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Arab World Sees Crackdown on RT as Admission of Role Russian Media Plays 'Conveying Truth to People'

— Ilya Tsukanov | Saturday September 14, 2024

© Sputnik/Evgeny Biyatov

The State Department has leveled fresh accusations against RT, claiming the Russian broadcaster is linked to Russian intel and engaged in a global influence operation. Journalists from the Arab World told Sputnik about the real reasons for the crackdown.

"You've asked questions for months and months about the Global South, and why there's not more support for Ukraine in this part of the Middle East or that part of Latin America or this part of Africa," US State Department Global Engagement Center director James Rubin told reporters at a briefing in Washington on Friday as the US government rolled out fresh allegations and restrictions against the Russian foreign language broadcaster.

"One of the reasons why so much of the world has not been as fully supportive of Ukraine as you would think they would be...is because of the broad scope and reach of RT, where propaganda, disinformation and lies are spread to millions if not billions of people around the world," Rubin said, complaining about Russian media's global reach and ability to get alternative viewpoints across.

Secretary of State Blinken, President Biden and other officials will be "talking" with counterparts "in Latin America, in Africa, in Asia and are going to be working with their colleagues to try to show all of those countries that...to broadcast, with no restriction of control, RT and allow them free access to their countries," and "has had a deleterious effect on the views of the rest of the world about a war that should be an open-and-shut case," Rubin added.

'Shocking' Hypocrisy and Duplicitousness

“These events clearly show that the world has once again been deceived by [US] claims of supporting a free media. Blinken leading the campaign against RT is more shocking than it is surprising, especially since the US is making these accusations against a channel expressing the views of many people around the world, not just in Russia,” Palestinian-British Journalist Abdel Bari Atwan told Sputnik.

“The US has a regime closer to a dictatorship than a democracy, and the campaign against RT contradicts Washington’s false claims that it seeks different opinions and democracy, which Americans no longer have,” Atwan suggested.

The Biden administration is “projecting onto RT its own favorite method of using the media for insidious purposes,” Ibrahim Awad, vice president of Lebanon’s National Media Council, told Sputnik.

It’s stunning “that the foreign minister of a superpower has become involved in such a matter, but on the other hand, the US’s deceptive position and attempts to sit on two chairs at once is not surprising,” Awad said.

US Sanctions on Russian Media Reveal Fear, Insecurity of Dying Empire – Ex-CIA Analyst! Former US State Department official and retired CIA intelligence officer Larry Johnson spoke with Sputnik about the new sanctions against Russian media announced by Secretary of State Antony Blinken Friday.

“Freedom of speech in America is under assault,” said Johnson as the Biden administration announced its latest punitive measures against Rossiya Segodnya, the parent company of RT and Sputnik. “I'm waiting to see if they're going to come down and sanction me, for example, for daring to appear on RT and offer commentary. I'm not compensated for that in any form or fashion.”

“The only thing that can kill free speech is this kind of persecution,” said the former CIA analyst.

— Ex-US Defense Department Analyst Karen Kwiatkowski:

“This really is divorced from reality.”

“They are creating news and media coverage of something that very much fits into their narrative, which is an anti-Russian narrative which is related to the campaign.”

What this reflects is just… one more symptom of a dying empire where they have to go out and attack others.”

“The only thing that can kill free speech is this kind of persecution,” said the former CIA analyst.

“It's irrational. And again, I think it's a symptom of a weakness on the part of the United States. Weakness and fear. That's where this originates… the United States is acknowledging that what it can't handle is the truth.”

“We are not allowed to speak freely about American foreign policy,” Kwiatkowski warned. “We see it in terms of the demonstrations across the country in support of Gaza, trying to end that genocide. We are not allowed in this country to criticize the American neoconservative foreign policy. That is a done deal. We do not have freedom of speech in that area at all.”

