Russian TV staffs stage walkout on-air before resigning
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Moscow: Calling for stoppage of war, the entire staff of a Russian television channel resigned on a live telecast. Russian administration had suspended the channel's, TV Rain, operations due to its coverage of the war in Ukraine, NDTV reported.
One of the channel's founders, Natalia Sindeyeva, said "No to war" on-air, and the employees staged a walkout from the studio after. Later the channel said in a statement that it had stopped its operations indefinitely.
Writer Daniel Abrahams shared the video on LinkedIn.
Post the walkout, the channel played the 'Swan Lake' ballet video, which was shown on state-run TV channels in Russia when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. This video also went viral on social media.
The radio station Ekho Moskvy (Echo of Moscow) also had stopped its operations after pressure fell on its board on its coverage of the war. Editor of the radio station, one among the last liberal media in the country, informed its shutting down on Thursday. It was taken off the air on Tuesday but continued to broadcast on YouTube.
The radio station had conducted interviews with Ukrainian journalists who talked about the ravages of the Russian offensive into Ukraine, the New York Times has reported.
But, Editor-in-Chief Alexei Venediktov to the station told Reuters that its editorial policy would not change, which has been independent for three decades.
Meanwhile, the US accused Russia on Wednesday of launching a fully-fledged attack on "media and truth". The US pointed out how Moscow blocked independent news outlets and prevented Russians from hearing news from Ukraine. The US State Department said that Russia is strangling Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram platforms to prevent millions of citizens from having independent news, opinions etc.
