Margarita Simonovna Simonyan

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Margarita Simonowna Simonyan, 2017

Margarita Simonyan ( Russian Маргарита Симоновна Симоньян , Armenian Մարգարիտա Սիմոնի Սիմոնյան Margarita Simonyan Simoni * 6. April 1980 in Krasnodar ) is a Russian TV journalist and chief editor of the news agency Rossiya Segodnya ( Russian Россия сегодня Russia today ).

Life

Simonyan was born on April 6, 1980 to Armenian parents in Krasnodar . She comes from a poor background, her father repaired refrigerators, her mother was a housewife. Her parents were both descendants of Armenian refugees from the Ottoman Empire . Her father's family comes from Trabzon and emigrated to Crimea during the Armenian genocide in 1915 . During the Second World War , the family was deported to the Ural region with other Hemschin Armenians . Her mother comes from Sochi and was the descendant of an Armenian family whose ancestors fled the massacres of Armenians in the 19th century .

During her school days, when she helped sell small items at the market in the afternoons, she focused on foreign languages. She won a State Department scholarship for the Future Leaders Exchange student exchange program during 10th grade  and lived in Bristol , New Hampshire , USA for a year . She later reported that the school level in Krasnodar was so high that she was immediately given two grades better at high school. The teachers would have thought they were much older because they believed that people grew up earlier in Russia. Her parents' wish to stay in the United States and find foster parents to escape the misery of Russia was outraged. The experiences in the US would have destroyed her television illusions about the American way of life . “Probably for the first time I began to think about how information, media and films influence people's opinions. (…) Basically, I started to realize that we had been lied to. ”She only gave up her positive attitude towards the USA in 1999 after the bombing of Belgrade. But she still appreciates many things, such as the culture and the food. She remembered the craze for everything American in the 1990s, when America was seen as the savior. You have learned the declaration of independence by heart.

Simonyan opted for a journalistic career at an early age, working first for a Russian local newspaper and then for a local television station while studying journalism at the Kuban State University in Krasnodar . In addition, she studied at the "Television Elite School" founded by Vladimir Posner (Школа телевизионного мастерства, Schkola Tewisionnowo Masterstwa ).

Career

Simonjan with President Medvedev (2010)

During the Second Chechen War , Simonyan worked as a television correspondent for a smaller broadcaster. Simonjan reported on the war and the flood disaster in southern Russia and received the journalists' association's award for valor at work (“За профессиональное мужество”). In 2002 she also became the regional correspondent for the television channel Rossiya , reporting on the Beslan hostage-taking in 2004 . Simonyan was one of the first on the scene and eyewitnessed the murder of 334 people, 186 of them children.

She later moved to Moscow and became part of the Kremlin reporters. She became the first vice-president of the Russian Association of Radio and TV Reporters and in 2005 she became a member of the Russian Public Chamber of Russia .

In 2005, Simonjan also became editor-in-chief of the TV station RT .

In 2010 she published her first book, Heading to Moscow!

In 2012, Simonyan was named to the list of the 100 most influential women in Russia by media representatives Echo Moskvy , RIA Novosti and Ogonyok .

In December 2013 she was appointed editor-in-chief by Dmitri Konstantinowitsch Kisseljow , chairman of the new state agency Rossiya Sevodnja, parallel to her position as editor-in-chief of RT.

Political position

With President Putin at RT (2015)

In response to accusations of colored coverage, she replied: “We make no secret of the fact that we are a Russian broadcaster - of course we see the world from the Russian point of view. We are much more honest in this regard. "

In an interview with Spiegel in 2013, Simonyan said that RT was the only English-language broadcaster to report on the Russian and South Ossetian perspective during the Caucasus War of 2008 . She said the West has never got beyond its Cold War stereotypes and that journalists are interested in portraying Russia as a morally reprehensible aggressor.

In response to the accusation of one-sidedness and whataboutism, she replied that the representation of Russia in the Western media was much more one-sided than, conversely, the representation of the USA in the Russian. “We are much less critical of western politics than the western media are of Russia. When was the last time you read something good about Russia? (...) That's why this cliché makes me laugh that RT is an anti-Western channel. "

In the course of reporting on the Crimean crisis in 2014, Simonjan wrote that an “actual war” was taking place: “... a media war”. In addition, with special mention of the American presenter Abby Martin, she pointed out that RT journalists in the USA were subjected to massive harassment and slander. She called RT a weapon and explained that, in the long term, it was a matter of consumers getting used to RT in order to then show “what is needed” in an emergency.

