Media outlets based in the US and Britain have long enjoyed dominance in the global news market and have abused their position to manipulate audiences, a Kremlin spokesman told RT in an exclusive interview.

Russia is currently being targeted by an unprecedented campaign in the West, aimed at undermining its resurgence, Dmitry Peskov told RT’s Sophie Shevardnadze. The media are playing a major part in it, as they are selling an anti-Russian narrative to the people of Western nations. But what those outlets do is a disservice to their audiences, he argued.

“People are naked against these media wars. They are victims of these media wars,” he said. “They are being… driven into a certain way of emotions without even understanding that.”

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Peskov said that for decades “Anglo-Saxon media” enjoyed a virtual global monopoly on delivering news about economy and politics. “They are the most powerful, the most influential, and they have the widest possible reach globally,” he said. “And, of course, this feeling of monopoly brings a will to manipulate this monopoly. You can use this monopoly as a tool of delivering your point of view, whether it’s right or wrong, it doesn’t matter, you can adjust it in accordance with the situation – to simply manipulate the [minds] of people throughout the world.”

Watch the full version of RT’s exclusive interview with Dmitry Peskov

He added that outlets like RT challenge this “huge machine” with alternative narratives and facts that don’t fit into how the Western media wants the world to see things. A good example of this is coverage of events in Syria and Iraq, Peskov said. Western media were all too eager to highlight civilian casualties of the operation in Aleppo, which they blame solely on Russian and Syrian forces, but failed to extend this kind of reporting to similar operations in Mosul and Raqqa, where the US-led coalition was in charge.

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