UK lawmakers should be making decisions about appearing on Russian media, such as the RT broadcaster, on their own, but they should recognize that they risk being used for propaganda purposes if they do this, UK Prime Minister Theresa May said on Wednesday.
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 12th September, 2018) UK lawmakers should be making decisions about appearing on Russian media, such as the RT broadcaster, on their own, but they should recognize that they risk being used for propaganda purposes if they do this, UK Prime Minister Theresa May said on Wednesday.
May's comments come in the wake of criticism facing Alex Salmond, the Scottish former first minister, who hosts a chat show on RT. UK politicians have been saying Salmond is shaming Scotland and calling on the ex-first minister to quit the show.
"We all have doubts about the objectivity of the reporting on Russia Today [RT] which does remain a tool of propaganda for the Russian state ... The decisions about appearing on Russia today is a matter of judgment for each individual, but it should be clear that they risk being used as propaganda tools by the Russian state," May said addressing the members of parliament.
Margarita Simonyan, the editor-in-chief of RT, commented on May's statement by noting that the prime minister had made it while the UK lawmakers had been openly weighing plans to sack her.
"Facing resignation, dismissal, poisoning or meteorism? Blame it on RT," Simonyan said.
In July, UK Home Secretary Sajid Javid asserted that too many UK lawmakers supported the "Russian propaganda machine" and said that those parliamentarians who upheld RT had to recognize they might lose the support of their voters if they continued doing that.
The United Kingdom has repeatedly accused RT and other Russian media of meddling it its internal affairs, particularly in the Brexit referendum, something repeatedly denied by Moscow.
May has recently been facing criticism over her way of dealing with the process of the UK withdrawal from the European Union amid the possibility of a no-deal Brexit voiced by many UK and EU politicians. The resignations of Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and Brexit Secretary David Davis in July over disagreements with May's vision of future relations with the European Union have also dealt a blow to the prime minister.
