Abby Martin (1984- ), a US journalist – or newsmodel (depending on who you ask) – is best known for speaking out against Russia’s takeover of Crimea while on Russian television! RT, the television station she appeared on, to its credit did not fire her. She left a year later and now works for South America’s TeleSUR, where she does a show called “The Empire Files” (2015- ).
She came of age in the wake of 9/11. In fact, she was a 9/11 Truther while at university (she no longer believes the US government was behind 9/11). Later she became an anti-war activist and a citizen journalist (also known as “not having a journalism degree”). It was while she was covering the protests of Occupy Oakland (her home town) that she came to the attention of RT, a sort of Russian BBC.
RT hired her as a reporter and in time gave her her own news and opinion show, “Breaking the Set” (2012-15). Her shows had titles like:
- Detroit Part I: Extinguishing the homeless & shutting off human rights
- Iraqi ghost soldiers, Ferguson murder ignored & Chicago police torture
- Deadly Legal Drugs, CIA’s Torture Doctors & Oil’s Plunging Prices
- Afghanistan drowning in opium, ending Fed & tribute to Ben Bradlee
And so on.
It was on that show that she said on March 3rd 2014:
“Just because I work here, for RT, doesn’t mean I don’t have editorial independence and I can’t stress enough how strongly I am against any state intervention in a sovereign nation’s affairs. What Russia did is wrong.”
Later when asked by Piers Morgan on CNN whether RT was propaganda, she said:
“Piers, no different than every other corporate media station. I mean, we’re talking about six corporations that control 90 percent of what Americans see, hear and read; …
“I can only speak for my show. I stayed true to my moral compass. But RT toes a perspective of the Russian foreign policy, just as the entire corporate media apparatus toes the perspective of the U.S. establishment. …
“But I think the real question that should be asked is why do I have to work for RT to tell the truth about corporations and the US government?”
“The Empire Files”: each show is about one subject, stuff like:
- How Black Lives Don’t Matter in Israel
- The Sikh Experience in America
- Steve Bannon Exposed: Goldman Sachs to Chief Propagandist
- Chevron Texaco’s Dirty History
- Marxism 101: How Capitalism is Killing itself with Dr. Richard Wolff
- How the World Runs on Looting the Congo
Right: looting the Congo, not yet another Broken Africa “documentary”!
I did a post on Steve Bannon, so I can tell she does her research and pretty much sticks to the facts. But she delivers them sometimes with a moralistic or sarcastic tone, a bad habit she may have picked up at RT. And in the case of Bannon, Martin went way more into his private life than I did.
Fan of: George Orwell, Democracy Now!, Jill Stein – but not Bill Maher.
– Abagond, 2017.
See also:
- YouTube: The Empire Files
- RT
- Broken Africa stereotype
- 9/11
- Steve Bannon
- George Orwell
- Jill Stein
- Chomsky
- Democracy Now!
538
“Just because I work here, for RT, doesn’t mean I don’t have editorial independence…What Russia did is wrong”
Wow, I can’t believe she was allowed to say that on air and still had a job and didn’t get harmed by Putin.
“But I think the real quesiton [sic] that should be asked is why do I have to work for RT to tell the truth about corporations and the US government?”
That’s a great question. Too bad she can’t go on non-propagandist (according to abagond) outlets like CNN or New York Times to do the same.
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@ resw
Thanks for pointing out the typo.
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not her fault. them dam Russians rubbed off on her. lol. love your unfounded assertions that you repeat as if established. so now its the sarcastic Russian tone meme. everybody who works for rt must adopt that tone. lol.
paraphrasing
they wont allow it. that’s why rt is better beyond measure than msm
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“…What Russia did is wrong”
I remember that statement! That’s when I stopped watching her. Either innocently or deliberately, Western propaganda had infiltrated RT. And not just here. I’ve seen it elsewhere on RT. Fortunately its minimal.
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maybe that’s why she left. losing me probably meant losing half her audience.
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The Real News Network (TRNN) runs her show The Empire Files on a weekly basis. Love the show and love the sarcastic delivery!
P.S. She is right about the Congo. Modern military equipment and high tech could not operate without the precious minerals that are looted from the Congo. Minerals that have cost over five million Congolese their lives since 1994.
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“I did a post on Steve Bannon, so I can tell she does her research and pretty much sticks to the facts. But she delivers them sometimes with a moralistic or sarcastic tone, a bad habit she may have picked up at RT. And in the case of Bannon, Martin went way more into his private life than I did.”
