I'm sorry that I was the one who was not muted and we played the YouTube stream in a loop. So good morning. My name is Daniela Kraus. I'm the General Secretary of the Press Club Concordia. We are currently here in Vienna, Austria. Concordia is the oldest press club in the world. It was founded in 1859. Welcome to everybody who hasn't joined one of our talks so far. This is a series of talks about context and backgrounds. And it's also by Mirjana Tomic. Good morning, Mirjana. Good morning. It is a cooperation between the Press Club and FUM, the Forum for Journalism and Media in Vienna. And actually, when we planned this talk, it was because RT planned to come to Austria and open an outlet because it was banned in Germany. So we decided to invite Stephen Hutchins. Stephen, good morning. Good morning. Nice to see you all. Nice to see you. To give us some background on RT and how it works and what are the meanings between what we are reading here. And so the situation changed totally. And now we will talk maybe about more recent happenings, but still it's our intention to give some background and to learn about how RT is working and what is the modus operandi of RT and what is its impact. So that's it from my side. I only have to say, please mute yourself when you are not speaking. This talk is uh recorded and also live streamed via youtube so first you can re-watch but second if you uh ask during the live q and a session that we will have afterwards uh this will be recorded um as well so please note that so that's it from my side and i uh hand over to miriana miriana the screen is yours. Thank you very much, Daniela. Thank you very much, Stephen, for joining us. Good morning, everyone, or good afternoon in some parts of the world. These are very difficult times and things are changing very, very fast. Between the moment Daniela suggested the topic and Stephen and I discussed it, everything has changed or hasn't it? I'm not so sure. So let me just start very briefly. The idea is to understand how RT functions, who does it reach, and then to assess if it is a security threat because Brussels, the European Union and many countries are deciding to ban RT. So according to the article 10 of the European Convention here, right? The freedom of expression can be suspended in case of a security threat. And before, I also have the feeling that since Brussels announced, and some countries are now reviewing if they should allow RT to be seen, I have the feeling that people who have never heard of it are actually watching it. And all of a sudden it is off screen like it is in Austria since yesterday because the main cable provider decided to ban it. So before we discuss RT, I would like Stephen, who is world expert on the topic, and we shall have now his CV in the chat, as well as the link to his study, to explain to us, how does RT work? How many people work there? What is the relationship between RT editors and political authorities? Let's have a background so that we all know what we are talking about. So Stephen and I will talk for about 30 minutes and then it will be open for Q&A. Stephen, please, the floor or the screen is yours. And thank you so much for joining us. Well, thank you. Thank you. That's quite a lot to get through. I will talk very briefly and then you can prompt me with more questions because I don't want to hog the floor for too long. It was set up as such and its budget is provided by the Russian state overwhelmingly. It does earn, in certain jurisdictions, it does earn a little bit of money from cable subscriptions and even advertising. But it's financed overwhelmingly by the Russian state. overwhelmingly by the Russian state. And it has a very generous budget, both by comparison with other Russian media outlets, but also by comparison with other world international broadcasters. So currently the budget stands at approximately €350 million per year, and that is approximately parallel with BBC World Service. One can complicate things by breaking down the different streams that make up the BBC World Service. But RT's budget is certainly on a par with BBC World Service. It is higher than that of France 24. It is higher than that of Deutsche Welle. It is higher than either Voice of America or Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, though combined, those two broadcasters have a slight edge on RT. So the fact that it receives such generous funding is already indicative of the importance that the state and the Kremlin attribute to it. It broadcasts and has content in a range of languages, total seven, though not all of these have broadcast wings. So the languages of fine-arty content include Russian, French, English, German, Arabic, Spanish, and there is a small presence in Mandarin, although that is negligible, which in itself is quite interesting. Of those, it is only English, French, Spanish, and Arabic for which you will find broadcast content. Of course, there has been a question over German and that was actually the context for the conversation with that with as originally conceived. With English, two versions of this RT UK and RT US so overarching those those two channels there's RT International which is the kind of umbrella organization that generates much of the content and and so RT in our US and RT UK will share content produced by RT International. But then there is local content broadcast by RT UK and RT US. And then similarly, the other broadcast channels do produce some local content. And there is a degree of cross-pollination and sharing. So some content made by RT France, for example, will occasionally appear on RT UK with subtitles