Russia Today covered ‘Freedom Convoy’ protests more than any foreign outlet: research
Global News
The Russian state-controlled television network used key words associated with the convoy protest during more than four and half hours of broadcasts between Jan. 13 and Feb. 12.
Russia Today (RT) covered Canada’s so-called “Freedom Convoy” protests far more closely than any other international outlet, according to new research.
The Russian state-controlled television network used key words associated with the convoy protest during more than four and half hours of broadcasts between Jan. 13. and Feb. 12 — dwarfing the rate of any other international outlet’s coverage of the anti-mandate occupation that snarled Ottawa streets earlier this year.
That’s according to an analysis of Google Jigsaw’s Global Database of Events, Language and Tone (GDELT), which Ahmed Al-Rawi, director of Simon Fraser University’s Disinformation Project, published on his website on Tuesday. The analysis has not been peer-reviewed.
“I was surprised to see that Russia Today, the Russian government-run television channel, was well ahead of so many other news channels in covering the convoy protests,” Al-Rawi told Global News in an interview.
The only other outlet that came close to covering the protests this closely was Fox News, which dedicated two and a half hours of coverage to the so-called “freedom convoy.”
Al Jazeera devoted the third-most time to the topic, with just over an hour of coverage over the course of the month, while CNN, MSNBC, Deutsche Welle, BBC News and CBS spent less than 30 minutes in total on the topics.
The Russian network’s interest in Canada’s convoy protests wasn’t surprising to intelligence community experts who have followed the Kremlin’s tactics in recent months.
That’s because, recently, Russia has focused less on tipping the scale towards specific electoral outcomes. Rather, according to an FBI official who spoke out earlier this year, the country has focused on sowing chaos and distrust abroad.
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