Guest of franceinfo on Tuesday, November 16, Maxime Audinet made the subject of his thesis a book, and he first went back to the origins of the launch of the Russia Today channel of international and continuous information, in December 2005.
Franceinfo: in what context was the Russia Today channel born?
Maxime Audinet: It is a channel at the time English which is launched at the initiative of the Kremlin, the presidential administration. in a very particular context for Russian foreign policy. The post-Soviet space is crossed by a series of revolutions known as the Color Revolutions, most notably the Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 2004.
The other context is the enlargement of the European Union and NATO to Eastern Europe. In this double context, the Russian elites are aware of the need to rethink their system of influence, to re-forge a set of instruments, particularly the media, and it is in this context that RT, at the time Russia Today, is created.
What is RT’s ambition (the new name of the channel) and who is it aimed at?
At the beginning, it was really a channel centered on Russia with a very classic approach of soft power, that is to say to spread a positive image, to make Russia better known. What is interesting is that in the summer of 2008, during the conflict in South Ossetia between Russia and Georgia, the very polarized coverage of the events, on the one hand by the Western media, on the other hand. by Russia, is very badly experienced by the Russian elites. RT, at the same time as its internationalization, since you have channels which open abroad, completely changes its editorial line, to establish itself not as an international Russian media but as an alternative global source in this international media environment.
The idea is no longer just to talk about Russia but to bring a foreign perspective
Maxime Audineton franceinfo
On the editorial level, if we take two important conflicts led by Russia, which are the one with Georgia in 2008 and then with Ukraine in the Donbass in 2014, is the point of view given on the air necessarily the Moscow line? without shade ?
There is a certain subtlety in this channel insofar as you are not on what you could observe in Soviet times with Radio Moscow, that is to say that you do not have a rigidity, a strict transcription of the official discourse.
On the other hand, on strategic events for Russia, in particular the two events that you mentioned, it is true that there is a very clear alignment with the official positions. There are repetitions of elements of language, for example the expression of the annexation of Crimea is not used by the Russian authorities and is never used directly on a channel like Russia Today.
The other mantra of the chain is to offer another point of view, another opinion, where opinions are presented as alternate truths. After the election of Donald Trump for example in 2016, and his recurring charges against fake news, did this idea find a stronger echo with the RT audience?
Today, this so-called alternative approach is something extremely widespread, there are a lot of media that do it. But at the time when RT was launching, there was less media, especially internationally. The only channel that developed this at the time was Al Jazeera on a smaller scale. It is a model which is especially inspired by the Fox News channel in the United States which arises as a media which is different from the mainstream media and this is what RT seeks to do from the end of the 2000s, in international space.
It could have worked at the beginning, like RT France at the time of the “yellow vests” movement, it is a niche that allowed the channel to strengthen its notoriety with a certain audience. Today, in a context where a channel like CNews is doing very well, this alternative niche is occupied by many other media. And today RT France has much more difficulty finding its place in this media landscape.
However, and the book documents it very well, the personalities or experts invited on RT do not necessarily all agree or all of the same political “side”?
There are a lot of people from very different political stripes who go to RT for different reasons. Some believe that they have the possibility of expressing themselves on an international channel, others have a more militant approach, others join this alternative idea, whether they are left or right.
It’s interesting because RT’s Spanish-speaking channel is very leftist, anti-imperialist and works very well in Latin America, with the presence of the anti-American and Bolivarian left. RT France and RT Deutsch are more along a Eurosceptic line that is increasingly right and far right.
We remember that if the launch of RT France had sparked several controversies at the end of 2017, with a channel not necessarily well received, neither by his colleagues nor by the government, today we talk about it much less. Why ?
The French media landscape has changed a lot since 2017. At the time, when RT France was launched, there were few international channels in France. They arrived by creating this television channel because the site had existed for a few years and succeeded in establishing itself.
In reality, it worked well on the “yellow vests”, thanks to social networks, with 12 million monthly visits. Today we have about three million visits to the site, which is the equivalent of a small regional daily, even departmental in France. I think they will try to revive themselves in favor of the presidential election, but today it is clear that RT France is a medium that works quite badly.