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Why Can’t the American Government Stop Talking About RT?

February 9, 2015 by Andrey Panevin Follow @AndreyPanevin @AndreyPanevin

A Russia Today (RT) News van parked near  protests on Bolotnaya square in Moscow. (Wikimedia / FeelSunny)

A Russia Today (RT) News van parked near protests on Bolotnaya square in Moscow. (Wikimedia / FeelSunny)

Two reasons:

  • The US is fully aware of RT’s broad, global reach RT 
  • RT reports news that is not the news the US wants people to hear

In the current climate of political Russophobia, the American government just can’t stop talking about RT News (Russia Today). Secretary of State John Kerry has blasted it as a “propaganda bullhorn.”

The Chair of the US Broadcasting Board of Governors labelled it beside Boko Haram and ISIS and now Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland has called it a broadcaster of “untruths … with a tiny, tiny viewership.”

The obvious question to ask is, why do they insist on talking about RT if it really is all the things they call it? The answer is just as obvious. It is because they understand that RT is the opposite of all of these things, and people are beginning to find out.

The truth of the matter is that RT is BY FAR the most watched online news source, outstripping its nearest competitors by millions of views. In fact RT recently counted a record two billion views on YouTube. To say that the company has minimal viewership is a blatant lie and the US government knows it.

To call it propaganda is a question of semantics. It is true that RT presents news that is rarely critical of the Russian government. But the fact that it is a news company coming from the Russian government’s point of view is something RT has never hidden.

To simply label the company as a ‘propaganda bullhorn’ as John Kerry did, is admitting two things. The first is that the US government is fully aware of the broad, global reach that RT has. The second is that the news that RT reports is not the news that the US government wants people be informed of.

RT is known for its in-depth reporting on the west’s disastrous interventions in the Middle-East and Ukraine and the general decline of the western political system.

It regularly features guests such as Noam Chomsky, Glenn Greenwald and Julian Assange, as well as a range of outspoken commentators who voice opinions that do not fall in line with US State Department output. Assange even hosted a series of interviews with prominent anti-imperialist figures such as Tariq Ali, Rafael Correa and Sayyid Nasrallah among others.

The United States, which claims to be the home of free speech and liberty, will not tolerate any free speech that counters its own factory-like output of propaganda.

Noam Chomsky famously said of American media that “any dictator would admire (its) uniformity and obedience.” This quote best sums up why Chomsky is regularly interviewed by RT and not the American mainstream media.

Now more than ever, as the US government is looking to quash dissent at home and abroad, it will also look to silence alternative news outlets such as Russia Today.

What needs to be remembered by the people is not that they are obliged to watch RT or any other news program, but that they have the freedom and the choice to do so.

 

Crossposted from Russia Insider.

Content posted to MyMPN open blogs is the opinion of the author alone, and should not be attributed to MintPress News.

Filed Under: Foreign Affairs, Media & Culture Tagged With: corporate media, dissent, free speech, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, Glenn Greenwald, John Kerry, Julian Assange, mainstream media, Middle East, MSM, Noam Chomsky, Press Freedom, propaganda, Rafael Correa, RT, Russia, Russia Today, Sayyid Nasrallah, Tariq Ali, Ukraine, Victoria Nuland, Wikileaks, YouTube

Comments

  1. Nathan abu Nevada says

    February 9, 2015 at 8:49 pm

    RT is a wonderful resource for an American to enable them selves to argue geo-politics armed with the same amount of knowledge the rest of the World enjoys. It is easier to win a debate with facts over rhetoric and when you have the facts that are based on a reality every one else around the Wold is familiar with, instead of a Washington DC-New York based reality, this can really give you a leg up in a debate with a Neo-Conservative for example, who try to argue geo-politics based on a false perception of reality because they do not know any better, falsely believing they have a free press instead of a CFR controlled Press that represses pertinent facts to change the story in order to benefit the CFR Agenda of utilizing the Amerikaner as a facility for the NATO.

    I’ll be honest if I am having a good night on the comment boards of cyber space, terrorizing Neo-Cons, it is because I stole my stuff from the cutting edge Journalist who has helped a lot of People Abby Martin. rt.com/shows/breaking-set-summary/

    Reply

Trackbacks

  1. Chomsky Takes On Mainstream Media, US Warmongering On RT says:
    April 21, 2015 at 8:36 am

    […] the U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors compared RT to a terrorist organization. Indeed, it seems the U.S. government can’t stop talking about RT — last week, during a congressional hearing, House Foreign Affairs Committee chair Ed Royce […]

    Reply
  2. Department Of Homeland Security Still Controls What You Read says:
    June 22, 2015 at 9:00 am

    […] government has sought to accuse RT, an English-language news funded by the Russian government, of distributing propaganda in the United States. Simultaneously, the U.S. mainstream media has been eager to broadcast a pro-European, anti-Russian […]

    Reply

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