denier Ryan Dawson, presenting him as a human rights activist. Such figures as Alex Jones, Jim Marrs, David Ray Griffin, and Webster Tarpley have appeared on RT to advance conspiracy theories about topics such as the September 11 attacks, the Bilderberg group, and the "New World Order". Content RT has presented itself as a global network "like the BBC or France 24", differing from them in offering “alternative views” ignored by the "Western-dominated news media". Many Western countries, in contrast, regard RT not just as a propaganda organ, but as "the slickly produced heart of a broad, often covert disinformation campaign designed to sow doubt about democratic institutions and destabilize the West". According to Steven Erlanger, RT provides "hard news and top-notch graphics" and a "mix with interviews from all sorts of people: well known and obscure, left and right. ... if there is any unifying character to RT, it is a deep skepticism of Western and American narratives of the world and a fundamental defensiveness about Russia and Mr. Putin." Propaganda and related issues RT's editor-in-chief, Margarita Simonyan, has described RT as giving Russia "soft power", and being the same kind of "tool" for Russia that the "BBC or CNN" are "for the UK and USA". In 2012, she stated that RT waged "an information war ... with the entire Western world" during the Russo-Georgian War. Observers have criticized the state-supported/controlled nature of RT as an instrument of propaganda. In 2005, Pascal Bonnamour, the head of the European department of Reporters Without Borders, called the newly announced network "another step of the state to control information". In a 2005 interview with U.S. government-owned external broadcaster Voice of America, Russian-Israeli blogger Anton Nosik said the creation of RT "smacks of Soviet-style propaganda campaigns". In 2009, Luke Harding (then Moscow correspondent for The Guardian) described RT's advertising campaign in the United Kingdom as an "ambitious attempt to create a new post-Soviet global propaganda empire". In Russia, Andrey Illarionov, former advisor to Vladimir Putin, has called the channel "the best Russian propaganda machine targeted at the outside world". Chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov, speaking after the launch of RT America, said: "Russia Today is an extension of the methods and approach of the state-controlled media inside Russia, applied in a bid to influence the American cable audience". Others have commended its promotion and discussion of issues ignored or just not given enough time