or as usual, dubbing in this context. It is a very large presence now in the international broadcasting arena um there are total at least as things stand currently of 22 offices um around the world um the staffing numbers as far as as the most recent information suggests, include a total staff cohort of some 2,856, of whom around 1,000 are journalists. So that is quite a significant presence. As to audiences, this is a difficult area because the figures, well, first of all, they change, but also they're contested. If you go to RT's website, it'll tell you that it has a that it reaches 700 million people across the world. That's a deception. That is its potential reach. Should everyone who could access RT did access, then potentially, theoretically, it could reach 700 million people. It doesn't, and it doesn't come anything near that. Its television audience figures are, certainly as far as the Western world are concerned, modest, to put it kindly. as the western world are concerned modest to put it kindly um so in the uk as i say the figures vary from from week to week and year to year but it it's thought to have a audience share about 0.02 0.03 percent which is very low um and and the weekly viewers between 300,000 and 500,000. This is, of course, Britain has a population of over 60 million. In the US, it's slightly larger, as one would expect. It runs into the low millions um i should should say that for for rt uk it it um it can broadcast within the framework of freeview so we have a um a freeview package which allows every license fee payer to watch any channel that included within free view so as well as the bbc cnn and etc etc rt in the us um if you want to watch rt it's generally by cable so you have to take out a subscription but still the figures are are modest um where things begin to change is if you look at um um rt spanish and rt uh arabic where the figures the viewing and bear in mind i'm talking about viewing figures for broadcast television that are are much better so um um as things were when I last checked, the most successful broadcasting channel for RT is Spanish and has viewing figures across the continent of 17 million or so. million or so. For Aarti Arabic, it's around 11 or 12 million. And just again, to put this into context, Aarti Arabic is ranked sort of second or third in that region. So it is competitive in the Middle East, and it is certainly competitive in Latin America. It's really not competitive elsewhere in terms of its broadcast audience. It does better with social media. So its YouTube channels have quite a high hit rate. It boasts that it was the first YouTube channel to hit 1 billion viewers. And it now, its YouTube channel now attracts sort of some 4, 4.5 billion. Now on the face of it, that's quite impressive. But what one has to remember is that the content that features on RT's YouTube channels is very often the kind of trivia that one is used to finding on YouTube. It's clickbait, it's celebrity gossip, it's your archetypal cat videos, etc., etc., which RTty is very very good at picking up on the idea theory is that viewers will watch this click bait and then progress to watching the um the more politicized political videos there's not much evidence that that is happening um so you know those headline figures are again somewhat misleading um with twitter uh it it it's modestly successful um as far as our figures indicate um there are over two million followers of its uh of its twitter feed but that again to give you some comparison compares with um 24 25 million for bbc and 54 million for cnn and 54 million for CNN. Instagram, it's a newcomer to Instagram. The figures are quite low, but it is one of the fastest growing Instagram performers. So as I say, it's just to summarize the audience figures, the audience impact, it's a somewhat mixed picture. But I think one can generalize by saying that certainly in the Western hemisphere, its TV audience figures are negligible. In the Middle East and Latin America, they're much better. Social media, it is a growing presence, but it is still modest if you compare it with the likes of BBC or CNN. I think you asked about, sorry, I've slightly lost track of the question. I think you asked about... There are two more things that the time is running really fast. I would like you to mention two things, if possible. One is, what is the relationship between who really sets the political content? What is the relationship between, who really sets the political content? What is the relationship between, like we know that the director of Russia Today or RT, Simonyan, she has been there since 2005 and she started as a 25 year old woman. And what is the relationship between the leadership or management of RT and the political authorities? Who sets the agenda? And if you can shortly explain how RT adapts to different viewers, depending on when they are. In Latin America, they have a far-left agenda and in Western Europe, a far-right agenda. Could you just explain that and who their main commentators are that are starting to leave? Just about three or four minutes and then we go into their security and the democracy threat. These are really important questions, particularly the first one that you asked about, who sets the agenda, who sets the content. Not least because, if we're going to move on to talk about banning and regulating, the BBC's regulator banned or removed the broadcasting license of CGTN, the Chinese state broadcaster, mainly on the grounds that its content is directly mandated by the Chinese state. by the Chinese state. Now, one could make a similar argument about RT. Simone Yan, as