Sputnik and
RT Under Investigation
Is it news or propaganda? And what about the First
Amendment?
By Philip Giraldi
October 11,
2017 "Information
Clearing House"
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Somehow everything
keeps coming back around to Russia. In one of its
recent initiatives, the Justice Department (DOJ)
appears to be attacking the First Amendment as part
of the apparent bipartisan program to make Vladimir
Putin the fall guy for everything that goes wrong in
Washington. In the past month, the DOJ has revealed
that
the FBI is investigating
Russian owned news outlets Sputnik News and RT
International and has
sent letters to the latter
demanding that one of its business affiliates
register as a foreign agent by October 17th.
The apparent line of inquiry that the Bureau is
pursuing is that both are agencies of the Russian
government and that both have been spreading
disinformation that is intended to discredit
the United States government and its institutions.
This alleged action would make them, in the DOJ
view, a propaganda arm of a foreign government
rather than a news service. It also makes them
subject to Department of the Treasury oversight
under the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938.
Sputnik,
which is owned by a Russian government media group
headed by Putin consigliere Dimitri
Kiselyov, has been under investigation due to the
accusations made by a fired broadcaster named Andrew
Feinberg. Feinberg, the former Sputnik White House
correspondent, reportedly took with him a thumb
drive containing some thousands of internal business
files when he left his office. He has been
interviewed by the FBI, has turned over his
documents, and has claimed that much of the
direction over what the network covered came from
Moscow.
RT America,
more television oriented than Sputnik, operates
through two business entities:
RTTV America and RTTV Studios. The Department of
Justice has refused to identify which of the
businesses has been targeted by a letter calling for
registration under FARA, but it is believed to be
RTTV America, which provides both operational
support of the broadcasting as well as the
production facilities. Both companies are actually
owned by Russian-American businessman Alex
Yazlovsky, though the funding for them presumably
comes from the Russian government.
I have noticed
very little pushback in the U.S. mainstream and
alternative media regarding the Department of
Justice moves, presumably because there is a broad
consensus that the Russians have been interfering in
our “democracy” and have had it coming. If that
assumption on my part is correct, the silence over
the issue reflects a certain naïvete while also
constituting a near perfect example of a pervasive
tunnel vision that obscures the significant
collateral damage that might be forthcoming.
News organizations are
normally considered to be exempt from the
requirements of FARA. The Department of Justice
action against the two Russian major media outlets
is unprecedented insofar as I could determine. Even
Qatar owned al-Jazeera, which was so vilified during
the early stages of the Afghan War that it had its
Kabul offices bombed
by the U.S., did not have to register under FARA,
was permitted to operate freely, and was even
allowed to buy a television channel license for its
American operations.
The DOJ is in
effect saying that RT and Sputnik are nothing more
than propaganda organs and do not qualify as
journalism. I would have to disagree if one goes by
the standards of contemporary journalism in the
United States. America’s self-described “newspapers
of record” the New York Times and the
Washington Post pretend that they have a lock
on stories that are “true.” The Post has
adopted the slogan “Democracy Dies in Darkness”
while the Times proclaims “The truth is
more important now than ever,” but anyone who has
read either paper regularly for the past year knows
perfectly well that they have been as often as not
leading propaganda organs for Hillary Clinton and
the Democratic Party, pushing a particular agenda
and denigrating Donald Trump. They differ little
from the admittedly biased television news reporting
provided by Fox News and MSNBC.
What exactly did the
Russians do? According to
last January’s report
signed off on by the FBI, CIA and NSA, which may
have motivated the DOJ to take action, RT and
Sputnik “consistently cast President-elect Trump as
the target of unfair coverage from traditional U.S.
media outlets that they claimed were subservient to
a corrupt political establishment.” Well, they
certainly got that one right and did better in their
reporting of what was going on among the American
public than either the Washington Post or
New York Times.
Regarding Sputnik,
Feinberg claimed
inter alia that he was “pushed” to ask
questions at White House press briefings suggesting
that Syria’s Bashar al-Assad was not responsible for
some of the chemical attacks that had taken place.
