RT America

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RT America
RT America Logo.png
CountryUnited States
NetworkRT
HeadquartersWashington, D.C.
Programming
Language(s)English
Picture format1080i HDTV
(downgraded to letterboxed 480i for the SDTV feed)
Ownership
Owner(ANO) TV-Novosti
Sister channelsRT International
RT France
RT UK
RT Arabic
RT Documentary
RT Actualidad
RT Deutsch
History
LaunchedFebruary 2010
Links
Websitewww.rt.com/usa/ Edit this at Wikidata
Availability
Terrestrial
Digital terrestrial television
(United States)		Colorado
Channel 31.5 (Cortez)
Cable
Cox Communications (Washington, D.C.)Channel 473
RCN Cable (Washington, D.C.)Channel 33
Verizon FiOS (Washington, D.C.)Channel 455
Satellite
Dish NetworkChannel 280 (SD)
Washington, D.C.:
Channel 8084 (HD/SD)
DirecTVChannel 321 (SD)
GlobeCast WorldTVChannel 462
IPTV
Apple TVIPTV
Eagle MultimediaIPTV
Google ChromecastIPTV
Pluto TVIPTV
Russian TVGroupIPTV
Roku TVIPTV
Sling TVIPTV
Streaming media
RT.comLive Stream
YouTubeLive Stream

RT America is a U.S.-based news channel headquartered in Washington, DC. It is part of the RT network, a global multilingual television news network based in Moscow funded by the Russian government.[1][2][3] The channel says its reach is 85 million people in the United States, but this figure is disputed.[4] It is distributed through select cable providers, over-the-top services, a live stream through its Web site, and three low-power digital subchannels.[5]

Among the channel's current shows are Dennis Miller + One, CrossTalk and The Keiser Report, hosted by Dennis Miller, Peter Lavelle and Max Keiser, respectively. Former shows included News with Ed Schultz (2016–2018) and Larry King Now (2012-2020). Additional personalities hosted at the channel are Stacy Herbert, Chris Hedges, Jesse Ventura, Sean Stone, Lee Camp, Mike Papantonio and Ben Swann.

Controversies centered upon RT America include Breaking the Set host Abby Martin's 2014 statement of her opposition to Russia's intervention in Ukraine,[6] which was followed the next day by anchor Liz Wahl’s on-the-air resignation, which she issued on account of her belief that RT was a propaganda machine for President Vladimir Putin.[7] David Z. Morris, writing in Fortune magazine, accused it of providing a platform for fringe theories used to legitimize the policies of the Russian government and delegitimize those of the American government, featuring figures from the far-right who would had been unwelcomed on other U.S. channels,[8] and James Kirchick wrote in the The Washington Post that the channel was not a 'news service' in any meaningful sense of the term.[9]

History[]

The channel was launched in the United States in February 2010 as RT was looking to increase its reach. It was launched along with Rusiya Al-Yaum in 2007, the Spanish-language channel RT Actualidad in 2009, and the RT Documentary channel in 2011.[10] The channel is registered as a "foreign agent" with the United States Department of Justice under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). A 2017 report by the United States Intelligence Community characterized RT as "The Kremlin's principal international propaganda outlet" and said that RT America had been set up as an autonomous nonprofit organization to avoid FARA's registration requirement.[11][12]

Views and opinions[]

According to David Z. Morris, writing in Fortune magazine in 2017, RT America has "provided a platform for various fringe or simply false narratives in American public discourse," with guests on the network promoting conspiracy theory that 9/11 was orchestrated by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the conspiracy theory that the death of Osama bin Laden had been faked.[8]

RT has regularly featured figures from the far-right. Some of these figures have ties to fringe or extremist groups that would render them unwelcome on other channels.[13] According to the Southern Poverty Law Center in 2014, RT America has discussed the President Barack Obama "birther" conspiracy theory on multiple occasions, including an interview with a white supremacist that failed to indicate his allegiance.

