Former CNN Talk show host Larry King had interviewed every sitting US president, heads of state from around the globe, and many celebrities on CNN. His Larry King Live show was one of the most popular TV shows in the United States.
After he retired from the US International Cable network, he took a job for Russia Today known as RT. RT is a competing global English speaking news network based in Moscow, Russia and available also on some US cable channels along with Al Jazeera, BBC, RAI, NHK, or DW.
Larry King calls his show now Larry King Now. It’s the same concept, same people interviewed, similar audience.
His show remains very popular also with a growing viewer audience in the United States.
His network RT received an Emmy nomination for its series of Guantanamo hunger strike reports in 2014, and the channel was earlier nominated for Emmies in 2010 and 2012.
Today the Newly-appointed chief of US Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), Andrew Lack, has named RT one of the agencyโs main challenges alongside extremist groups like the Islamic State and Boko Haram.
The question now pops up if Larry King is actually working for a terror network?
Lack, the first chief executive of the BBG, mentioned RT in an interview with The New York Times.
โWe are facing a number of challenges from entities like Russia Today which is out there pushing a point of view, the Islamic State in the Middle East and groups like Boko Haram,โ he said. โBut I firmly believe that this agency has a role to play in facing RT never expected to find itself on a list with the two most dangerous terrorist groups of the day and is seeking clarification on the comment.
โWe are extremely outraged that the new head of the BBG mentions RT in the same breath as worldโs number one terrorist army,โ said Margarita Simonyan, RTโs editor-in-chief. โWe see this as an international scandal and demand an explanation.โ
Apart from BBG itself, RT is also seeking clarification from the US State Department and the US Embassy in Russia.
US politicians have lashed out at RT in the past. John Kerry attacked the channel for its coverage of the Ukraine crisis last spring and called RT a โpropaganda bullhorn.โ
Following Kerryโs rant, Russiaโs Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov decried John Kerryโs comments about RT as โuncivilizedโ and โprosecutorial.โ โ[The West] has been convinced for some time that it has a full monopoly on mass media,โ said Lavrov in a statement. โRussia Today has won a large audience in the US and Western Europe, not to mention in Latin America and the Arab world.โ