Russia Today reporter resigns over Flight 17 coverage, says station's number one rule is 'it is always Ukraine's fault'

A Russia Today reported based in London resigned with immediate effect Friday morning due to the state-backed channel's "disrespect for the facts," she told the UK's Press Gazette. Sara Firth, who had been with the station for five years, said RT's coverage of the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 — which was shot down over Ukrainian airspace by an anti-air missile likely obtained from Russia, killing 295 civilians — was the "straw that broke the camel's back."

Firth spent Friday tweeting, re-tweeting, and responding with surprising honesty to unflattering truths about Russia Today before revealing that she had resigned. Her tweets included the fact that the station's number one rule is that it is "always Ukraine's fault," and she even refuted one user's attempts to compliment her, insisting that because she was being paid by a government-funded station, she had to "always obey."

Firth's tweets were so shocking that one user thought her account had been hacked.

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Firth also told BuzzFeed that when she went to the newsroom after the plane went down yesterday, she "saw how we were covering it already and I just knew I had to go. It was a total disregard to the facts... I couldn't do it any more. Every single day we're lying and finding sexier ways to do it."