"They’re Lying to You”: Russian TV Employee Interrupts News Broadcast

THE GUARDIAN: Marina Ovsyannikova ran on to the set of the Channel One transmission shouting: ‘Stop the war. No to war’

An employee on Russia’s state Channel One television has interrupted the channel’s main news programme with an extraordinary protest against Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

Marina Ovsyannikova, an editor at Channel One, burst on to the set of the live broadcast of the nightly news on Monday evening, shouting: “Stop the war. No to war.”

She also held a sign saying: “Don’t believe the propaganda. They’re lying to you here.” It was signed in English: “Russians against the war”.

The news anchor continued to read from her teleprompter speaking louder in an attempt to drown out Ovsyannikova, but her protest could be seen and heard for several seconds before the channel switched to a record segment. With video » | Pjotr Sauer | Monday, March 14, 2022

Tokyo Olympics Sparks Anti-LGBT Slurs on Russian TV

Transgender weightlifter Laurel Hubbard was singled out for abuse. EUROPEAN PHOTOPRESS AGENCY
BBC: The participation of openly gay, lesbian and transgender athletes in the Tokyo Olympics has led to an upsurge in anti-LGBT commentary on Russian state TV.

Extremely offensive language, some of which appears in this article, was used by the hosts and guests on talk shows aired by the country's two most popular television channels.

Even though the Kremlin has tended to not publicly support anti-LGBT sentiment, it fits in with the state ideology of defending Russia's "traditional values" against the West.

The state-run channels dedicated several of their talk shows to speak disparagingly about LGBT athletes at the Games, using words like "abomination" and "perversion".

In response, an International Olympic Committee (IOC) spokesman told the BBC they were contacting the official Russian broadcaster, one of the two channels in question, to express their concern.

"Discrimination has absolutely no place at the Olympic Games," they said in a statement.

What was said on air?

British gold medal-winning diver Tom Daley, who is gay, and a transgender woman weightlifter from New Zealand, Laurel Hubbard, were particularly targeted on Rossiya 1.

The 26 July edition of the 60 Minutes programme was especially rife with slurs. One of the panellists, Alexei Zhuravlyov, who is a member of the Russian parliament, said he was "disgusted" by gay and transgender people.

"We stand opposed to all this smut and perversion, strongly opposed," he told the show, pointing at the studio screen which showed Hubbard.

"We stand against this abomination," he shouted. At one point, Zhuravlyov used an offensive Russian word to describe gay men. With video » | Vitaly Shevchenko | BBC Monitoring | Wednesday, August 4, 2021