you said, is the editor-in-chief. She's a very, very powerful figure. She's one of a small circle of media executives who together with Kremlin officials set the broad news agenda for the whole of Russian media via weekly meetings of a small group of media executives, including Simeon Yan, will agree news agendas on a week-by-week basis and then roll them out across state-sponsored, state-controlled media. Simonyan has little kind of involvement in the sort of day-to-day production of content and shaping of content of news broadcasts. That is delegated to, first of all, to a head of news who kind of oversees news production across RT. And then, so it is a hierarchical organization, and then each of the Each of the constituent channels will have a head of newsroom. All of these people are Russian. And so the reporting line is direct from the channels through the overarching head of news to Slymanian and then upwards. news to Szymon Jan and then upwards. But at the local level these heads of newsroom, they will they will determine their own content, except with the exception of particularly politically sensitive issues. And now we are in those times. So when we go into a situation like the war in Ukraine or before that, the Salisbury poisoning, the 2014 conflict, the conflict in Syria, these are considered politically sensitive issues for which Simonyan and the top media executives want to see a consistent line. And there, there is little room for deviation. And so the head of each newsroom across all of these channels will be driven by what the agreed narratives are, with little room for deviation. With the less politically sensitive issues, there is much, much more leeway. And this brings me to the second part of your question, to what extent does the content vary across the different channels? And the answer is, outside of these big crises, there is quite a considerable degree of variation. And, you know, the content is adapted and modified according to the political and media environments in which the particular channel operates. So, you know, for example, RT France spent a great deal of time focused on the Gilets Jaunes protests when they were live. During Brexit, RT was a sort of active promoter of mostly pro-Brexit narratives in the British context. And so it will cleave right or left, depending on what suits its purpose in a particular environment. Is the main purpose disruption? Yes. The idea is that RT will work with whichever narratives show up a particular society in a bad light. And sometimes they can be narratives from the left, and sometimes they can be narratives from the right. So in Spain, for example, where the right is somewhat less of a presence and where the connection between the Spanish right and the Kremlin is meager, the content tends to cleave left. Whereas in Germany, the RT Germany aligns itself very much with the German right. The same is somewhat true of RT France, although with RT France and RT UK, there is a certain eclecticism. So, for example, when the British left, when to everyone's surprise, Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader of the Labour Party, a far left figure who surprisingly managed to win the leadership of the Labour Party. RT saw that as an opportunity to stir and disrupt and to promote narratives that were likely to lead to division and a breakdown in consensus. So there was support simultaneously given to the Jeremy Corbynite left, but also to the Brexit-promoting right. It can ride two horses at once. So it is eclectic and somewhat opportunistic. And in order for it to fulfil that function, the logical thing to do is to devolve decision making to the local level where the staff, the journalists know the situation and know which way the wind is blowing. So it's not an act of kind of generosity in delegating decision-making to the local level. It's a completely rational and logical decision given RT's remits, which broadly speaking is yes, to stir up discontent and to to highlight inequality iniquity the stories to quote um you know rt's mission that that the other the mainstream media aren't telling you so that's as you as probably most of you know it that is the gist of its sort of mission. We tell you the stories that your mainstream media are not telling you. And that's how they justify. So rather than saying our intention is to disrupt and disturb, they will tell you, no, no, no, our intention is merely to give you access to the stories that you're not being told um and um um yeah but but uh uh to come back to what i was saying in in the case of of of events like the war, then all of that is put to one side. And the... Please take a break. From a slight cold, but I don't want to let that interrupt my flow. Go ahead, please. The case of war? In the case of war, the content and the narratives are much, much more disciplined and much more carefully shaped and consistent and in line with one another. So as you'll appreciate, the war began only four or five days ago. And believe it or not, I don't have time to do nothing but watch RT, let alone in six different languages. nothing but watch RT, let alone in six different languages. So to the extent that I've been able to, you know, I've been, and with colleagues, we've been trying our very best to monitor how RT UK and RT France and indeed RT Russia are covering this event. And yeah, I mean, it is very clear that they're under clear instructions not to deviate far from the narrative that russian domestic audiences are being fed so you know you will not find reference anywhere on rt uk or rt france to an invasion or to a war. It is a special