Zombie ‘Russiagate’ Conspiracy Persists as US Stokes Fear, Hatred of Moscow! — John Miles

The narrative has proven to be a useful tool as the United States supports economic, diplomatic, and military aggression against Russia.

“Russiagate continues to survive like a science fiction monster, resilient to bullets,” writes former CIA analyst Ray McGovern in a piece on the website Consortium News, noting the longevity and usefulness of the conspiracy in continuing to stoke hostility towards Moscow among the American public.

The notion that Russia interfered in the 2016 US presidential election or played a role in hacking leaked Democratic Party emails has persisted even after sworn testimony from the cyber security firm CrowdStrike confirmed the lack of evidence for the claim.

“The mainstream media has been incredibly adept at suppressing all this stuff,” McGovern noted on Sputnik’s The Critical Hour program Wednesday. “No matter what we write in Consortium News or other outlets – it's on antiwar.com now, too – or however much you and I share this information, we're fighting an uphill battle.”

“Why is this important? Just to remind folks who might not reflect on this, Russia has been demonized to the point where Donald Trump has been blamed on the Russians – think what you will of that,” he continued.

“And all kinds of other things have been blamed on the Russians to the point where if these not very emotionally stable people in the White House decide to go after the Russians in Ukraine or even get involved against the Russians in Syria or elsewhere in the Middle East, most of the American people say, ‘oh yeah, those damn Russians, didn't they give us Donald Trump?’”

The ingrained hostility towards Russia from the American public – and from Democratic Party supporters, in particular – has served as a useful tool in justifying continued US involvement in Ukraine’s proxy war against the country.

Former CIA head James Clapper, who presided over the agency’s illegal surveillance of the Donald Trump campaign during the 2016 election, has been instrumental in perpetuating the narrative. Clapper has made his distrust of Moscow clear, appearing to suggest nefarious qualities are somehow hardcoded into the DNA of Russian people.

“[Clapper claimed] the historical practices of the Russians [make them] almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever, which is a typical Russian technique,” McGovern recalled, calling him a “Russophobe extraordinaire.”

“I Was The CIA Director… We Lied, We Cheated, We Stole,” Declared Former CIA Director Mike Pompeo During a Candid Moment In 2019. “We Had Entire Training Courses.”

A gene for dishonesty has yet to be found. But if one exists, Pompeo’s comment suggests it is most likely to predominate among CIA officials like Clapper, who have been responsible for the overthrow of dozens of world leaders and the deaths of millions of civilians.

Truth Hurts

Nasser Abu Bakr, head of the Palestinian Union of Journalists, says Washington’s assault on RT is an “admission of the role the channel plays in conveying the truth to people.”

The US elite “only wants one version of the world – their version, which entails falsification, lies and propaganda, and they don’t want the world to see the truth, hence the attempts to restrict all free media spreading truth and justice,” Bakr said.

Algerian professor of media studies Hakim Bugrara says the US regularly “undermines the humanitarian and democratic values it claims to defend” when someone falls outside its orbit.

“Washington does not accept the existence of strong media contradicting its position, and the Americans are particularly worried about Russian media, which has enormous reach and distribution, despite all attempts to interfere with its broadcasts.” Russian journalists have broken through the information blockade with their content and diversity of opinions, and most importantly, offered the world “a different perspective on current events and their underlying causes,” Bugrara said.

US Recognizes Russian Media Play Important Role in Reporting Truth - Experts

On September 4, the United States imposed sanctions against the Rossiya Segodnya media group, RIA Novosti, RT, Sputnik, and Ruptly. The new measures also affected Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of Rossiya Segodnya, Sputnik's parent media group.

Commenting on the US accusations against RT, political scientist and international relations expert Ruhollah Modabber told Sputnik that the US recognizes that Russian media, especially RT and Sputnik, play an important role in reporting the truth and countering false Western propaganda.

