How UK media mislead us about Britain’s leading military ‘think tank’
Posted by M. C. on July 25, 2023
The British press has quoted the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) hundreds of times in the past two years without informing readers it is funded by the UK military, US government and arms corporations, and that it’s a bastion of establishment interests.
Smaller funders include arms manufacturers Lockheed Martin, Airbus, Babcock, Leonardo, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon, alongside the UK Ministry of Defence and the Royal Navy.
RUSI (circled) is next door to the Ministry of Defence in Whitehall. (Photo: MOD)
RUSI has been cited in 336 UK press articles in the past two years, and is invariably described by journalists simply as a “think tank”.
But the organisation’s funders include the UK and US governments, alongside arms corporations, and its commentaries overwhelmingly reflect the perspectives of the British establishment.
Declassified could find no instances in the hundreds of press articles where RUSI’s funders were mentioned.
In the past two years, the Guardian or Observer mentioned RUSI in 106 articles, the Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph in 66 and the Times and Sunday Times in 28 articles.
The references in the papers were quotes from RUSI staff, notably on the war in Ukraine and UK military policy, or reports released by the organisation.
RUSI says it is “an independent think tank engaged in cutting-edge defence and security research” and that it “embodies nearly two centuries of forward thinking, free discussion, and careful reflection on defence and security matters”.
Based in Whitehall, close to the Ministry of Defence, RUSI was founded in 1831 by the Duke of Wellington, the Field Marshal and later prime minister.
Its second largest funder – providing between £500,000 and £999,000 – is the US State Department while its other large sponsors include the UK Foreign Office, the British army and arms corporation BAE Systems, which all gave up to £0.5m each in 2020-21.
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