Margarita Simonyan: Russian Iron Lady
By Dr.Syed Mehboob
Research Scholar, Analyst
Media is part of the war, and in the modern era, it is more destructive than sophisticated weapons. Western media for the last several decades has had a monopoly on the world propaganda campaign. Some of the western media conglomerates details are given below.
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British Public Service broadcaster in London. It is the oldest and largest global broadcaster by stature and by number of employees, the BBC employs over 21,000 staff in total of whom approximately 17,900 are in public sector broadcasting.
Voice of America (VoA) is the state-owned news network and international radio broadcaster of the United States of America. It is the largest and oldest of the US-funded international broadcasters. VOA produces digital TV and radio content in 49 languages, which it distributes to affiliate stations around the world. It has a budget of US$267.5 million and a staff of 961.
Deutsche Welle is a German public, state-owned international broadcaster funded by the German federal tax budget. The services are available in 32 languages. DW’s satellite television service consists of channels in English, German, Spanish, Persian, Urdu, Arabic, and other languages. It has assets of EUR 34.16 million.
Reuters is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters Corporation. It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide in 16 languages. Reuters is one of the largest news agencies in the world. In 2023, its revenue was US$402 million.
Agence France-Presse is a French international news agency headquartered in Paris. It is the world's oldest news agency with 2,400 employees of 100 nationalities. AFP has an editorial presence in 260 cities in 151 countries.
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. The New York Times covers domestic, national, and international news, and companies' opinion pieces, investigative reports. It has a circulation of 10.36 million.
The Guardian is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821. It has a circulation of 135,000.
The Washington Post is an American daily newspaper. It has a circulation of 139,000.
Besides these print and electronic media, social media is also widely used for the propagation of Western narratives. Several dozen think tanks are also working.
Among all this widespread and huge Western media, one Russian Iron Lady is standing like a rock to rejoinder and counter huge Western propaganda, and she is Margarita Simonovna Simonyan, head of Kremlin RT. She is effectively and successfully countering Western propaganda. She is in the list of the most powerful women in the world. For twelve years she has been the head of RT and Sputnik international Russian news networks. She has turned them into influential Kremlin bullhorns, earning both the envy and contempt of powerful news organizations in the West. Last year, RT bragged that 35 million people viewed the website daily.
With more than 2,000 employees, RT broadcast news for many years in English, Arabic, French, Spanish and German. Simonyan sees the channel as a «defense ministry» equipped with media soldiers, ready for war at any time. After Russia’s war with Ukraine, imagine the champions of freedom of expressions and with the name of this freedom of expression they don’t shy insulting Prophet Muhammad ( Peace be upon him) the most sacred and revered personality of the world with 1.95 billion followers but when it comes to RT western countries have banned it, and put the channel’s head on the sanctions list. Simonyan railed against this decision and called it a threat to the freedom of the press.
Margarita Simonovna Simonyan is a Russian media executive. She is the editor-in-chief of the Russian state-controlled broadcaster RT as well as the state-owned media group Rossiya Segodnya. She covered the Second Chechen War in the 2000s while working as a journalist. Subsequently, she worked at Krasnodar television, was VGTRK's own correspondent in Rostov-on-Don, and worked as a special correspondent for the Vesti TV news program. She is a member of the board of directors of Channel One Russia and a member of the Academy of Russian Television,. At the age of 25, she was appointed head of Russia Today, now known as RT. In 2022 and 2023, Simonyan was sanctioned by the European Union, United Kingdom, Ukraine, Armenia and other states for her central role in showing the other side of the picture to the viewers in western countries.
Correspondent, covered the Second Chechen War, and also serious flooding of the Krasnodar region, for her local television station, receiving an award for "professional courage". In 2002, she became a regional correspondent for Russia's national Rossiya television channel and covered the 2004 Beslan school hostage crisis. Simonyan, one of the first correspondents to arrive at the scene, witnessed the killing of 334 people, 186 of them children. She told an interviewer "It was the worst thing that ever happened to me," and that she 'cried frequently' while trying to write about it. She then moved to Moscow where she joined the Russian pool of Kremlin reporters. She was the first vice-president of the Russian National Association of TV and Radio Broadcasters and a member of the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation. In 2010, her first book, Heading to Moscow!, was published.
In 2018, Simonyan wrote the script for The Crimean Bridge. Made with Love, a film directed by her husband, Keosayan. The film attracted scathing reviews and was even the lowest-rated film on several film review aggregators, with Simonyan's script widely panned.
Western Media and politicians are afraid of her because she is very effective in communicating with the world's people and is considered a proud daughter of Russia |