[Bresenham]

The BBC was banned from broadcasting the voices of Sinn Féin MPs who had been elected to the UK parliament.

So starting from the vantage of a news service banning interviews with members of its own country's parliament, outlets like Russia Today have to be below that bar.

A number of Russian outlets are listed as unreliable - perhaps some of them are tabloids like English language tabloids, but it seems that all Russian outlets with a standard mild or heavy support of their government are not OK, whereas this is not the case for the US and UK outlets with the same mild to heavy view of things from their country's vantage. It is just the myopic view of the English speaking countries.

[rhcom2]

> The BBC was banned from broadcasting the voices of Sinn Féin MPs who had been elected to the UK parliament.

The British government instituted that ban, not the BBC. That was also ended almost 30 years ago.

Russia is very low on press freedom (142) while the UK is at (28) is high [1] which seems to be the reason for its outlets to be unreliable.

https://web.archive.org/web/20120131012309/http://en.rsf.org...

[Mauricebranagh]

Everyone in the UK was banned - but they got round it by having an actor reading what the SF MP's said.

SF could have go round this by taking up their seats and using parliamentary privilege.

[Bresenham]

To take up their seats, they would have had to swear an oath - "I swear by Almighty God that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, her heirs and successors, according to law. So help me God."

So if the Irish republicans had sworn an oath of allegiance to the queen, her heirs and their successors, they could have had the benefits of UK press freedom. Ok.

[pmyteh]

It's clear that the ban on Sinn Féin members speaking on television was an abuse (by the government). But given that the BBC sidestepped the ban by having them re-voiced by actors (purportedly making Thatcher furious) it's difficult to see them as anything other than independent-minded in this instance.

[dash2]

My question wasn't "what makes you think the BBC is perfectly reliable", but "what makes you think it's not more reliable than RT et al."