An award-winning journalist, James Kirchick, who is gay, was invited by RT News — a Russian owned and government-funded news network — to speak about the sentencing of Bradley Manning today. Instead, as the segment began, Kirchick put on a pair of rainbow suspenders and told the Russia Today host that he was not going to be talking about Manning, rather, about “the horrific environment of homophobia in Russia right now.”
“Being here on a Kremlin-funded propaganda network, I’m going to wear my gay pride suspenders and speak out against the horrific, anti-gay legislation that Vladimir Putin has signed into law.”
Kirchick, who can be called a conservative, was speaking from Stockholm, Sweden, and said he wanted to “let Russian gay people know they have friends and allies in solidarity all over the world.” He told the RT News reporters, “we’re not going to be silent in the face of this horrific repression perpetrated by your paymasters, by Vladimir Putin.”
“And I don’t know, as a journalist, how you can go to sleep at night, seeing what happens to journalists in Russia, who are routinely harassed, tortured, and killed by the Russian government. I don’t know how you can call yourself a journalist and how you can go to sleep at night. I find that abominable, and you should be ashamed of yourself.”
“You have 24 hours a day to lie about America, I am going to tell the truth with my two minutes.”
Aside from the suspenders, Kirchick clearly had planned his comments before going on:
Need a rainbow flag in #Stockholm, fast. Can anyone help?
— Jamie Kirchick (@jkirchick) August 21, 2013
And even after pulling the plug on the interview, Kirchick says RT News was not done with him.
True fact: @RT_com just called taxi company that took me to studio to drop me off on the side of the highway on way to Stockholm airport
— Jamie Kirchick (@jkirchick) August 21, 2013
Watch:
//www.youtube.com/embed/MEV9O_O7EB8