As the United Kingdom heads for a snap general election on June 8, the Kremlin’s English-language broadcasters appear to be providing a partisan platform for commentators who support opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn and call for Scotland to leave the United Kingdom.

In the month after Prime Minister Theresa May called for the election on April 18, editorials published by RT and Sputnik offered Corbyn praise and advice, while criticizing May. Over the past twelve months, they repeatedly criticized the UK government’s relationship with Scotland and called for Scottish independence. These opinion pieces vastly outweighed any pieces arguing against Corbyn, or in favor of May or of Scotland’s continued presence in the United Kingdom.

Source: Sputnik. Archived on May 19, 2017.

The UK election has seen plenty of partisan coverage from independent and commercial media. However, RT and Sputnik are public service, state-funded broadcasters, not independent or commercial media. As such, they should provide impartial and balanced coverage.

This does not mean that they cannot publish critical opinion pieces, but they should be even-handed in their criticism. Publishing editorials which systematically criticize one side, while praising the other, over a period of weeks or months, appears like blatant bias and could be viewed as interference in UK politics by the Russian state’s organs.

State outlets

RT and Sputnik were created in 2005 and 2013, and are funded by the Russian state. Both claim to be independent, with RT complaining on September 20, 2016, that it had been called “Kremlin-backed,” and protesting that it is “an autonomous non-profit organization, funded from the budget of the Russian Federation.”

The claim of editorial independence is deceptive. According to Margarita Simonyan, chief editor of both outlets, in a comment published by state news wire RIA Novosti in June 2005, “We want to reflect Russia’s opinion of the world and to make Russia clearer for understanding.”

According to the decree establishing Sputnik’s parent organization, the Rossiya Segodnya agency, its goal is “reporting the state policy of the Russian Federation, and public life in the Russian Federation, abroad.”

Source: Kremlin. The presidential decree establishing the Rossiya Segodnya agency, of which Sputnik is part. Paragraph 4 a) reads, “The fundamental direction of activity of the federal state unitary concern ‘International information agency ‘Rossiya Segodnya’’ is reporting the state policy of the Russian Federation, and public life in the Russian Federation, abroad.”

“Reflecting Russia’s opinion” and “reporting the state policy of the Russian Federation” are not the tasks of independent news agencies, but of official communications channels.

Their reporting is consistent with that view. It consistently reflects the Kremlin’s strategic narratives — for example, criticizing NATO and Ukraine, and attacking witnesses to possible Russian war crimes in Ukraine and Syria. RT has also been found guilty in the UK of violating journalistic impartiality standards in its coverage of Ukraine and Turkey at times when the Kremlin was at loggerheads with Kiev and Ankara.

The evidence, therefore, indicates that neither RT nor Sputnik is an independent news outlet; rather, they are Russian government communication tools used to promote its policies.

Election coverage — Corbyn vs. May

To establish the two outlets’ approach to the UK election, the DFRLab analyzed their editorial references to May and Corbyn between April 18 and May 18. On Sputnik’s website, date-limited Google searches were conducted on the “Opinions” and “Columnists” sections; on RT’s site, on the “Op-Edge” section. In each case the search terms were “Jeremy” and “Theresa,” to avoid confusion with the many uses of the word “May.”

In the month since the election was called, Sputnik ran five editorials mentioning Corbyn. Two were penned by columnist Neil Clark, on April 19 and May 10; three were by editorialist John Wight, on April 21, May 12 and May 17.

Clark’s first editorial portrayed the Labour Party’s poor performance in opinion polls as “caused by the failure of Blairites and Brownites to accept leader Jeremy Corbyn’s democratic mandate,” said Corbyn “must” focus the election debate on issues other than Brexit, and added, “we need to reject Theresa May’s stated reason for calling the election.” This is openly partisan.