U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen introduced a bill to probe Russia’s TV “propaganda outlet” RT as a foreign agent. The legislation would allow the Department of Justice to track the channel’s “funding sources and foreign connections” and RT is clearly not happy about it. On Wednesday its editor-in-chief fired back at the proposed bill with the quip “What’s next? Public executions?”
Shasheen suggested an amendment to the FARA act dubbed “Foreign Agents Registration Modernization and Enforcement Act,” which would demand organizations disclose their suspected foreign connections. Typically FARA does not restrict the activities of foreign media. The bill is a response to alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 US presidential election.
“We have good reason to believe that RT News is coordinating with the Russian government to spread misinformation and undermine our democratic process,” says Shaheen. “The American public has a right to know if this is the case.”
RT’s editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan responded to the proposed legislation as “yet another example of McCarthyism-style persecution of dissenting voices.”
“At such pace they’ll soon start shooting our journalists at the squares. Greetings to Senator McCarthy from Senator Shaheen,” Simonyan said, implying that there is paranoia toward Russia and drawing a comparison to the investigations of the McCarthy era.
RT America TV is a Russia-financed channel operated from within the United States. The recent declassified report of U.S. intelligence concluded that Russia used RT to influence the recent U.S. elections. It states that RT leadership is closely tied to and controlled by the Kremlin and that the TV channel seeks to influence politics and fuel discontent in the U.S.
RT denies that it is under Kremlin’s control, because it was formed as an autonomous nonprofit organization. On Wednesday an RT story suggested that Russian media outlets are being attacked by both US and European officials who “brand virtually any messages conveyed by Moscow as ‘propaganda’ that needs to be tackled.”