Polly Boiko

Tuesday

October 9, 2018

From Russia Today with love

I like to think I’m a journalist like any other. But I work at the RT London office. That’s the Russian state-funded news channel. Four days a week, I’m a straight up news reporter. But, once a week, I do an even more sinister job. On Wednesdays, I ascend an extra couple of floors to a different ‘zone’ within the RT London compound, where I join a stealthy, covert team of online propagandists. There, in the lair of online information warfare, (six sad looking desks and quite a bit of mundane office banter) we record a short, and (we hope) funny and often expletive-laden video on a topic of entirely our choosing, satirizing the sorry state of the world.

Wednesday

March 14, 2018

Polly Boiko

The day I almost lost my job: diary of an RT reporter

From our UK edition

My name’s Polly and I work for RT (yes, so shoot me). I’m a reporter in the London bureau, and like many of my RT colleagues I woke up this morning not sure if I'd still have a job in the afternoon. We had heard the pre-statement leaks: diplomatic expulsions. No royals or dignitaries attending the World Cup. But no word as yet about our fate. Just existential uncertainty as to whether RT will be closed down by the British state. Ever since the Prime Minister pointed the finger of blame for the Skripal poisoning at the Kremlin, talk of her closing down RT has been rife.