Employees walk out live on air during programming on TV Rain. (screen grab from TV Rain)
The channel suspended its operations after TV Ren employees declared it “not for war” and sent orders to shut it down due to its coverage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Russian television channel TV Ren (Dozhd) saw mass resignations on the air as employees declared “not for war” and after the channel was ordered to close due to its coverage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. had suspended its operations.
Natalia Scindia, one of the founders of the channel, decided to take a stand for peace as the staff walked out of the studio. TV Ren is one of Russia’s last independent news outlets.
The entire staff of the news channel gave their resignation live on air.
Meanwhile, TVRain, the last independent media outlet operating in Russia, has shut down — here are the last few minutes of its broadcast, bad Google Translate. It then cut into Swan Lake, which has special relevance: https://t.co/XXtUHroZkt pic.twitter.com/Iq7HSal7FW— Timothy Burke (@bubbaprog) 3 March 2022
In its final program, the channel played Tchaikovsky’s ‘Swan Lake’, which refers to August 1991 when Soviet TV stations broadcast ballet, not civil unrest in the country.
TV Rain gets off to a bang when it airs a 1991 performance of Swan Lake on Soviet TV during the coup attempt against Gorbachev. At a time when many wonder whether the people around Putin can stop this war in Ukraine and leave Russia in isolation. https://t.co/ADFGVwxy8o— Andrew Roth (@Andrew__Roth) 3 March 2022
A day earlier, the General Director of TV Rain had said that the channel was temporarily halting after the website was blocked.
Scindiava issued a statement after one of Russia’s last remaining liberal media outlets, Eko Moskvi radio station, was shut down following pressure on its coverage of the war in Ukraine.
“We need strength to understand how we can work from here. We really hope that we will return to broadcasting and continue our work,” Scindia said in a statement published on the channel’s website.
The New York Times reported that TV Ren had already been blocked by Russia’s telecommunications regulator and that some of the channel’s employees fled the country for fear of their safety.
It was previously reported that media outlets in Russia have been instructed to publish information only from official sources.
(with Reuters inputs)
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