The channel has been accused of being pro-Trump[14] during the Trump's presidency, and typically has been an accused of being a conservative-leaning channel.[15] However some experts deny these accusations, and say the channel does not have a US domestic political leaning bias.[16]

RT has regularly used Ryan Dawson as an "expert" interviewee for a variety of issues. According to The Interpreter online magazine, Dawson is a Holocaust denier and holds other extensive non-mainstream positions, none of which was mentioned by RT in its description of him.[17][18] According to David Z. Morris in his Fortune article: "RT America has been more likely to highlight legitimate but marginalized political perspectives, and further blurs the line between propaganda and commentary by employing respected U.S. journalists such as Chris Hedges, Ed Schultz, and Larry King."[8]

An analysis published in the academic journal Politics in 2015 identified the conspiracy theories spread by RT as a tool of Russian foreign policy, used to legitimize the policies of the Russian government and delegitimize the policies of the American government.[19] During the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign, RT published conspiracy theories about the murder of Seth Rich and other articles to undermine the Hillary Clinton campaign. Some of these gained traction on social media and were distributed around the internet.[8]

In their investigation of alleged Russian meddling in the U.S. 2016 elections, the U.S. intelligence services stated that they had "high confidence" that RT was involved in a campaign ordered by President Vladimir Putin. The New York Times reported their findings in 2017 indicating that "the attack was carried out through the targeted use of real information, some open and some hacked, and the creation of false reports, or 'fake news,' broadcast on state-funded news media like RT and its sibling."[20]

On November 13, 2017, the United States Department of Justice insisted that RT America register as a "foreign agent" under the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA). On the same day, RT's editor in chief, Margarita Simonyan, said that it would comply with the demand in order to avoid further legal action by the U.S. government, and registered the company as a foreign agent.[21] Under FARA, RT is required to disclose financial information. The network's congressional press credentials were revoked following the network's registration as a foreign agent.[22]

James Kirchick wrote in The Washington Post in September 2017 that "RT is not a 'news service' in any meaningful sense of the term. Reputable news services don’t employ Illuminati correspondents. RT has no regard whatsoever for basic journalistic values like objectivity or the pursuit of truth."[9] Kirchick was a guest in August 2013 to talk about Chelsea Manning, and used the opportunity to "speak out against the horrific anti-gay legislation" which had recently been approved by President Putin. The clip went viral on social media.[23]

William Broad of The New York Times wrote about the network's coverage of 5G, the mobile phone technology. Broad said the network aired seven programs in 2019 on the subject up to mid-April that year. One of these, entitled A Dangerous ‘Experiment on Humanity', Broad commented, linked 5G "signals to brain cancer, infertility, autism, heart tumors and Alzheimer’s disease — claims that lack scientific support".[24] According to Mr. Broad, the channel focused on Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe, a 2016 film by the British anti-vaccine campaigner Andrew Wakefield, to echo the charge by an unnamed black minister in Los Angeles who was seen in a video addressing an audience and, according to Mr. Broad, saying that "childhood immunizations had caused autism in 200,000 black children."[25] Domestically, in Russia itself, President Putin is a firm advocate of vaccinations.[26]

Programming[]

Current[]

  • CrossTalk (2009)
  • The Keiser Report (2009)
  • Worlds Apart (2013)
  • (2013)
  • Going Underground (2013) with Afshin Rattansi
  • Redacted Tonight (2014)
  • (2015)
  • America's Lawyer (2016) with Mike Papantonio
  • On Contact with Chris Hedges (2016)
  • The Alex Salmond Show (2017)
  • The Big Picture with (2017)
  • The World According to Jesse (2017)
  • In Question (2018)
  • The News with Rick Sanchez (2018)
  • Just Press Play (2019)
  • Dennis Miller + One (2020)
  • Eat the Press (2020)
  • News Views Hughes
  • Sophie Co

Former[]

Notable news personalities[]

Current[]

Former[]

Incidents[]

ODNI Statement on Declassified Intelligence Community Assessment of Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent U.S. Elections

Abby Martin statement[]

On March 4, 2014, Breaking the Set host Abby Martin (whose show was at the time produced by RT America), speaking directly to her viewing audience during the show's closing statement, said that although she worked for RT, she was against Russia's intervention in Ukraine. She said that "what Russia did is wrong", as she is against intervention by any nation into another country's affairs.[6] Later, Martin asserted that RT still supported her despite her differences of opinion with the Russian government.[29] RT's press office suggested that Martin would be sent to Crimea, and responded to accusations of propaganda, stating "the charges of propaganda tend to pop up every time a news outlet, particularly RT, dares to show the side of events that does not fit the mainstream narrative, regardless of the realities on the ground. This happened in Georgia, this is happening in Ukraine".[30][note 1]

