The Guardian has published an article by a left-wing university crank spinning for Russian and Iranian state media and praising a far-left conspiracy theory site. Piers Robinson writes:

“one can gain useful insights and information from a variety of news sources – including those that are derided as “propaganda” outlets: Russia Today, al-Jazeera and Press TV should certainly not be off-limits. Mainstream media, wherever it may be based, is widely acknowledged to be overly deferential to political and economic power and that means, as consumers of news, we also need to think about exploring alternative news and information sites such as Media Lens and Spinwatch. And, more broadly, we need to become more aware of the strategies of manipulation that all governments employ in order to shape opinions and conduct.”

Russia Today is funded by Putin’s government and regularly airs conspiracy nonsense attacking the west and spinning for Moscow. Press TV was banned in the UK for filming the torture of an Iranian journalist. Media Lens is an extremely eccentric hard-left site which reckons Seumas Milne is a sellout and has been accused of denying the Srebrenica genocide. What an odd thing for the Guardian to publish…

UPDATE: Judging by his Twitter account Piers Robinson is also a big fan of the Corbynista conspiracy site The Canary. His students at Sheffield University are lucky to have him…