CrossTalk

CrossTalk
Title card
Presented byPeter Lavelle
Production
Production locationMoscow
Running time30 minutes
Original release
NetworkRT
ReleaseSeptember 30, 2009 (2009-09-30) –
present (present)
Infobox instructions (only shown in preview)

CrossTalk is a current affairs debate television program on RT. It is billed by RT as "RT's flagship program."[1] It is hosted by American journalist Peter Lavelle, who created the show.[2] It also features Yelena Khanga.[3] CrossTalk premiered on September 30, 2009 and airs for 30 minutes.[4] Guests are encouraged to intervene whenever they wish which, according to Oliver Bullough in the New Statesman, means the conversation can "degrade into barely comprehensible shouting".[5]

In a 2010 episode of CrossTalk, Lavelle's two guests — Douglas Murray of the Centre for Social Cohesion and Anne-Elisabeth Moutet of the Rousseau Institute — were taken aback when he said that the perpetrators of the September 11 attacks were "not fundamentalists".[6] Lavelle later said this particular episode was a "fiasco" because he lacked a "balanced pair of experts".[6]

An edition in July 2016 was a response to a NATO summit in which all participants were critical of the alliance. One participant said NATO was "a minute group of megalomaniac powerbrokers hell bent on sending us into a third world war". According to Lavelle, he had been prevented from showing a defence of NATO in captions because of technical problems, although anti-NATO captions were shown.[2] The programme has conveyed conspiracy theories that the September 11 attacks were an inside job and AIDS being caused by AIDS drugs themselves.[7]

  1. ^ e.g., programme site as of 6 May 2023
  2. ^ a b Williams, Christopher (February 7, 2017). "Media watchdog calls in Kremlin-backed news channel RT over impartiality breach on Nato". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved September 14, 2017.
  3. ^ "Introducing "CrossTalk"". RT. September 30, 2009. Archived from the original on December 24, 2011. Retrieved December 15, 2011.
  4. ^ ""Crosstalk": RT's brand new TV debate club". RT. September 30, 2009. Archived from the original on March 27, 2012. Retrieved December 15, 2011.
  5. ^ Bullough, Oliver (May 10, 2013). "Inside Russia Today: counterweight to the mainstream media, or Putin's mouthpiece?". New Statesman. Archived from the original on 2013-06-29. Retrieved September 14, 2017.
  6. ^ a b von Twickel, Nikolaus (March 23, 2010). "Russia Today courts viewers with controversy". Moscow Times. Archived from the original on 2010-08-11.
  7. ^ Kennedy, Dominic (August 1, 2016). "Putin TV channel twists the thinking of western viewers". The Times. London. Archived from the original on 2020-02-25. Retrieved September 14, 2017. (subscription required)