LOL, since when did you become a paragon of journalistic virtue? Her stuff has more substance than yours. She wouldn’t be caught dead writing the hagiographic crap you subjected us to in your series on Obama and his family. Embarrassing.
I’m a fan of A. Martin, a rare combination of integrity and drop dead gorgeous to boot. Intoxicating.
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And, looking at her statement again.
But then she goes on to say
that’s a big effing difference! ‘you cant tell the truth about corporations and the US gov on MSM!
you can on RT. and apparently, as the feisty mz martin proves you can tell ‘the truth’ about Russian government on Russian tv.
that’s a big effing difference.
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@”Thanks for pointing out the typo.”
You’re welcome. How funny it is that you never thank me for correcting your many
lieswell-intentioned misstatements like this one made in December:““then RT is certainly questionable because it is owned by the Russian government”
and I haven’t forgotten this one either:
“both RT and SputnikNews are run by the Russian government. They are Putin mouthpieces…”
even though Abby Martin said on air “What Russia did is wrong”
Either Putin is giving the false illusion of “editorial independence” or nomad was correct when he said back in December:
“Abby Martin, who is from the US, used to work for RT. She said they never told her what to say”
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And let it be known that abagond’s favourite “biased journalism” but not propaganda outlet the New York Times
liedmisstated that Abby Martin quit on air the same day she announced denounced Putin over the Crimea affair.Abby Martin demanded they retract that
liemisstatement, because she remained at RT for over a year after that incident, in fact.When the NYT got it’s opportunity to correct its statement it said this:
“An earlier version of this article misstated when the RT anchor Abby Martin left the network. She quit some months after denouncing on air Russia’s war in Ukraine, not during the broadcast.”
Well it was a whole year after, and Abby Martin said it “still insinuates I quit RT over Ukraine but I had my show for 1yr after denouncing Putin – disproving the article’s point.”
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Very interesting to learn more about Abby Martin. I like her work, but agree with your assessment: “facts… delivers them sometimes with a thick moralistic or sarcastic tone, a bad habit.” Will reblog a link to your article.
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[…] READ MORE: Abby Martin | Abagond […]
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Reblogged this on League of Bloggers For a Better World.
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@resw
“Abby Martin, who is from the US, used to work for RT. She said they never told her what to say”
I think abagond said that, but I certainly agree.
Hey, heres a quick rule of thumb I just ran across.
I’ll go Anti-Media a step further. It’s probably good for you. whatever MSM is warning me away from [like RT], that’s where I want to go.
http://theantimedia.org/new-york-times-propaganda-china/
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@nomad
“Abby Martin, who is from the US, used to work for RT. She said they never told her what to say”
Sorry for the confusion. Well, Abby Martin is clearly not helping anyone prove RT is propaganda.
“whatever MSM is warning me away from [like RT], that’s where I want to go.”
Sound advice.
I also find it odd that NYT (and others) began a campaign of RT bashing about the same time abagond did (December/January). I wonder if that’s just a coincidence.
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@resw
“I wonder if that’s just a coincidence.”
nope. that’s what happens when you rely on msm and its cia concocted memes. cia tells msm what to promote and it permeates the media and filters down to abagond and the rest of us. and we all start talking about trump is hitler, fake news, Russia hacked the election and RT is propaganda.
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“I also find it odd that NYT (and others) began a campaign of RT bashing”
I think the bashing began when the MSM saw that RT America had good ratings and were cutting into their market share. It also played into the MSM’s invention that it was the Russians that helped elect Trump and not their own market stratagy of coving Trump because he was good for their ratings.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.rt.com/document/56e15d5ec36188e0278b457f/amp
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*covering Trump
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I cannot speak for the MSM, but the reason I started watching RT was because of Russiagate. I wanted to see what Russian media had to say about it. In December I mostly watched it for their coverage of Aleppo, which was about to be “liberated” (their word for it).
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Abby Martin is anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist. In this period of history that makes her anti-US for the most part. It is naive to think that that was not a huge reason RT and TeleSUR wanted to employ her talents.
If giving her complete editorial freedom was part of the cost of doing business with her, as seems likely, then it was more than worth it since it was clear she would mainly criticize the US – as seems to have been the case:
The number of times “Obama” appeared in the title or description of her episodes of “Breaking the Set”: 98.
The number of times “Putin” appeared: 2.
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If the fact that RT allowed Abby Martin to say whatever she wanted proves they are not propaganda, then neither is Fox News propaganda: they seem to let Sheriff David Clarke, for example, say whatever he wants.
