CrossTalk

This article is about the RT TV show. For other uses, see Crosstalk (disambiguation).
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)