An archive episode. A reporter on the team that reviewed leaked emails from Russian state television describes the daily news digests circulated inside the broadcaster. He says the operation looked a lot like a normal newsroom, but one cherry-picking the internet and foreign cable news to push the Kremlin's story.
Yeah, absolutely. And so to get a picture of how VGTRK is working, did you say there are just thousands or however many workers just combing the internet to find videos and audio that could potentially be used as propaganda? Or was it mostly sent from Kremlin or security agencies?
…the ground. And so you have what is in some ways a very normal, like inside look at a television channel, but on the other side, it's sort of a sort of a funhouse mirror because it's sort of so distorted in terms of what they're projecting to the millions of people who are watching their channels.
Yeah, like imagine a Bloomberg news or Reuter news digest each day going out, but in place of, you know, your spot oil prices and election results and statements from Angela Merkel or something, you just have dozens and dozens of right-wing YouTube channels supporting theories about bioweapons labs in Ukraine. And, you know, you identify that Roger Stone has joined in the chorus and here he is. And here's the Chinese foreign ministry spokesman backing it in this way. And so it's just this, it is this funhouse mirror version of news media where instead of what we would think of as verified stuff, it's cherry-picking the best pieces of the internet and cable news and other things from around the world to put forward the Russian narrative to its own people. And it is remarkable how sophisticated and capable they were at doing that.
It's quite a daily news roundup in my inbox.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
So I know you touched on this a little bit, but just to establish, what types of media does VGTRK pull clips from? And why more conservative outlets and lesser known fringe media?