Russia Today Correspondent Quits Over Plane Crash 'Lies'

A second Russia Today correspondent has quit her job, saying
the Kremlin-funded station's anchors "do work for" Russian
President Vladimir Putin and lied on-air to the public.
London reporter Sara Firth announced her resignation nearly
two hours after taking to Twitter in a conversation with
Russia Today's London correspondent Polly Boiko, The
Huffington Post reported.
Firth said the network asks its anchors to "obscure the
truth," and that she'd had enough.

The conversation popped up after another Twitter user
complained to Boiko about the network's coverage of after a
suspected surface-to-air missile brought down Malaysia
Airlines Flight 17 as it flew from Amsterdam to Kuala
Lumpur:
When Boiko asked Tanos what she is spreading, Firth popped
in with a tweet accusing the London anchor — and herself —
of lying on a daily basis, saying:
She told The Press Gazette in London that she made her
decision to quit Thursday after
her newsroom's response to the reports about the deadly
plane crash.
"Yesterday when the story broke you get the kick in your
stomach when you’re going to get the facts and it’s this huge
story," she said. "And I walked into the newsroom and they
were running an eyewitness account of God-knows who the
person was blaming the Ukrainian government, and it is such
a volatile situation."
Firth, who has been with Russia Today since 2009, told
BuzzFeed Friday that the organization's coverage of the crash
was "the total disregard to the facts. We threw up eyewitness
accounts from someone on the ground openly accusing the
Ukrainian government [of involvement in the disaster], and a
correspondent in the studio pulled up a plane crash before
that the Ukrainian government had been involved in and said
it was 'worth mentioning.' "
But the prior plane crash wasn't "worth mentioning," Firth
said.
“I couldn’t do it any more," Firth said. "Every single day
we’re lying and finding sexier ways to do it.”
Earlier this year, former Russia Today correspondent Liz
Wahl quit while she was on the air, saying she couldn't
support a network that "whitewashes the actions of Putin"
while asking her to "promote Russian foreign policy."