RIA Novosti: Russia’s Defense Tsar Wants ‘Optimistic News Factory’

MOSCOW, January 14 (RIA Novosti) ­ The Russian defense industry will create its own “news factory” to offset the “Russophobic” produce of state-owned television channels, a senior official said.

Russian television revels in vulgarity and sensationalism, and its makers show “disdain for everything created by domestic labor and Russia’s great culture,” said Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, who is responsible for the country’s defense and aerospace industries.

He said on Twitter he had ordered the press services of companies under his supervision to create their own “factory of real, optimistic news that will rouse people to new accomplishments.”

The companies include state-controlled corporations in the space industry, shipbuilding, aviation industry and engine building, Rogozin said late Monday.

The Russian government appears to be taking an increasing interest in the country’s media image: Last month, President Vladimir Putin ordered the liquidation of RIA Novosti, replacing it with a new agency whose head, ultraconservative TV personality Dmitry Kiselyov, promised it would strive for “the restoration of a just attitude toward Russia as an important world country with good intentions.”

Rogozin, once a firebrand nationalist politician, was co-opted into the government in 2008 and became the overseer of the country’s military-industrial complex in the Cabinet in 2011.

Russia’s defense industry has often been criticized for ineffectiveness and lack of transparency. The country’s military has been struggling in recent years to keep up with the schedule of a sweeping rearmament plan, for which $20 trillion has been allotted through 2020.