[LINK] "Liz Wahl, Former RT News Anchor, Quits and Prospers"

[rfmcdonald]

BusinessWeek's Felix Gilette interviews that Liz Wahl, the American Russia Today TV journalist whose on-air resignation got her global attention. She regrets nothing.

When Wahl joined RT—Russia’s state-sponsored English-language news network—in September 2011 as a correspondent based in Washington, she had high hopes of doing serious journalism. But Wahl says over the next two-and-a-half years she grew disillusioned, coming to believe that the network was little more than a gussied-up propaganda machine for the government. In late February, when Russian forces invaded Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, things got worse. Wahl grew increasingly uncomfortable with RT’s one-sided coverage of the crisis and its glowing hagiography of Russian President Vladimir Putin. On a Wednesday in March, Wahl decided not just to resign but to do it in dramatic fashion, on live TV.

She grabbed her cell phone, went to the bathroom, and quietly called her boyfriend to let him know what was coming. She scrawled some notes to read on the air. Then she went back to her desk and prepared to make a hasty exit after her broadcast. Inside the studio near the end of the live 5 p.m. news hour, Wahl looked into the camera. Her heart was careening. “My grandparents came here as refugees during the Hungarian revolution, ironically to escape the Soviet forces,” she said. “I cannot be a part of a network funded by the Russian government that whitewashes the actions of Putin. I am proud to be an American and believe in disseminating the truth. That is why after this newscast I am resigning.”

The station went to a commercial break. Wahl pulled out her earpiece, took off her microphone, and after a brief talk with her disapproving news director, walked out of the RT office building for the last time. A short while later, her cell phone began ringing. The clip of her resignation was going viral on the Internet. Cable news bookers were going bonkers. Everybody wanted her on their show.

In the ensuing media blitz, Wahl gave interviews to CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert, and ABC’s Barbara Walters, among others. Stories about her resignation appeared in news outlets around the world. The New York Daily News credited her with breaking through “the Iron Curtain.” She wrote a feature for Politico entitled “I Was Putin’s Pawn.” Wahl says she has no regrets. “I am happy I did it on the air,” she says. “There’s not anything I would change.”