Liz Wahl | |
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 Wahl in 2012 | |
| Born | May 27, 1985 |
| Education | Fairfield University |
| Occupations |
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| Political party | Democratic |
Liz Wahl (born May 27, 1985) is an American journalist. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] She was a correspondent for the Russian government-sponsored RT television network from 2011 to 2014 but left the network following a harshly critical on-air resignation that went viral.
Wahl was born at the U.S. Naval Base Subic Bay [6] in the Philippines to a Filipina mother [6] and a Hungarian American father. She was raised in Connecticut. She graduated from Fairfield University. [7] Her paternal grandparents were refugees from Hungary, who fled the on-coming Soviet invasion during the Hungarian Uprising. [5] [8] Wahl cited her grandparents' experience as a factor in her public denunciation of RT and the network's coverage of the Russo-Ukrainian War. [5]
Wahl worked at the United States branch of RT since 2011. [9] She and colleague Abby Martin began criticizing RT’s coverage of the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation on-air on March 3, 2014. [3] On March 5, 2014, Wahl went off script and resigned her job during her live segment while denouncing her employer RT. [10] Wahl stated "I cannot be part of a network funded by the Russian government that whitewashes the actions of Putin." [11]
The video of Wahl's resignation immediately went viral on the internet, with millions of hits on YouTube. She appeared on three major American cable news outlets – CNN, [12] Fox News, and MSNBC – was also invited to appear on The View , and the shows of Anderson Cooper, and Stephen Colbert [13] [14] for additional interviews.
Then RT Breaking the Set host Abby Martin criticised Wahl’s on-air resignation, which she said was a publicity stunt engineered by Bill Kristol's Foreign Policy Initiative think tank. [15] [9] Barbara Walters initially voiced criticism of Wahl, saying she should not be treated like a hero, [16] [17] but Walters recanted afterwards and praised Wahl's efforts. [18]
Politico published Wahl's tell-all firsthand story where she detailed her early career, how she was recruited to RT, her frustrations working for the Russian-funded network. [5] Wahl's contact, James Kirchick, admitted to having foreknowledge of her resignation but denied suggestions that he had orchestrated the event, stating that Wahl did what she did out of her own volition and that she initially reached out to him months earlier following his own on-air protest on the network against anti-gay legislation in Russia. [19] Wahl told David Weigel writing for Slate that her detractors were behaving as though her contact with Kirchick were part of a conspiracy. It began following his unexpected criticism of Russia's anti-gay laws during his appearance on RT. [20]
Wahl has reported for Newsy. [21] Wahl spoke at a peace conference in the Hague and addressed the Parliament of Canada on foreign interference in the digital era. [9]
In January 2019, Wahl announced her candidacy in the 2020 election for the United States House of Representatives Texas's 23rd congressional district as a Democrat. Wahl failed to appear on the ballot for the Democratic primary on March 3, 2020. [9] [22] [ needs update ]
Margaret Jane Pauley is an American television host, and author, active in news reporting since 1972. Pauley first became widely known as Barbara Walters's successor on the NBC morning show Today, beginning at the age of 25, where she was a co-anchor from 1976 to 1989, at first with Tom Brokaw, and later with Bryant Gumbel; for a short while in the late 1980s she and Gumbel worked with Deborah Norville. In 1989, with her job apparently threatened by Norville's addition to the program, she asked to be released from her contract, but her request was denied. Her next regular anchor position was at the network's newsmagazine Dateline NBC from 1992 to 2003, where she teamed with Stone Phillips.
Barbara Jill Walters was an American broadcast journalist and television personality. Known for her interviewing ability and popularity with viewers, she appeared as a host of numerous television programs, including Today, the ABC Evening News, 20/20, and The View. Walters was a working journalist from 1951 until her retirement in 2015. Walters was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 1989, received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the NATAS in 2000 and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2007.
Ksenia Anatolyevna Sobchak is a Russian public figure, TV anchor, journalist, socialite and actress. She is the younger daughter of the first democratically elected mayor of Saint Petersburg, Anatoly Sobchak, and the Russian senator Lyudmila Narusova. Sobchak became known to the wider public as the host of the reality show Dom-2, which aired on the Russian channel TNT. Later she became an anchor at independent television channel TV Rain. As of January 2023, she hosts the television show Dok-Tok with Alexander Gordon.
RT is a Russian state-controlled international news television network funded by the Russian government. It operates pay television and free-to-air channels directed to audiences outside of Russia, as well as providing Internet content in Russian, English, Spanish, French, German and Arabic.
James Kirchick is an American reporter, foreign correspondent, author, and columnist. He has been described as a conservative or neoconservative.
Bianna Vitalievna Golodryga is a Moldovan-born American news anchor and journalist. She is currently serving as a senior global affairs analyst at CNN, and was previously the news and finance anchor at Yahoo! News. Golodryga was also previously co-anchor of the weekend edition of Good Morning America and a co-host of CBS This Morning.