One wonders at Feinberg’s reluctance as Sputnik and
RT were not the only ones expressing skepticism over
the claims of Syrian involvement, which have been
widely debunked. And why is expressing a credible
alternative view on an event in Syria even regarded
as propaganda damaging to the American public?
There is a
difficult to distinguish line between FARA
restricted “trying to influence opinion” using what
is regarded a fake news and propaganda and
legitimate journalism reporting stories where the
“facts” have been challenged. Even real journalists
choose to cover stories selectively, inevitably
producing a certain narrative for the viewer,
listener or reader. All news services do that to a
greater or lesser extent.
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I have
considerable personal experience of RT in particular
and, to a lesser extent, with Sputnik. I also know
many others who have been interviewed by one or
both. No one who has done so has ever been coached
or urged to follow a particular line or support a
specific position insofar as I know. Nor do I know
anyone who has actually been paid to appear. Most of
us who are interviewed are appreciative of the fact
that we are allowed to air views that are
essentially banned on the mainstream media to
include critique of maladroit policies in places
like Syria and Afghanistan and biting critiques of
the war on terror.
Sputnik, in my opinion,
does, however, lean heavily towards stories that are
critical of the United States and its policies,
while RT has a global reach and is much more
balanced in what it covers. For sure, it too
criticizes U.S. policies and is protective of the
Russian government, but it does not substantially
differ from other national news services that I have
had done interviews for. I find as much uniquely
generated negative reporting about the U.S. (usually
linked to violence or guns) on BBC World News,
France24 and Deutsche Welle as I do on
RT International.
To describe it as part of an “influence campaign”
driven by a “state-run propaganda machine” has a
kernel of truth but it is nevertheless a bit of a
stretch since one could make the same claims about
any government financed news service, including
Voice of America. Governments only get into
broadcasting to promote their points of view, not to
inform the public.
There is a
serious problem in the threats to use FARA as it
could advance the ongoing erosion of freedom of the
press in the United States by establishing the
precedent that a foreign news services that is
critical of the U.S. will no longer be tolerated. It
is also hypocritical in that countries like Israel
that interfere regularly in American politics are
exempt from FARA registration because no one dares
to take such a step, while Russia is fair game.
Going after news
outlets also
invites retaliation
against U.S. media operating in Russia and,
eventually, elsewhere. Currently Western media
reports from Russia pretty much without being
censored or pressured to avoid certain stories. I
would note a recent series that appeared on CBS
featuring the
repulsive Stephen
Colbert spending a week in Russia which
mercilessly lampooned
both the country and its government. No one arrested
him or made him stop filming. No one claimed that he
was trying to undermine the Russian government or
discredit the country’s institutions, even though
that is precisely what he was doing.
And then there is the
issue of the “threat” posed by news media outlets
like RT and Sputnik. Even combined the two services
have limited access to the U.S. market, with a 2014
study suggesting that they have only
2.8 million actual weekly viewers.
RT did not make the cut and is not included on the
list of 100 most popular television channels in the
U.S. and it has far less market penetration than
other foreign news services like the BBC. It can be
found on only a limited number of cable networks in
a few, mostly urban areas. It does better in Europe,
but its profile in the U.S. market is miniscule. As
even bad news is good news in terms of selling a
product, it probably did receive higher ratings when
the intelligence agency report slamming it came out
on it in January. Everyone probably wanted to learn
what RT was all about.
So it seems to
me that the United States’ moves against RT and
Sputnik are little more than lashing out at a
problem that is not really a problem in a bid to
again promote the Russian “threat” to explain the
ongoing dysfunction that prevails in America’s
democratic process. One keeps reading or hearing how
the American government has “indisputable” proof of
Moscow’s intentions to subvert democracy in the U.S.
as well as in Europe but the actual evidence is
still elusive. Will Russiagate end with a bang or a
whimper? No one seems to know.
Phil
Giraldi is a former CIA Case Officer and Army
Intelligence Officer who spent twenty years overseas
in Europe and the Middle East working terrorism
cases. He holds a BA with honors from the University
of Chicago and an MA and PhD in Modern History from
the University of London
This
article was originally published by
Unz Review
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