Tumelo Mothotoane dumps the SABC and SABC News to join Russia Today as international correspondent and anchor.

Tumelo Mothotoane has dumped the SABC and will be leaving SABC News at the end of this month to join Russia's Russia Today (DStv 407).

"It is with emotional feelings that I officially announce that I am leaving the SABC at the end of March," says Tumelo Mothotoane who will join RT as an international correspondent and anchor.

Tumelo Mothotoane whose middle name is "Fortunate" presented Sistas on SowetoTV (DStv 261) for 3 years since she was 18, before moving to the SABC where she's the presenter of the current affairs show Sunday Live on SABC1 and anchored the news during AM Live on SABC News (DStv 404).

At RT, Tumelo Mothotoane will join the fellow South African, Thabang Motsei who've been working there for the past few years already.

New docu-reality show, News Team, starting on Russia Today (RT), following 7 reporters, including South Africa's Paula Slier and Thabang Motsei.

A new news reality show starting today on Russia Today (DStv 407), News Team, will be following several of th 24-hour TV news channel's reporters - including the two South Africans who work for RT - Paula Slier and Thabang Motsei.

News Team starting at 12:30 (South African time) will be broadcast on RT on Wednesdays from today for the next 22 weeks with repeats on Thursdays and Saturdays. According to RT News Team offers "an unprecedented glimpse into the world of field journalists".

The docu reality show was produced by Josh Silberman who says he developed an interest in doing a TV show about news correspondents "because it doesn't get any more real, unpredictable or exciting than news, especially in a war zone".

"Rather than being a series about television or news, it's a TV show about people - people who risk their lives to tell the world about what is happening outside of their living rooms".

News Team which is shot in a documentary reality series format, follows South Africa's Thabang Motsei and Paula Slier, the Englishman Peter Oliver, as well  as the Russians Maria Finoshina, Egor Piskunov and Alexey Yaroshevsky as RT reporters.

Viewers will see Paula Slier ending up in a gas attack in the West Bank for instance.

Since Russia's military invasion of the Ukraine's Crimea peninsula last month, the Kremlin-based TV news channel went into a blatantly slanted and propaganda fuelled news delivery style.

That has dented not only RT's reputation but especially the credibility of Thabang Motsei who, as an RT anchor, suddenly started reading biased news reports and doing slanted interviews with people of a mind-boggling nature. It makes for unintentionally hilarious viewing, harking back to Cold War era type propaganda news reels.

Russia Today's mind-boggling, rolling propaganda is placed in stark contrast when RT's Thabang Motsei comes up against CNN's Christiane Amanpour.

While Christiane Amanpour of Amanpour on CNN International (DStv 401) showed global TV viewers on Monday night with honest facts and insight exactly how Russia is going to get damaged economically and politically through imposed sanctions following its invasion of Ukraine's Crimea ...

... at the exact same time South Africa's Thabang Motsei on Russia's RT (DStv 407) was spouting insane propaganda-driven drivel not just damaging her and RT's credibility, but making for hilarious viewing for anyone interested in media studies.

RT's ongoing laughably one-sided broadcasting favouring Russia and nothing else and not giving any other side of the story, came into sharp contrast on Monday night when the once-respected anchor Thabang Motsei inflicted further serious career-damage to her name and journalism brand.

Thabang Motsei came across as a sad, light-weight, and out of her depth propaganda TV drone when she presented RT's nightly newscast directly opposite the best, the most informed, and the most respected global TV news woman, Christiane Amanpour.

Never in the history of Russia Today has the 24-hour TV news channel been so utterly blatantly propagandist and one-sided.

The trust and credibility RT had, has now surely completely evaporated as global viewers will definitely not see Russia Today any longer as a news channel but as a direct propaganda communication tool for Russian president Vladimir Putin.

RT's shocking lack of balance, avalanche of spin and propaganda, and unbelievable bad presentation in terms of covering Russia's invasion and annexation of Ukraine's Crimea region came into stark clarity and contrast on Monday when RT's propaganda pandering played out at the same time against a show such as Amanpour.

Christiane Amanpour showed in a clear, concise and full perspective how Russia is getting, and going to get damaged economically and politically, and explained why, and also showed how the damage and fallout is and will be much greater for Russia.

On RT, viewers waited for Thabang Motsei to tell then that Hobbits really do exist, that dragons really do exist, and that dwarfes (that really do exist) have started a fight with a dragon.