operation. However, RT UK is operating under the jurisdiction of Ofcom and therefore it is obliged to follow rules of impartiality. to follow rules of impartiality. And in the case of the war, it seems to be taking, if you like, the path of least resistance. So it is sticking to the vocabulary of special operation. It is also portraying the war as a defensive effort to save Russian speakers in the east of Ukraine from hostile nationalist-led Ukrainian forces. quite careful in putting those terms in quotes and contextualizing them by reference to Russian foreign minister and to officials. So it won't tell you directly this is a special operation to defeat Nazis attacking East European Russian speakers. It will report that line, put it in quotes, and then what it will also generally do, again in order to make sure that it is minimally reaching or maintaining impartiality standards, it will often have at the bottom of the screen a ticker in which you'll see quotes to the contrary. You'll see quotes from European leaders, NATO officials, and so on. So if you're an attentive viewer, you can listen to what the anchor is telling you, and you can also read a different narrative at the bottom of the ticker. Does that meet impartiality standards? I'm not a media regulator. It's not for me to say, but that's an argument that we have. I should also say that just two other quick things on that point. Certainly my brief experience of watching war coverage on RTUK is that there have been slips. a number of occasions where reporters on the ground have without quotes, whoops, referred to denazification to Nazis or far-right nationalist forces leading the fight in Eastern Ukraine. Yeah, so without any quotation marks, and that's a slip. So if I were a media regulator, which I'm not, I would pinpoint that as a clear breach of impartiality. The other quick point, because I don't want to, I could say a lot more, because I don't want to I don't want to I could say a lot more but I don't want to kind of hold the floor so as far as I can tell that there there has been a slight kind of parting of ways between RTUK well I'll say two things there's been slight parting ways between RT UK and RT France. Broadly speaking, I have observed rather more diversity on RT France. I've not seen the words war or invasion used, but I've seen the words intervention and offensive okay um i've also seen on rt france headlines um about turkey's objections to russian actions rt uk has been much more nervous about in any way deviating from the line this now one could have a discussion about why this is. It may well be that, I mean, RT France has been under very, very close scrutiny from none other than Macron himself. And it may well be that it has got wind of the fact that it was under the cosh and therefore has kind of been ultra cautious in modifying its approach in order basically to remain functioning. It's also, I think, probably regarding RT France, also true to say that RT had great hopes of RT France. It was really excited about the launch of RT France. This was at the height of the Gilets Jaunes. It saw a real opportunity there. Plus, importantly, not to forget, Russia generally has its eyes on Africa. has its eyes on Africa. And of course, North Africa is French speaking. And I think it saw RT France as a way to get its message out into Africa. May I step in? Because I promised the audience, you promised the audience half an hour. Can I just ask you to reply very fast and then I shall give the floor to the audience half an hour. Can I just ask you to reply very fast and then I shall give the floor to the audience. Is RT a threat to security now, A, and B, are we overblowing its importance by discussing if it should be banned or not? Just really briefly, we already have questions. There are several answers to that question. On the face of it, in Simonyan's own words, RT is the broadcast arm of the Russian Ministry of Defence. Those are her words. So it is a weapon in what she sees as an information war. Russia does not recognise the concept of impartiality. It sees what is happening as an information war in which RT is defending and playing the role of the broadcast under the Ministry of Defence. So seen in that light, yes, you could argue that, well, the Russian state is committing atrocities in Europe under the auspices of the Ministry of Defence. Therefore, RT has to be seen as a threat to security because it is part of that apparatus. The other approach, the approach that I tend to take, is perhaps you could say more pragmatic, which is that certainly as far as its broadcast output content is concerned, its impact is minimal. And that, first of all, by talking it up, one actually gives it fuel, the very fuel that it seeks. By banning it, it kind of conforms to the Russian narrative about Western hypocrisy, about the media not telling you the stories you don't want to hear. this crisis but be very surprised if the banning of RT in Europe and perhaps in Britain would not lead to a reciprocal banning of BBC France. Deutsche Welle has already I believe been banned and this is not good. This means that you know the counter narratives, the messages that we want to get to the ordinary Russian people, they are deprived of access to that. So there is an argument to be had. It's not clear cut. But if you ask me my own sympathies, they would lie with the latter line. But I can certainly see the case and the rationale for seeing RT as part of the whole state apparatus and that therefore it's just. I'm going to read these questions because it is our colleague Markus Müller from the Austrian Public Broadcaster Radio. He