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@ gro jo
It seems you wanted a hagiography of Abby Martin rather than my honest opinion.
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@ gro jo
I agree it was embarrassing.
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@abagond
like that’s a bad thing. every body needs to be in opposition to this rogue empire which has been hijacked by elite criminals
that’s what I like about her
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so? her subject is America not Russia. that’s like saying why doesn’t abagond do more posts on white people. its not your subject.
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Chris Hedges on RT in 2015:
He too has criticized Russia’s Ukraine policy on RT and got no pushback from them.
Source: (http://rtwatchcuj.tumblr.com/post/111508968408/talking-heads-two-pundits-two-opposing-views)
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Garry Kasparov, a critic of Putin, on RT:
Source: (https://www.cjr.org/q_and_a/kasparov-trump-russia-propaganda.php)
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“@ gro jo
It seems you wanted a hagiography of Abby Martin rather than my honest opinion.”
Your ‘honest’ opinion consisted of carping at your readers about her minor faults, if they even amount to faults, such as being a “newsmodel”, yeah, I know it’s not your word, but you chose to throw it in your post to denigrate her. “citizen journalist (also known as “not having a journalism degree”)”. I don’t recall seeing a post on your J school degree. “I did a post on Steve Bannon, so I can tell she does her research and pretty much sticks to the facts. But she delivers them sometimes with a moralistic or sarcastic tone, a bad habit she may have picked up at RT.” How do you know that she may have picked up that habit at RT, maybe RT hired her because of it. TeleSur hired her because of her bad, according to you, habit. Your tone was a passive aggressive one. You couldn’t fault her work so you attacked her person couching your attack in the words of others. Your post would have been more honest and interesting if you had come out and stated why you can’t stand that b**ch, and listed the many reasons she rubs you the wrong way. No I don’t want a hagiography of her, I’d settle for nude pictures.
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Having done a post on RT, when will you get around to doing the same for BBC and VOA?
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How about doing a post on the National Inquirer too? A tool for the CIA if ever one existed!
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So the propaganda exists in the selection of who is allowed to say whatever they want? No. again, that’s editorial bias, of one sort or another, for good or for bad. Now if everybody they allowed to say what they wanted were, say, government tools or say rapid ‘conservatives’, then yeah, that could be considered propaganda. But if the news service offers this to a range of povs then its not. As I say RT ranges from mainstream Thom Hartman to radical Chris Hedges, who BTW interviewed MOVE yesterday on Mumia. It may run again today should one care to watch.
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@”Having done a post on RT, when will you get around to doing the same for BBC and VOA?”
Never, because the Kremlin doesn’t fund the BBC and VOA.
@”….then neither is Fox News propaganda: they seem to let Sheriff David Clarke, for example, say whatever he wants.”
Really? What he says is what Fox News wants him to say. And David Clarke never had a prime time opinion show on Fox, as far as I know.
But of course none of that is relevant. You’re the one who made the claim RT is “propagandistic” and have not provided a single example to support it.
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Russia so evil
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2017/05/racists-love-russia.html
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@abagond
Its so sophisticated you cant even tell its propaganda! Chuckle. Kasparov should stick to chess.
So far, abagond, like resw says, you haven’t given a single example to confirm your bias that RT is propaganda. The best you seem able to do is quote someone who, though Russian himself, is as biased against RT as you are. And, though I haven’t read the article I bet he isn’t able to give examples either. In addition he is bold faced lying RT fabricating news and fake rumors. He is a dishonest source and, thus, without proof to back up his statement, his charge of RT propaganda can be dismissed.
Kasparov’s statement is not proof. So you still haven’t given a single example.
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Just as I have said from the beginning. RT on air personalities are independent.
RT has an agenda. They are anti American empire, that’s true. But then, so am I. So should we all. Its the greatest evil on earth today.
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@ gro jo
I like Abby Martin, but that hardly puts her beyond criticism, even by those without a journalism degree. You are sounding like Allen Shaw on Obama.
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@ gro jo
I will most likely do posts on the BBC (and CNN) at some point, but not the VOA: I rarely use it as a source and I do not see it as a heavyweight, though maybe that is because it is not aimed at me..
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@ nomad
I am not presenting him as proof, but as a Russian who is a critic of Putin.
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“abagond
@ gro jo
…You are sounding like Allen Shaw on Obama.”
Oooh, I’m scared. What do you think you sound like making those petty comments about her?
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VOA is the propaganda tool of the US, comparing and contrasting it to RT and BBC would be instructive.
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@Anarchrist
Comment deleted for obscenity. This is not a porn site.
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