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Labour MP Jo Stevens demanded that "Ofcom urgently reviews RT's licence" and requested an urgent meeting with Dame Melanie Dawes of the regulatory agency to "discuss my concerns about the broadcaster," in a letter sent Wednesday.
Stevens - signed as the Shadow secretary of state for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport - said the review was needed given the "troubling revelations in the Russia report about the role of RT and Sputnik in spreading Kremlin-backed disinformation in the UK."
The shadow secretary further claimed that the parliamentary report, released on Tuesday, "sets out in black and white" the issues OFCOM has supposedly already identified with RT, and "exposes the role RT plays in the much wider issue of Russian influence."
Unfortunately for Stevens, the report does no such thing. When asked to provide an "egregious" example of the alleged Russian interference, committee members were unable to give "any, egregious or otherwise," as noted by the BBC's Andrew Neill.
The committee did not even cite any of the British intelligence agencies - indeed, it excoriated them for allegedly refusing to investigate the 'Russian meddling' the parliamentarians asserted as fact - but relied instead on "open-sourced reporting."
In practice that translated to articles published in the media and testimonies from experts such as Christopher Steele of the debunked "Trump-Russia dossier" infamy, or ex-American financier Bill Browder, who's reinvented himself as a human rights crusader after being charged in Russia with tax evasion.
Democrats in the US infamously blamed Russia for their loss to Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election, using Steele's spurious dossier as evidence. Labour currently holds only 202 seats in the 650-member House of Commons as a result of their historic collapse in 2019.
OFCOM is a supposedly independent regulatory agency tasked with ensuring impartial reporting by media outlets operating in the UK, and this kind of pressure from a political party is highly unusual and improper.
Ongoing assault on the free media
"We have this leaked letter, arguably proof that Sir Keir Starmer wishes to curb the free press and most notably attack an independent, so-called, media regulator," said Ashraf Rattansi, host of RT's Going Underground, referring to the Labour leader.
"We now have the words of... Starmer's Shadow Department of Culture, Media, and Sports Secretary in a private letter sent to this independent regulator saying, almost telling her urgently, 'I need to see you.' To do what? To interfere with an independent regulator? Devastating."
Slamming the letter as an attempt to bully the media watchdog, Rattansi also noted the move may amount to a breach of the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which codifies the "freedom to hold opinions without interference."
After the release of Parliament's 'Russia report' on Tuesday, Starmer soon weaponized its thinly backed conclusions, calling on Prime Minister Boris Johnson to crack down on RT for what he deemed "serious distortions" in its coverage and to "look again at the licensing." Rattansi said the party has overstepped its bounds.
"Keir Starmer has crossed a line here. He is attempting, perhaps, to interfere with an independent media regulator - politically," he said.
This is a leader of the opposition at the dispatch box, where he has parliamentary privilege, talking to the prime minister about wanting to ban RT.
Reader Comments
I don't agree though. They want all Russian media outlets out. Their reporting on several issues has been a major embarrassment to the PTB. Like Syria for example.