In a recent email interview with Chinese state mouthpiece Global Times (GT), Margarita Simonyan, the editor-in-chief of Russian news outlet RT, said that Russian and Chinese voices are alone in confronting Western mainstream journalism.
On the West’s RT Ban
Referring to the US and Europe banning RT, Simonyan said that the “facade of free press” in both regions has “completely crumbled.”
The editor accused “Western establishments” of “distorting the facts about what is going on in Ukraine for a decade.”
“They tried to silence RT for years before the Special Military Operation because they couldn’t let their audiences decide for themselves what to believe about events in Ukraine, in Russia, around the world and in their own backyards,” she elaborated on the reasoning behind the move.
“This is why they implemented any way possible, including illegal and illegitimate, to shut us down and shut us out wherever they could,” she said.
“During all this time, nobody had pointed to a single grain of evidence that what RT has reported or continues to report, is not true. When it comes to the Russian voice, or just a different perspective from theirs, it is simply not allowed to exist,” she decried.
#Opinion: For me, to die for telling the truth, for defending your Motherland, is a far less frightening fate than a slow death from an incurable disease or a life of shame for something like treason, said RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan. https://t.co/tzPEzrcPzL pic.twitter.com/NudoL8w9or
— Global Times (@globaltimesnews) October 5, 2023
Russian and Chinese Media
Against this backdrop, Simonyan said that it is “important… for Russian and Chinese media to work together in the international news space,” as it is “simply a matter of survival of Russian and Chinese voices on a global stage.”
“We are virtually alone in confronting the most powerful army of Western mainstream journalism, and such dominance makes for a dangerous, bellicose world,” the news chief stated.
On Rising Sinophobia and Russophobia
Simonyan also commented on the rising Sinophobia and Russophobia in the US, saying that it happened because the US government has perpetually “needed someone to turn their anger on, to pin the blame for all the sins and with whom to fight directly, indirectly or in a hybrid warfare.”
She concluded by stating that “today’s Russophobia and Sinophobia are not much different from classic racism and fascism.”