Glenn Greenwald said that American media elites love to mock Russian media, especially RT, as being a source of shameless pro-Putin propaganda, where free expression is strictly barred. Agreeing the "network has a strong pro-Russian bias", he suggested that Martin's action "remarkably demonstrated what 'journalistic independence' means".[31]

Liz Wahl resignation[]

RT America broadcast with former anchor Liz Wahl

The day after Martin's statement, RT America anchor Liz Wahl resigned on air, which she said was due to her belief that RT was a propaganda machine for President Vladimir Putin.[32] She stated:[33][7]

I cannot be part of a network funded by the Russian government that whitewashes the actions of Putin. I am proud to be an American and believe in disseminating the truth. And that is why, after this newscast, I am resigning.[7]

Wahl said that what "broke" her was that RT censored a question from her interview with Ron Paul about "Russia's intervention in Ukraine".[citation needed]

In response, RT released a statement: "When a journalist disagrees with the editorial position of his or her organization, the usual course of action is to address those grievances with the editor, and, if they cannot be resolved, to quit like a professional. But when someone makes a big public show of a personal decision, it is nothing more than a self-promotional stunt. We wish Liz the best of luck on her chosen path".[34]

In a March 2014 Politico article, Wahl expanded on her resignation statement, saying, "For about two and a half years. I'd looked the other way as the network smeared America for the sake of making the Kremlin look better by comparison, while it sugarcoated atrocities by one brutal dictator after another."[7]

When asked by Brian Stelter, host of CNN's Reliable Sources, about a clip of her interviewing a guest on RT, Wahl responded,

They get these extreme voices on that have this kind of hostile toward the West viewpoints towards the world, very extremist. These are the people that they have on. And when I was on the anchor desk, they would instruct you to egg on these guests and try to get them, you know, rallied up, to really fire off their anti-American talking points. Listen, I'm all about exposing government corruption. I'm all about being critical of the government. But this is different. This is promoting the foreign policy of somebody that has just invaded a country, has invaded the country and is then lying about it, is using the media as a tool to fulfill his foreign policy interests. And RT is part of Putin's propaganda network and it's very, very troubling in the wake of what is going on in Ukraine today.[35]

C-SPAN interruption[]

On January 12, 2017, during a live House of Representatives debate on the Securities and Exchange Commission, C-SPAN 1's live broadcast was suddenly interrupted by a cut-in of RT America. C-SPAN explained the interruption as a technical malfunction, blaming it on an internal routing error, that moved the RT America feed from an internal monitor within C-SPAN used to monitor the network alongside others to the broadcast feed for C-SPAN 1.[36]

RT stated that while it was testing its systems in preparation for the inauguration of Donald Trump, its signal was "mistakenly routed onto the primary encoder feeding C-SPAN 1's signal to the internet, rather than to an unused backup."[37]

See also[]

Notes[]

  1. ^ See Information war during the Russo-Georgian war and 2014 Crimean crisis

References[]

