Megyn Kelly Unwittingly Used By Russian Propaganda Machine (TWEET/VIDEO)



On Sunday night, Megyn Kelly made her grand debut on NBC News, via an exclusive interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin. But there’s already a strong indication that Kelly lost this encounter. She got rooked into letting an anchorman for one of the loudest cheerleaders for Putin peddle the Kremlin line before an American audience.

Kelly’s first official appearance on NBC came on the Thursday edition of the “Today” show. As part of the run-up to her interview with Putin, she conducted a series of interviews with ordinary Russians to get their take on the prospect that their president hacked the American presidential election. Watch here.

The first interview was with Sergey Brilev, a Russian broadcaster and television journalist. Brilev scoffed at any notion that Putin had a thumb on the scale for Trump, and hoped that we would “come to terms” with Trump’s victory rather than engage in “kindergartenish stuff” such as accusing Putin of hacking the election. He thought that it was “self-humiliating” to even suggest that our presidential election was “decided in Moscow.” According to Kelly, most of the other people with whom she spoke expressed similar sentiments.

When Media Matters senior fellow Matt Gertz saw this interview, something made his spidey senses go off. He did some digging, and discovered that Brilev was far from being a neutral observer. Brilev is deputy director of Russia-1, the country’s flagship state-owned television channel. He also hosts that station’s Saturday night newscast.


However, he is best known as a past host of “Direct Line with the President,” an annual live broadcast where Putin takes calls from average Russians. According to University of Florida professor Michael Gorham, an expert on Russian media, this program looks spontaneous, but is actually carefully scripted to make it appear that ordinary Russians share Putin’s “patriotic sentiment” and look to him as “a ‘final authority’ when all other venues for grievances had been exhausted.” A simple search on Google would have not only turned up these facts, but also his ties to the Russian International Affairs Council, a pro-Kremlin think tank.

According to Helena Goscillo of The Ohio State University, another expert on Russian media, Brilev and other state media journalists are “quite well trained” to parrot Putin’s line. To her mind, the mere thought that he would claim that his country hacked our election is “laughable.” Had Kelly done her homework, she would have known this.

Gertz also found ample evidence to suggest that Brilev wouldn’t have gone off script even if he’d wanted to do so. Since 2006, the great majority of Russian media outlets have been either owned outright by the state or are controlled by businessmen with close ties to the Kremlin. In this environment, Russian reporters are, in the words of The Guardian, “public servants first and journalists second (if at all).” Anyone who doesn’t toe the line risks losing access to cable coverage or printing facilities.


After being publicly prodded by Media Matters, Kelly did what she should have done earlier–do her homework. When she promoted her Putin interview on Thursday’s edition of “NBC Nightly News,” she mentioned that Brilev was a state broadcaster. Watch here.

Kelly described Brilev as “one of the country’s top broadcasters” and a reporter for “a state-owned channel.”

But why didn’t she do so before going on the air a few hours earlier? She could have saved herself a lot of embarrassment. And she wouldn’t have given Putin the impression that he’d gotten the drop on her.

(featured image courtesy Kelly’s Facebook)

Darrell is a 30-something graduate of the University of North Carolina who considers himself a journalist of the old school. An attempt to turn him into a member of the religious right in college only succeeded in turning him into the religious right's worst nightmare--a charismatic Christian who is an unapologetic liberal. His desire to stand up for those who have been scared into silence only increased when he survived an abusive three-year marriage. You may know him on Daily Kos as Christian Dem in NC. Follow him on Twitter @DarrellLucus or connect with him on Facebook. Click here to buy Darrell a Mello Yello.