Russia's RT seeks legal challenge over UK watchdog's ruling

The Britain-based Russian TV channel RT has said it will launch a legal challenge over a ruling by the UK’s media regulator that it repeatedly failed to be impartial while reporting on the poisoning of former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter.

The broadcaster said it would seek a judicial review following Ofcom’s verdict in December that it had broken impartiality rules in seven news and current affairs programmes.

The poisoning, which Britain blamed on Russia, strained relations between the two countries and led to the biggest Western expulsion of diplomats since the height of the Cold War.

Mr Skripal, a former Russian military intelligence officer who later worked as a double agent for Britain, was targeted with the nerve agent novichok while at his home in Salisbury.

Russia has denied any involvement in the attempted murder.

In its ruling, Ofcom said RT had failed to give sufficient weight to a range of views in seven current affairs discussions or news items about the poisoning.

In an apparent response shortly after the ruling, Russia’s own media regulator announced it had launched an investigation into the activities of the BBC in the country.

Announcing the legal challenge on Thursday, RT said in a statement it “will be seeking judicial review of Ofcom’s decisions and process in its breach findings of 20 December against the network”.

It added: “Ofcom investigated 10 RT programmes, and decided that seven were in breach; we firmly believe that none were in breach. RT is left with no choice other than to seek judicial review of the matter.”

Russian officials say RT is a way for Moscow to compete with the dominance of global media companies based in the US that they say offer a biased and anti-Russian view of the world.

But critics say it is little more than the propaganda arm of Vladimir Putin’s government and aims to undermine confidence in Western institutions.

Ofcom has said it will consider further representations made by RT but could impose sanctions, ranging from compelling the station to broadcast a statement of its verdict through to a financial penalty and, in the most extreme case, revoking its licence.