  1. ^ "Question That: RT's Military Mission: Assessing Russia Today's role as an "information weapon"". Atlantic Council, Digital Forensic Research Lab. January 7, 2018 – via Medium.
  2. ^ Julia Ioffe (September–October 2010). "What Is Russia Today? The Kremlin's propaganda outlet has an identity crisis". Columbia Journalism Review.
  3. ^ Fisher, Max (13 June 2013). "In case you weren't clear on Russia Today's relationship to Moscow, Putin clears it up". The Washington Post. Retrieved 31 July 2016.
  4. ^ Erickson, Amanda (January 12, 2017). "If Russia Today is Moscow's propaganda arm, it's not very good at its job". The Washington Post. Retrieved August 25, 2019. Archived on 12 January 2017.
  5. ^ List of RT affiliates from rabbitears.info, retrieved January 23, 2022
  6. ^ a b Greg Botelho (March 5, 2014). "State-funded news anchor Abby Martin: 'What Russia did is wrong'". CNN.
  7. ^ a b c d Wahl, Liz (March 21, 2014). "I Was Putin's Pawn". Politico. Archived from the original on March 22, 2014.
  8. ^ a b c d Morris, David Z. (September 17, 2017). "Inside RT, Russia's Kremlin-Controlled Propaganda Network". Fortune.
  9. ^ a b Kirchick, James (September 20, 2017). "RT wants to spread Moscow's propaganda here. Let's treat it that way". The Washington Post. Retrieved January 11, 2019.
  10. ^ Nikolaus von Twickel, "Russia Today courts viewers with controversy", The Moscow Times, March 23, 2010.
  11. ^ "Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections" (PDF). United States Intelligence Community. January 6, 2017.
  12. ^ Ewing, Phillip (February 10, 2017). "5 Things On Michael Flynn, Russia and Donald Trump". NPR.
  13. ^ Authoritarianism Goes Global. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 2016. p. 180.
  14. ^ https://www.npr.org/2016/12/15/505751335/-rt-america-the-one-news-outlet-for-which-trump-retains-an-unexpected-affinity
  15. ^ https://adfontesmedia.com/rt-bias-and-reliability/
  16. ^ https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/rt-america-was-not-pro-trump/
  17. ^ "Dubious Broadcast 'Experts' Seen on Many Networks". Intelligence Report. Southern Poverty Law Center. November 21, 2014. Retrieved July 28, 2019.
  18. ^ Holland, Adam (June 10, 2014). "Ryan Dawson, RT's 'Human Rights Activist,' A Holocaust Denier Who's Friends With Hate Criminals". The Interpreter. Retrieved July 28, 2019.
  19. ^ Yablokov, Ilya (2015). "Conspiracy Theories as a Russian Public Diplomacy Tool: The Case of Russia Today (RT)". Politics. 35 (3–4): 301–315. doi:10.1111/1467-9256.12097. S2CID 142728966.
  20. ^ Erlanger, Steven (March 8, 2017). "Russia's RT Network: Is It More BBC or K.G.B.?". The New York Times. Retrieved January 11, 2019.
  21. ^ Stubbs, Jack; Gibson, Ginger (November 13, 2017). "Russia's RT America registers as 'foreign agent' in U.S." Reuters.
  22. ^ Gold, Hadas. "Congressional press office yanks RT's credentials". CNNMoney. Retrieved 2017-11-30.
  23. ^ Pompeo, Joe (September 20, 2019). "Russia Goes Viral: How the RT Network Built a U.S. Audience". New York. Retrieved April 12, 2019.
  24. ^ Broad, William J. (12 May 2019). "Your 5G Phone Won't Hurt You. But Russia Wants You to Think Otherwise". The New York Times. Archived from the original on May 20, 2019. Retrieved 12 May 2019.
  25. ^ Broad, William J. Putin's War on U.S. Science. [Science Desk]. The New York Times, Late Edition (East Coast). New York, N.Y. 14 April 2020. p.D1. Accessed 29 January 2022.
  26. ^ Broad, William J. (April 14, 2020). "Putin's Long War Against American Science". The New York Times. Retrieved April 16, 2020.
  27. ^ RT America (2016-10-13), 'America's Lawyer': Attorney and radio talk show host Mike Papantonio joins RT America, retrieved 2018-07-27
  28. ^ RT America (2018-07-05), Remembering Ed Schultz, retrieved 2018-07-27
  29. ^ "Ukraine conflict perspectives and Washington's shadow lobbyists". RT. March 4, 2014.
  30. ^ Graves, Lucia (March 4, 2014) "RT Defends Host Abby Martin, Responds to Accusations of Pro-Putin Propaganda", National Journal; retrieved April 11, 2014
  31. ^ Greenwald, Glenn (March 4, 2014) "RT Host Abby Martin Condemns Russian Incursion Into Crimea – On RT", The Intercept Retrieved March 21, 2014
  32. ^ "Russia Today TV presenter Liz Wahl quits on air". BBC News. March 6, 2014.
  33. ^ RT America (2014-03-05), RT America's Liz Wahl resigns live on air, retrieved 2016-07-28
  34. ^ "RT reacts to anchor Liz Wahl quitting on air". RT International. Retrieved 2017-04-14.
  35. ^ Brian Stelter (March 24, 2014). "Putin TV in Chaos". CNN.
  36. ^ Bromwich, Jonah Engel (2017). "C-Span Online Broadcast Interrupted by Russian Network". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2017-11-30.
  37. ^ Spangler, Todd (2017-01-19). "Facebook Restores Kremlin-Funded RT Posting Privileges After Temporary Block". Variety. Retrieved 2017-11-30.

External links[]

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