RT America was a U.S.-based news channel headquartered in Washington, D.C. Owned by TV Novosti and operated by production company T&R Productions, it was a part of the RT network, a global multilingual television news network based in Moscow and funded by the Russian government. The channel said it reached an audience of 85 million people in the United States, but this figure is disputed. It was distributed through select cable providers, over-the-top services, a live stream through its website, and three low-power digital subchannels. Since the channel's closure, viewers who tune into the cable channel or their live stream are being shown a live feed of an RT International broadcast instead.
Margarita Simonovna Simonyan is a Russian propagandist and 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.
The Alyona Show was a current affairs television program hosted by Alyona Minkovski that aired on RT from 2009 to 2012. The show featured in-depth analysis of news stories and also frequently criticizes the mainstream media, national politics in the United States, and the U.S. financial industry.
Abigail Suzanne Martin is an American journalist, TV presenter, and activist. She helped found the citizen journalism website Media Roots and serves on the board of directors for the Media Freedom Foundation which manages Project Censored. Martin appeared in the documentary film Project Censored The Movie: Ending the Reign of Junk Food News (2013), and co-directed 99%: The Occupy Wall Street Collaborative Film (2013).
The first government headed by Arseniy Yatsenyuk was created in Ukraine on 27 February 2014 in the aftermath of the Revolution of Dignity. The cabinet was formed as a coalition of the Batkivschyna, UDAR and Svoboda political parties, the Economic Development and Sovereign European Ukraine parliamentary factions, and a number of unaffiliated MPs. On 24 July 2014, UDAR, Svoboda and 19 independent MPs exited the coalition to pave the way for the early parliamentary elections of late October 2014. Prime Minister Yatsenyuk announced his resignation the same day, but the Verkhovna Rada declined his resignation on 31 July 2014.
Maria Nikolayevna Baronova is a Russian chemist who has worked as a sales manager of lab equipment, journalist, and political spokesperson. She is known as an activist opposing President Vladimir Putin and, in particular, for having organized the Bolotnaya Square protests on May 6, 2012. In February 2019, she joined Russian government television network RT to work on a charity project.
In February and March 2014, Russia invaded the Crimean Peninsula, part of Ukraine, and then annexed it. This took place in the relative power vacuum immediately following the Revolution of Dignity and was the first act of the wider Russo-Ukrainian War.
Natalia Vladimirovna Poklonskaya is a Ukrainian-born Russian lawyer. She has served as the adviser to the Prosecutor General of Russia since 14 June 2022.
The following lists events that happened in 2014 in Russia.
Media portrayals of the Russo-Ukrainian War, including skirmishes in eastern Donbas and the 2014 Ukrainian revolution after the Euromaidan protests, the subsequent 2014 annexation of Crimea, incursions into Donbas, and the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, have differed widely between Ukrainian, Western and Russian media. Russian, Ukrainian, and Western media have all, to various degrees, been accused of propagandizing, and of waging an information war.
RT UK, also known as Russia Today, was a free-to-air television news channel based in the United Kingdom. It was part of the RT network, a Russian state-controlled international television network funded by the federal tax budget of the Russian government. The channel's head was Nikolay Bogachikhin. Launched in 2014, it ran live broadcasts for seven years and ceased broadcasting from London in July 2021.
The propaganda of the Russian Federation promotes views, perceptions or agendas of the government. The media include state-run outlets and online technologies, and may involve using "Soviet-style 'active measures' as an element of modern Russian 'political warfare'". Notably, contemporary Russian propaganda promotes the cult of personality of Vladimir Putin and positive views of Soviet history. Russia has established a number of organizations, such as the Presidential Commission of the Russian Federation to Counter Attempts to Falsify History to the Detriment of Russia's Interests, the Russian web brigades, and others that engage in political propaganda to promote the views of the Russian government.
Marina Vladimirovna Ovsyannikova is a Russian journalist who was employed on the Channel One Russia television channel. She worked for Russia's main evening newscast Vremya on Channel One since the beginning of the 2000s, later describing her role as "producing Kremlin propaganda".
For the second time American presenters on the Russian backed TV station Russia Today have gone off script to voice their personal concerns about Russia's occupation of the Crimea region of Ukraine.
She also noted that her partner is a physician who treats American soldiers on a daily basis.
My grandparents came here as refugees during the Hungarian revolution, ironically to escape the Soviet forces," Wahl said, adding she was "very lucky to have grown up here in the United States.
On last night's The Colbert Report on Comedy Central, Obama appears on "Between Two Ferns," Liz Wahl discusses her resignation from Russia Today, the NSA hires an advice columnist, and Maria Shriver talks "Paycheck to Paycheck." Check out highlights from The March 12th broadcast below!
Walters's co-hosts gave some push back, but Babara held her ground, declaring, "I think what she did is fine — it's a personal choice, but don't make her a hero for protesting. She is working for the government."
Barbara Walters has no sympathy for former Russia Today anchor Liz Wahl. The veteran ABC news correspondent took to "The View" Thursday to address the RT anchor's recent on-air resignation, in protest of the Russian government's pro-Putin propaganda on the network.
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