Thabang Motsei's unrelenting and insanely dished up news melodrama on Russia Today was headshakingly odd. It seems as if RT is clueless or deliberately oblivious that global TV news viewers (and RT is made and broadcast specifically for global viewers) also have access to other TV news channels.

Cold War type trashaganza only works and worked due to the absence of other knowledge or information or the deliberate drowning out of other points of view. But Russia Today is surrounded by multiple TV news channels on the pay-TV platforms in countries such as South Africa and elsewhere.

If RT remained more subtle in its approach, more restrained and more cleverly in its presentation and "facts" perhaps it wouldn't have been so jarring.

Watching RT and its unrelenting Russian propaganda on full display, is like watching a temporal worm hole broadcasting a modern-day, yet 80s inspired version of what a 24-hour global TV news channel would have been if it existed then - but done looking like Russia today.

BREAKING. South Africa's Thabang Motsei on Russia's RT goes on a jaw-droppingly one-sided, Russian propaganda-fuelled news rambling.

South Africa's anchor and reporter on RT (DStv 407) Thabang Motsei is shockingly going along and damaging her own brand and credibility anchoring the one one-sided, Russian propaganda-filled story after another on the RT news channel - which has seemingly overnight changed into a heavy slanted, extremely biased 24-hour TV news channel.

The once highly respected Thabang Motsei who knows the history of, and comes from South Africa where an apartheid government used extreme nationalist and media propaganda to destroy a nation and its people, is now spouting eye-popping rhetoric, slanted and biased stories, and jaw-dropping unproven statements suddenly masqueraded and presented as "news" in surreal TV broadcasts on RT.

Her shocking behaviour - coming across as a puppet saying whatever she is told to say - is evaporating Thabang Motsei's reputation and credibility as a real journalist and TV reporter.

At issue is wall-to-wall coverage on RT about Russia's military invasion of the Ukraine, and the region of Crimea which will soon "belong" to Russia after residents in Crimea vote in a "referendum" to join Russia. No "no" vote can be marked on referendum ballots.

RT's shocking sudden change in hardline propagandist news coverage favouring Russia and trashing Western Ukraine and Kiev since a week ago is breathtaking to watch in South Africa as reporters and anchors like Thabang Motsei suddenly turned into on-air robots, saying the most unbelievable things.

Anchoring RT's news coverage on Saturday night, Thabang Motsei, usually level-headed, informed and impartial, anchored, read and talked for story after story after story about Russia and Crimea - all with the same narrative refrain: the Ukraine and the rest of the world is bad and Russia is standing and helping residents in Crimea.

The news coverage and the words coming out of Thabang Motsei's mouth, smiling and friendly - yet blatantly one-sided - is clearly helping to incite division in Crimea and the Ukraine (and possibly even violence) as she says unsubstantiated and unproved things.

Watching RT the past week it is as if somebody has flipped a switch editorially and turned RT into an English speaking propaganda TV channel for a specific subject (Ukraine and Crimea region) for Russia. 

The interesting part is how blatantly obvious it is, moreover due to the lack of basically any stories positive about West Ukraine or telling the other side of a story, and with the abundant availability of other 24-hour TV news channels covering the same story with wide additional perspective.

It is as if RT wants to convince somebody that Russia is justified to invade an annex a certain part of another country. 

Yet RT's global audience - viewers for instance who can watch RT in South Africa - can very plainly see through the shocking and badly done propaganda slant - since RT is flanked by numerous other TV news channels to the left and the right of it on the channel line-up grid. 

It's surprising how quickly RT which used to be much more balanced and fair in terms of stories, suddenly took a sharp and blatantly biased editorial position, one of being pro-Russia and is demonising everything and anything regarding the Ukraine "which is a state falling apart", except for Crimea wanting to be a part of Russia - its the same refrain, the same narrative, the same theme in basically every story.

Looking viewers straight in the eye, Thabang Motsei tells them about neo-Nazis from Kiev threatening lives in Crimea and post-revolt Ukraine, how "Russian reporters are coming under attack from radicals", and how "satellite providers have refused to work with RT over anonymous threats".

It's unbelievable, yet really happening. 

South African academics and lecturers should watch and record RT and anchors such as Thabang Motsei to show their students in media and TV studies how once credible reporters have become - seemingly overnight - part of a vast propaganda machine. It is jarring to watch.