The New York Times published an article about RT on January 7. The article discussed the claims made by US intelligence saying that supposedly RT seeks “to destroy the credibility of spectators towards the democratic procedures in the United States.”
In the original version of the NYT article it was written that supposedly Martin accused RT of propaganda during a live show.
Later on, the article was edited suggesting that Martin actually didn’t do that, but instead condemned Russia's actions with regard to Ukraine and left the channel a few months later because of that.
Such claims in the published article angered Martin. She said that all her work at RT was misrepresented in the published article.
“What a mess. New York Times' feature piece defending the intelligence report on Russian interference in US elections contained egregious errors about me,” Martin wrote on her Facebook.
In an interview with Sputnik, Martin expressed her shock: “I was quite taken aback. First of all I didn’t know that I had so much power. I didn’t know that reporting from five years ago had wheeled the American electorate to 20,000 votes in Wisconsin. I didn’t know that so many people were watching my show on RT.”
She further said that the whole thing is so “unbelievably, audaciously ridiculous.”
“I can’t even begin to tell you how insane this really is. It should be laughed off instead of being taken seriously by these establishment publications.”
But instead you have The Washington Post and the New York Times hailing it as if it is some sort of report that should be taken seriously. “It is a joke,” the journalist said.
Martin discussed the NYT article and their “fake narrative” of stories and how they never stop “selling war and propaganda on behalf of the state.”
Talking about her show on RT she said that even after she expressed criticism about some of Moscow’s policies that she did not agree with, she still could keep her job and her prime time show for a whole year.
Hence, the article suggesting that she left because of “political differences with RT” is very far from the truth. The journalist said that she tried to contact the author of the article, in order to ask him to make corrections to the statements. However, he did not care to make those changes right away and even after some corrections were made it was not exactly how she wanted it to be.
Similarly on her Facebook, Martin noted that she did criticize Moscow's policy, but retired a year later and that was not because of RT’s “propaganda.”
“I worked at RT for an entire year after speaking out and didn't quit because of "propaganda"—in fact, I had paved more editorial freedom there than most of the corporate bought mainstream media and defended that point in every interview I did,” Martin wrote in her Facebook post.
She added that the “paper of record really needs to work on its most basic research, because this is just embarrassing.”
On January 5, US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said at a US Senate hearing on cybersecurity that RT had been "disparaging" of the US political system and was active in promoting its views on US hypocrisy regarding human rights and generally seeking out fissures in US society. Clapper also accused RT of spreading fake news stories.
US media has also been lashing out against Russian journalists working in the country. In November, shortly after the US presidential election, The Washington Post published a piece claiming that Russian media outlets flooded the country with "fake news" and propaganda with the aim of helping Donald Trump win the election. The newspaper later updated the article stating that it does not vouch for the accuracy of the authors' statements.