asks two questions um the first question is uh what would the ban of rt in the eu and uk mean is it possible to really keep them out that's first question and the second question uh how would you compare rt to other outlets like sputnik? Both very good questions. As far as the first one is concerned, how would you keep party out? Well, first of all, we were speculating before this discussion started to whom or to what does the ban apply. My understanding, though you may correct me if I've got this wrong, my understanding is that the ban will apply to television, to RT's broadcast output. So that would be relatively easy to control. to control, except, of course, the fact that all that would happen is that RT would retreat to online, and you can watch RT content online. You don't have to have RT as part of a freeview package or a cable subscription package. It is available online. And this is not to mention, of course, how on earth you keep control of RT's social media output, its web content, though I've noticed actually I've noticed yesterday I was desperately trying to access RT.com and it was subject to a hacking. And this has been happening quite persistently. But you can't hack forever. And it seems to me that actually stopping RT broadcasting is one thing that you can do. Keeping content away from people is something quite different. And as I say, RT's biggest impact is not with its television output, certainly not in Europe. So banning is something, it seems to me, of a symbolic gesture that is not only not likely to have much of an impact, but it could actually be counterproductive. As to its relationship with Sputnik, this is an interesting question. The two are, they see themselves as sister channels. So they operate under the same umbrella of Russia Sivotnya. the Russian organization that oversees all international content of the Russian media. So Sputnik and RT, they work out of the same offices. They complement one another. There are differences. First of all, Sputnik doesn't have a television channel. It has a radio for which the figures are even more pathetic than RT television. Very, very few people listen to Sputnik radio. presence online and in social media. If one were to distinguish the two, I would say that Sputnik is the more outrageous, the more aggressive, the one that is sailing closer to the wind in terms of disinformation. If you like, it's a sort of almost good cop, bad cop relationship. By comparison with Sputnik, Arty presents itself as a more of a kind of soft power purveyor, whereas Sputnik is the outright warrior. So there is some degree of complementarity and quite a lot of intersection and sharing between them, but they are different and should be treated as such. Thank you so much. I see, please raise your hands. I see one, Georg Krausenberg, please introduce yourself. And whoever wants to ask a question, please raise your hand and turn on your camera. And please. Thank you very much, Miriam. I'm from the Institute of the Danube Region in Central Europe, here in Vienna. And I have two short questions. The one is concerning the situation of BBC, for instance, now in Russia. Is it possible even for people to watch or to listen? Because one of the arguments you placed that RT was not banned yet in UK is precisely that BBC may be banned. And the other short question is concerning correspondence of RT, like our foreign minister, former foreign Foreign Minister Kneizl. Is she a rather unique case, or are there more of former politicians as correspondents? Thank you. Stefan, I would like to take one more question from another colleague, and then I reply. Sergei, the floor is yours. Unmute yourself and please introduce yourself. Hello, my name is Sergei. I'm working for University of Passau and I'm working now on a project about so-called Internet Research Agency and my question is also about it. So, Stephen, what do you know about the connection of RT with Evgeny Prigozhin's media businesses? So I'm speaking about Internet Research Agency, which we also know as the Troll Factory and also media group Patriot. So it's Riafan, Nevsky Novosti, and other outlets. And also the third question, if you don't know about connection to these obvious ones, maybe you know about connection with so-called Russian submarines website. So it's these proxy outlets such as Newsfront, etc. Thank you. Thank you very much. Stefan, please go. Go ahead. All very important questions to which we have to give necessarily brief and probably I think the concern about BBC is not so much that it simply won't be accessible. It's BBC World Service Radio, through which Russian citizens can access BBC. There was, for a period of time, an arrangement that the BBC reached with television channel Dorj, which is, or TV Rain, which is one of the few independent outlets, media outlets in Russia. It has been forced online. It can only be accessed by subscription. And until recently i think it it it did manage to include some bbc television news bulletins as part of its online output um uh i i think the concern really is is that is that um bbc um presence on the ground will be banned. So there will be no BBC reporters in Moscow or anywhere else in Russia. And already one prominent BBC journalist has been, had a visa revoked. This was before before the war this is well before the war um and the same has happened to uh to to other uh reporters so it's it's less um depriving people of access to the to to to the bbc and other such broadcasters, it's more depriving these broadcasters of the ability to report on the ground, give Russian viewers an authoritative, evidence-based account