Russia plans global TV channel to boost image
By Guy Faulconbridge
MOSCOW, June 6 (Reuters) – Russia is planning to launch a global,
24-hour English-language television channel to project Moscow’s view
of the world and help spruce up its image.
“Russia is a major country and a massive country so it needs to make
its position known to audiences all over the world,” Margarita
Simonyan, 25-year-old editor-in-chief of the new channel that will be
called Russia Today or RTTV, told Reuters.
The launch of the channel, initially funded with $25-30 million, comes
as Kremlin officials have long complained that foreign media
misrepresent Russia and reflects their growing concern about Russia’s
standing.
The decade-long conflict in Chechnya has tainted Russia’s image abroad
as well as the Kremlin’s two-year battle with the owners of oil major
YUKOS and the trial of its founder, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, or Moscow’s
perceived interference in Ukraine’s pro-Western “Orange Revolution”
last year.
President Vladimir Putin’s adviser Mikhail Lesin, a former head of the
Press Ministry, was one of the prime motors behind the project,
Russian daily Vedomosti said.
The channel, due to start by the end of this year, will draw heavily
on resources from state news agency RIA Novosti and will be
transmitted via satellite to audiences in the former Soviet Union, the
United States, Europe and Asia.
Simonyan, a former Kremlin correspondent for state television channel
Rossiya, said funds for the project would come from commercial banks
and the state. But she declined to be more specific.
“It has been long overdue for Russia to have a channel of this kind —
other countries have them so it is only correct for Russia to have one
too,” she said, adding that the channel would provide “objective and
interesting” reporting on Russia.
06/06/05 15:01 ET
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress