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Russia Today Reporter Quits Over MH17 Crash Coverage

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A London-based Russia Today (RT) reporter quit on Friday in protest of the station’s imbalanced reporting in its coverage of the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 crash.

Sara Firth resigned as a reporter, a position she held for five years, over what she called RT’s “total disregard for the facts,” the USA Today reported. 

“I resigned from RT today. I have huge respect for many in the team, but I’m for the truth,” she tweeted.

Hours after she tweeted her resignation, she told the U.K.-based Press gazette that it was the “straw that broke the camel’s back.”

[quote text_size=”small” author=”– Sara Firth” author_title=”RT reporter to UK-based Press Gazette”]

It’s scary that it’s genuine RT guidance on how to do a story, and you have to believe it to succeed there. You stop believing that what they say is the way it is and you stop being useful to them.

[/quote]

She also said that she had enough of “lying every single day … and finding sexier ways to do it.”

However, in an RT statement posted by tech news site Mashable, the station said that it was “not surprised” of her resignation because she recently informed the company that she “was likely to take an offer from another firm.”

“Sara has declared that she chooses the truth; apparently we have different definitions of truth,” the statement said. “We believe that truth is what our reporters see on the ground, with their own eyes, and not what’s printed in the morning London newspaper.”

RT maintained it is not like most of the media outfits that are quick “draw conclusions before the official investigation has even begun.”

It added, “We show all sides of the story, even if everyone else has already decided which side is to blame.”

Her resignation came months after RT anchor Liz Wahl resigned on air over the station’s allegedly “whitewashed” coverage of the Ukraine crisis in March. Her resignation, however, was quickly dismissed by the Kremlin-backed station as a publicity stunt.

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