of what is happening in their country that is not that of the state propaganda outlets. That would be the concern. You also asked about to what extent RT tends to employ former politicians. Yes, that is one of its strategies. And in the UK, for example, Alex Salmond, who was the leader of the Scottish Nationalist Party, had his own show. And it was only last week that under a great deal of pressure from across the political spectrum, he agreed to suspend his arrangement with RT. So until then, he had his own talk show on RT, and he was always very careful to stress that, yes, I'm broadcasting on RT, but I have complete editorial control. I can do and ask and say whatever I want. I'm not in any way impeded in that. There is a different arrangement between RT and its kind of big star presenters who are given much, much more freedom and leeway than are the sort of run-of-the-mill presenters and reporters on the ground. George Galloway is an ex, I don't know, he's switched horses so often I lost track, but he was originally a sort of a sort of fiery left-wing firebrand member of the Labour Party. And then he aligned himself with a sort of anti-Islamophobic wing of the left and launched his own party to protest against what he perceived was islamophobia so he has he has an agenda that aligns itself with rt just as alex salmon with his you know support for scottish independence has a position that is aligned with what is convenient to RT. Both of those say were given their own shows. Galloway's is extremely outrageous and when RT UK has been investigated for breaches of impartiality, as it has on several occasions, Galloway's show has almost always one of the prime culprits. Now, that's not because he's being told to provoke and upset and misinform. That's what he likes to do. My guess is that he does it, you know, often to the inconvenience and annoyance of rt um so yeah these star presenters are are do have to be sort of um considered separately um and star presenters it's a risk from rt but but on RT's part, sometimes these star presenters go off message. So I think Galloway is one example. In the States, you had the case of Abby Martin, who was a big figure in the Occupy movement. Do you remember the Occupy movement? She was given her own show, full editorial independence. given her own show, full editorial independence, and in the 2014 Ukraine crisis, live on air, she condemned Russia's annexation of Crimea. She's an anti-imperialist, and she stuck to her guns, and that was an act of imperialism, and she said so to her viewers, and kept her job for a year. So, you know, these star presenters are a case unto themselves, which is why it was an important question. I was also asked about the possible relationship between RT and Prigogine and the troll factory, the IRA. These connections are often hazy, and I'm not an intelligence specialist. My strong sense is that it would be a mistake to see the two as closely connected. I think a big mistake that we've often made when interpretingussian communication strategy is that it is a single coordinated disciplined hierarchical apparatus in which everyone is working in sync with one another according to a single agreed strategy i really don't think that is the case. What the trolls are doing under the auspices of Prigozhin in St. Petersburg has very, very little connection with what RT does. And in a way, it makes sense. They have very, very different functions, very, very different modes of operation. functions, very, very different modes of operation. And this sort of hierarchical information war narrative that we tend to promote about RT is often misleading and incorrect. It comes into play in the context of situations like the one that we're in now, where there is suddenly a sort of coming together and a degree of coordination that we don't otherwise see. I would still doubt that RT has much to do with the IRA. However, RT clearly is plugged into the security apparatus and that goes back to Mirjana's very first question. During the 2014 Ukraine crisis you'll remember that there were some rather embarrassing leaks of telephone conversations, private telephone conversations that EU officials were having with Ukrainian politicians. And guess which the first broadcaster was to leak them? Well, you don't need to guess. It was RT. And it's very, very credible to believe that the security apparatus had a direct connection, probably via Simonyan to RT. And in that situation, it made sure that RT was the first to the scoop. But I say it would be wrong to think that that's the way that RT always operates. And then what was the second? There was another question, a question that I've missed. Oh, the proxy, yes. That's another very interesting and complicated question. There's no question that as well as RT and Sputnik, the Kremlin has had involvement in setting up these kind of proxy media outlets that, to all intents and purposes, look like local, often far-right, or conspiracy theories promoting websites. They normally are websites, but in fact, if you look at the kind of the contact details and the metadata, they all roads lead back to Moscow. There are several of these and the News Front is one of them. Again, my sense is that the degree of coordination between the to a story on Newsfront and other such proxy sites. So they, you know, they're aware of one another and Newsfront will often also provide links to RT. So there is a cross-linking between the two, but I would hesitate to say that this is part of a single grand strategy. Thank you. We have a question here from Simon Kravagna, who is one of my directors of our film. It's