At a press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin in late May 2017, France’s newly elected President Emmanuel Macron accused Russian news portals “ Sputnik ” and “Russia Today” of spreading “false propaganda” about his election campaign in the run-up to the French presidential elections. The reaction of Simonyan as editor-in-chief of RT was not long in coming. In a talk show on the Russian television station NTV, she announced that she would file a lawsuit against the Macron campaign team for this "defamation". After Putin's re-election as president in 2018, Simonyan was quoted as saying: “He used to be our president and could be replaced. Now he's our guide. And we will not allow him to be replaced. "

Awards

Private

Simonjan is married to the television producer Andrei Blagodyrenko and has a daughter and a son.

Works

Web links

Commons : Margarita Simonowna Simonjan  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Margarita Simonjan becomes editor-in-chief of the new news agency Rossija Segodnja , RIA Novosti , December 31, 2013
  2. ↑ "МАРГАРИТА СИМОНЬЯН" . Echo Moskvy . 4th March 2013
  3. ↑ a b c d Max Seddon: Lunch with the FT: Kremlin media star Margarita Simonyan. In: Financial Times. July 29, 2016, accessed April 8, 2017 (British English): “In any case the experience had shattered TV-fostered illusions about the American way of life and its superiority to Russia's economic turbulence. "That was probably the first time that I started thinking about how information, media and movies affect people's opinions about things. For some reason, we in Russia think an entire country is different from what it's really like. I basically started to feel that we'd been lied to. ""
  4. ^ Armenians of the World-Margarita Simonyan. Shant TV , February 6, 2012, accessed March 23, 2014 (Armenian).
  5. ↑ "20 years of FLEX" ( memento of the original from October 6, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  (PDF). Future Leaders Exchange. 2012. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / oregon.4h.oregonstate.edu
  6. ^ A b Julia Ioffe: "What is Russia Today?" , Columbia Journalism Review, September / October 2010
  7. ^ Artyom Sagorodnow: Today's woman who needs to be heard. In: The Moscow Times. September 25, 2008, accessed November 2, 2017 .
  8. ↑ Kara Rowland: Russia Today: Youth served .  The Washington Times, October 27, 2008.
  9. ↑ Margarita Simonyan book event photographs ( Memento of the original from February 23, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Ria Novosti media library. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / visualrian.ru
  10. ↑ 100 влиятельных россиянок , Kommersant , January 23, 2012
  11. ↑ Главным редактором "России сегодня" стала Маргарита Симоньян ( Memento of the original from January 1, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Новости Mail.Ru, December 31, 2013 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / news.mail.ru
  12. ↑ "Russia Today: Youth served" , The Washington Times , Kara Rowland 27 October, 2008
  13. ↑ Benjamin Bidder: If Russia is at war, we will go into battle ( Spiegel online , August 14, 2013, accessed January 26, 2016)
  14. ↑ About Abby Martin, Liz Wahl and media wars , rt.com, Margarita Simonyan, March 6, 2014
  15. ↑ The Kremlin on All Channels: How the Russian State Controls Television . Reporters Without Borders, October 2013, p. 32 ff.
  16. ↑ n-tv news television: Macron attacks Russian media sharply . In: n-tv.de . ( n-tv.de [accessed on November 2, 2017]).
  17. ↑ Как врет телеканал Russia Today. Ответ Маргарите Симоньян . ( kompromat1.info [accessed November 2, 2017]).
  18. ^ State failure , bpb , April 9, 2018
  19. ↑ Маргарита Симоньян родила дочь Марьяну , Сусанна Альперина, Rossiyskaya gaseta , August 12, 2013
  20. ↑ Тигран Кеосаян и Маргарита Симоньян назвали сына Багратом , Komsomolskaya Pravda , September 27, 2014
personal data
SURNAME Simonjan, Margarita Simonovna
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Симоньян, Маргарита Симоновна (Russian)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian television journalist
DATE OF BIRTH April 6, 1980
PLACE OF BIRTH Krasnodar