Russian Network RT Must Register As
Foreign Agent In US
By
Megan R. Wilson
October 08, 2017 "Information
Clearing House"
- The company that runs the U.S.
version of RT, the Russian state-owned
outlet originally known as Russia Today,
must register with the Justice
Department as a foreign agent, signaling
that all of their content would be
labeled as propaganda from Moscow.
In a
report
Monday, RT did not name the company that
the Department of Justice (DOJ) has
compelled to file paperwork under the
Foreign Agents Registration Act, but
blasted the edict as overreaching.
"The war the US establishment wages with
our journalists is dedicated to all the
starry-eyed idealists who still believe
in freedom of speech. Those who invented
it, have buried it,” Margarita Simonyan,
RT’s editor-in-chief, said about the
registration.
Media organizations have been exempted
from the law, which is wide-ranging in
its disclosure requirements and
generally applies to political
consultants and those working in
lobbying or public relations.
It
would be a felony if RT is found to have
willfully failed to register as a
foreign agent, however.
The registration would not stop the
organization from operating, but
requires regularly submitted paperwork
that lists its sources of foreign
government-tied revenue and the contacts
it makes in the United States, and it
would require any reporting to be
labeled as being influenced or financed
by the Russian government.
In
January, RT America was singled out in a
report from the U.S. intelligence
community about the potential impact
that Russia had on the 2016 presidential
elections.
The report from the U.S. intelligence
community called the outlet a “state-run
propaganda machine” that “has positioned
itself as a domestic U.S channel and has
deliberately sought to obscure any legal
ties to the Russian Government.”
RT
has also contracted with Julian Assange,
who runs WikiLeaks and is suspected of
leaking internal emails from the
Democratic National Committee. The
intelligence report said that some
employed by RT “actively collaborated
with WikiLeaks” during the presidential
election.
“The word 'propaganda' has a very
negative connotation, but indeed, there
is not a single international foreign TV
channel that is doing something other
than promotion of the values of the
country that it is broadcasting from,"
Simonyan said, according to an article
in Business Insider from January. “When
Russia is at war, we are, of course, on
Russia's side.”
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RT's registration could have
wide-ranging implications for similar
news organizations around the world. For
example, Russia could retaliate and
crack down on Voice of America, a U.S.
government-funded media network that
operates internationally.
Sputnik,
another English-language Russian
government-funded news outlet, is also
in the crosshairs of the Justice
Department. The U.S. intelligence report
describes both RT and Sputnik as
conducting an “influence campaign” on
behalf of the Kremlin that sought to
bolster support for then-GOP candidate
Donald Trump
and sow opposition for the Democratic
challenger,
Hillary Clinton.
On Monday,
Yahoo News
reported
that former Sputnik reporter Andrew
Feinberg had a lengthy interview with
the Justice Department office that
handles Foreign Agents Registration Act
issues.
Feinberg, who worked at The Hill in
2012, provided law enforcement with a
thumb drive of thousands of internal
emails and documents he had downloaded
from his work computer before he was
fired from his reporting job there.
Justice Department officials wanted to
know about Sputnik’s “internal
structure, editorial processes and
funding,” he told Yahoo News.
The Foreign Agents Registration Act is a
World War II-era law, enacted to thwart
Nazi propaganda from coming into the
United States to sway American public
sentiment and U.S. policy.
Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are working to
update the law and make it much
stricter, with several bills in the
works.
One,
sponsored by Sens.
Jeanne Shaheen
(D-N.H.) and
Todd Young
(R-Ind.), would increase enforcement
capabilities for the office that
oversees the act, located within DOJ’s
National Security Division. The House
has companion legislation.
Shaheen on Monday lauded the Justice
Department’s efforts to probe into
Sputnik’s internal structure.
“I’m very encouraged that the FBI is
investigating the Sputnik news agency,
which is funded by the Russian
government. We can’t allow foreign
agents, particularly those working on
behalf of our adversaries, to skirt our
laws,” Shaheen said in a statement.
“Every new revelation about Russia's use
of propaganda to influence the 2016
election further highlights the need for
the federal government to bolster its
enforcement of FARA.”
This article was originally
published by
The Hill
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