Dictators Like Friendly Faces Not Fearless Reporting

Michael Hedges August 14, 2021 - Follow on Twitter

It is entirely too frequent that national authorities of a certain persuasion find foreign reporters and news outlets quite unwelcome. National sovereignty being what it is, said rulers are free to limit who can and cannot perform tasks of employment within their borders. This includes reporters, camera crews, editors and producers. There are tacit agreements allowing news outlets to perform their functions, usually bound to truth and fairness. In some countries, those relationships are quickly falling apart.

The Russian Federation Foreign Ministry this week informed UK public broadcaster BBC Russia correspondent Sarah Rainsford her visa expiring at the end of August would be allowed to expire. On State TV channel Rossiya-24 (August 12) foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said the decision was “symmetrical” due to the “humiliations with the visas inflicted by London on Russian correspondents in Great Britain,” reported AFP (August 12). It is the first expulsion from the Russian Federation of a UK media worker since Guardian Russia reporter Luke Harding was deported in February 2011.

Ms Zakharova’s asymmetrical reference is the UK Foreign Office (FCO) refusing to accredit in July 2019 employees of Russian propaganda channels RT, formerly Russia Today, and Sputnik for an FCO-organized international conference on media freedom. “We have not accredited RT and Sputnik because of their active role in spreading disinformation,” said an FCO spokesperson at the time. Other Russian State media outlets were granted accreditation for the event. About the same time UK media regulator Ofcom fined RT and Sputnik for “serious” breaches of impartiality rules from broadcasts related to the March 2018 poisonings of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury. An RT/Sputnik appeal was rejected in December 2020.

Ms Rainsford has been a BBC foreign correspondent for 22 years, the last 15 years in Moscow. BBC Director General Tim Davie urged the Russian authorities to reconsider, referring to Ms Rainsford as an “exceptional and fearless journalist,” in a statement (August 13). "The expulsion of Sarah Rainsford is a direct attack on the freedom of the press that we unreservedly condemn. We call on the Russian authorities to reverse their decision. In the meantime, we will continue to report events in the region in an independent and impartial manner.”

"I am being expelled,” Ms Rainsford said to BBC Radio 4 (August 14). “It's not a failure to renew my visa, although technically that's what it is. I'm being expelled and I've been told that I can't come back, ever. It's devastating personally but it's also shocking. Russia has never been a posting for me: it's not just any old place. It is a country that I've devoted a huge amount of my life to trying to understand.” She was part of the BBC team reporting on the 2004 massacre of school children by Chechen terrorists in Beslan, North Ossetia, Russian Federation. That reporting was honored with the Sony Gold Award for News Output.

“I've tried my hardest to understand this country and to tell the story of this country and it is something that's very close to my heart,” she continued. "The reality is that they don't want people like that here. It's much easier to have fewer people here who understand and who can talk directly to people and hear their stories. It's much easier, perhaps, to have people who don't speak the language, don't know the country so deeply. I really think it is indicative of an increasingly difficult and repressive environment.”

By coincidence - or not - Ms Rainsford attended the recent 8-hour press conference of Belarus dictator Alexander Lukashenko (August 9). She asked Mr. Lukashenko about all those inconvenient matters; repressive tactics, lost legitimacy. And, too, there are those new UK sanctions.

"What repression?" retorted the clearly unhinged Mr. Lukashenko. "Have I shot anyone? Have I killed anyone? You are risking starting World War III. Is that what you are trying to push us and the Russians to? Choke on your sanctions, lapdogs of America."

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• Hot Topics - Media in the Russian Federation

• Hot Topics - News Media

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