"People around the world turn to Russian media for the truth. RT and Sputnik have attracted a large audience. Western information sources fail at the same time as they try to show another reality through censorship. The Russian media have once again defeated the hegemony of the US and Europe in the information space", Ruhollah Modabber said.

The US wants to achieve information "censorship" against Russia because it has "failed" in Ukraine, Chilean political scientist Ingrid Urgelles, PhD told Sputnik, commenting on Washington's introduction of new sanctions against Russian media.

"This is another of the many attempts by the US to censor platforms that broadcast a point of view that differs from the imperialist agenda they promote. In this case, it is the conflict in Ukraine, and because the US lost, it also lost [global] support. That is why they are resorting to such extraordinary measures to blame the media, which is quite absurd, because it is not just about RT, but about the form in which people receive information," Ingrid Urgelles said.

In her opinion, RT as a media outlet has "always shown the other side of the coin and criticized US colonialism in different parts of the world."

The editor-in-chief of Russia's Rossiya Segodnya international media group and the RT broadcaster, Margarita Simonyan, said on Friday that she felt she had made a difference with her work, commenting on the new US sanctions.

"The US Department of State says RT is one of the reasons why Ukraine does not have larger support in other countries. I haven't lived my life in vain. Seriously," Simonyan wrote on Telegram.

RT Editor-in-Chief Cites Channel's Success as Key Factor Behind US Sanctions! © Sputnik/Evgeny Biyatov/Go to the mediabank

VLADIVOSTOK (Sputnik) - The editor-in-chief of Russia’s Rossiya Segodnya* international media group and the RT broadcaster, Margarita Simonyan, called RT's success as one of two reasons for US sanctions against Russian media, along with the elections in the United States.

"Why did they do it now? For two reasons — firstly, the projects turned out to be incredibly successful: our audience has grown very significantly compared to what it was when we broadcast openly. Last year alone, our English-language projects had almost 14 billion views. This hurts them. This is more than our closest competitors BBC and CNN," Simonyan said on the air of Rossiya 1 broadcaster.

"Plus they have elections — this is a scenario they have already worked out: as soon as there are elections, they need to quickly distract everyone with Russia," she added.

Simonyan recalled earlier that after the start of the Russian special operation, a number of Western countries supporting Ukraine had restricted the work of the TV channel and media group, including revoking licenses.

"In these countries and, in particular, in the US, we began to work, how can I say, underground. Guerrilla warfare is a well-known, familiar, and beloved business for any person born in the Soviet Union, and raised on Soviet textbooks, and educated in a Soviet school. We organized a number of 'guerrilla' projects," the journalist said.

She also emphasized that the audience in other countries had even increased.

"In addition to what we, of course, have left, broadcasting has been strengthened in those countries that allow us to do this. This is Latin America, this is the Arab world, we have grown very well in Africa," Simonyan said.

On September 4, the US Department of the Treasury announced sanctions against Simonyan and her deputies Anton Anisimov and Elizaveta Brodskaia. Deputy Director of the RT English-Language Information Broadcasting Andrey Kiyashko, RT’s Digital Media Projects Manager Konstantin Kalashnikov and a number of other employees of the broadcaster were also added to the sanctions list.

The US State Department, in a parallel move, tightened the operating conditions for Rossiya Segodnya and its subsidiaries, designating them as "foreign missions." Under the Foreign Missions Act, they will be required to notify the department of all personnel working in the United States and disclose all real estate they own.

US authorities also announced restrictions on the issuance of visas to individuals they allege are "acting on behalf of Kremlin-supported media organizations." However, the Department of State refused to disclose the names of those subject to the new visa restrictions. Commenting on the new sanctions, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller claimed the measures did not target any particular individual Russian journalists, but rather the employees of the targeted companies who were involved in "covert activities."

Meanwhile, US authorities have charged Kalashnikov and another RT employee, Elena Afanasyeva, with money laundering conspiracy and violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).

*Rossiya Segodnya is the parent media group of Sputnik News.