behind me. What kind of journalists work for RT? Why do they do that? is one of my directors of our film, it's behind me. What kind of journalists work for RT? Why do they do that? Is it only about money? Yeah, these are very good questions. Of course, RT's staff is made up of Russian journalists, but also journalists from the local journalists or native speaking English, French, German, Russian, Spanish. Why do they choose to work for RT? They do pay good salaries. They do also, and we have, I'm certainly not going to name any names, but we have, as part of our program, we have actually talked to RT staff, both current RT staff and ex-RT staff, and we've asked them these sorts of questions ourselves and some of them are quite open about the fact that the pay packages are generous. They also say that however it is very very difficult to gain promotion so you have this initial entry package which is very generous but it is next to impossible to progress beyond there um some of them are aspiring journalists who find that arty is a kind of or they perceive arty as the stepping stone um inexperienced they they um and arty is quite deliberate about employing young, inexperienced journalists whom they can mould and train. Some of them are genuinely motivated by RT's mission. And they do see it as an opportunity to promote some of the agendas that they themselves are sympathetic to. So the motivations are different. But the financial remuneration is certainly a factor. I should also perhaps, this is slightly off the point, but I think it's important. If you watch RT or if you read RT online, you'll find they often refer to experts whom they quote and whom they interview. Many of those experts are people no one has heard of. In fact, one would question the extent to which they are experts at all. They are people who conveniently will say the things that RT would expect and want them to say to support whatever narrative it is they're promoting. That said, RT is in something of a kind of chicken and egg scenario. It is desperate to legitimize itself by including comment from respectable experts who command authority and so it tries to invite credible politicians experts academics most of whom want nothing to do with it and therefore it is forced to resort to these it and therefore it is forced to resort to these figures who who who really have very very little credibility at all i myself have been asked to appear on rt twice um and on each occasion i've i've refused uh because i i just don't think it would be appropriate for me to appear on that channel. But it is very clear that they would much rather have somebody like me come and speak to them and challenge them and perhaps say things that they don't want to hear in order to increase their credibility and respectability than to have to resort to this array, this rather dismal array of non-experts whose affiliation is often not even mentioned. Why did you refuse? I suppose the first reason was that they approached me in the middle of the project. And as an academic, as someone who wants to try to study things impartially and objectively, appearing on the very organization whom I was supposed to be studying from a distance. So that was the reason I gave them. To be perfectly frank, I would feel quite uncomfortable about appearing on RT now when our project isn't running, and that's regardless of the war. about appearing on RT now when our project isn't running. And that's regardless of the war. Because it's not an outlet that I have any sympathy with. Thank you very much, Stephen. I don't see any more questions. It's 10 o'clock. But can I ask you a very fast question myself? As a former war reporter, I remember that although everyone was lying, all sides were lying, the truth is the first thing to die in any conflict. We still watched both sides, and even those on the front line watched both sides. The question is, if RT is prohibited, shall we be deprived of watching what the other side says? I think that's a good point. Yes. I think rather than saying we don't want to hear what the other side is saying because it's propaganda and disinformation, because it's propaganda and disinformation, it's much better to hear what that disinformation is and to be able to robustly challenge it rather than to be scared of it and to be seen to be hiding it from ourselves or from our fellow citizens. So I take the view that it is much better to have it out in the open um and to challenge it and to show it up for what it is rather than having it hidden away and then you will get more of that kind of the gentleman who asked the question about the proxy sites but but there you will have much, much more deception in the form of these pretend sites, which create much more of a problem. So for several reasons, my own view is that we shouldn't be scared. We should engage with it and challenge it robustly. I thank you so much, Stephen. If any of the journalists want to interview, I think that Stephen would agree. I thank you for giving us this incredible overview. We have posted the link to your website of your huge project at the University of Manchester, an open university, where journalists and researchers and regulators who have joined today will have the opportunity to learn more. And I really hope that peace prevails, which is more important than anything else. Thank you and Daniela, please. All I want to say is thank you, Stephen. Thank you everybody for participating. Thank you. Thank you, I enjoyed it. And thank you for the questions. They were all excellent. Thank you. Thank you. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye.