, speaking English so the “guest” would understand as well.

While the Sky News employee did not ask a question during the event, she rushed towards Lavrov at the end, with a question about the Ukrainian strike on Russia using the US-supplied ATACMS missiles, according to KP.

The Russian diplomat had answered that very question earlier in the hour-long press conference, and apparently did not feel like repeating it for Sky News. His security politely but firmly blocked the Sky News journalist as Lavrov left the building, according to journalists who were present.

The EU and Canada banned RT and most other Russian outlets in March 2022, citing the Russia-Ukraine conflict. The US government eventually got around its constitutional ban on censorship by accusing RT of acting on behalf of “Russian intelligence” in September.

https://www.rt.com/russia/607950-lavrov-presser-journalist-vote/

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

“It’s hard to do cartoons without freedom…”

         Gus Leonisky

truth vs western propaganda....

Western powers are waging an information war against Russia and suppressing free speech as they continue their crackdown on the country’s media, including RT and Sputnik, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said.

Speaking on Friday at a roundtable on the Ukraine conflict and the global media landscape, attended by over 70 foreign envoys, Lavrov accused the West of shaping the media narrative to distort facts and mislead the international community about the essence of the Ukraine conflict.

While formally supporting freedom of speech, in practice the West is trying to eliminate alternative viewpoints that contradict the mainstream narrative, the minister said. 

“Given this, it is no wonder that Russian media, such as RT and Sputnik, have become their main target. They have proven that they can provide their audience with unbiased information and impartial analysis of current events,” Lavrov said.

Russia's top diplomat also recalled that Germany this week expelled Russian public broadcaster Channel 1's news crew from the country. Berlin has denied closing the Channel 1 bureau but confirmed that it had denied residence permits to a correspondent and a cameraman, citing EU legislation. Russia retaliated by expelling two employees of the German state broadcaster ARD from Moscow.

Lavrov also pointed to Ukraine’s crackdown on Russian journalists, which he said started shortly after the Western-backed coup in Kiev in 2014. “The [Vladimir] Zelensky regime has openly declared a hunt for the representatives of the Russian media, but the West either remains silent or enables him,” he said.

According to the foreign minister, Moscow has found evidence that Kiev’s spy agencies were involved in the assassinations of several Russian journalists. “We hear no condemnation of those murders from the enlightened West,” he noted.

Lavrov stressed that “no information wars, lies, and fake news will help the neo-Nazi Kiev regime,” and that Moscow will eventually achieve all of its goals in the Ukraine conflict, which include ensuring the country’s neutrality, demilitarization and denazification. 

RT and Sputnik have faced pressure from the West for years. The EU banned both organizations shortly after the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, accusing them of propaganda. Western-dominated platforms, including YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram, who long operated shadow-bans on the channels, have fully suspended RT and Sputnik accounts, citing policies to prevent the spread of misinformation.

https://www.rt.com/russia/608406-lavrov-west-rt-sputnik-crackdown/

 

READ FROM TOP.

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

 

PLEASE DO NOT BLAME RUSSIA IF WW3 STARTS. BLAME YOURSELF.