Head of US state media put RT on same challenge list as ISIS, Boko Haram

[Natural Citizen]

Newly-appointed chief of US Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), Andrew Lack, has named RT one of the agency’s main challenges alongside extremist groups like the Islamic State and Boko Haram.

RT never expected to find itself on a list with the two most dangerous terrorist groups of the day and is seeking clarification on the comment.
“We are extremely outraged that the new head of the BBG mentions RT in the same breath as world’s number one terrorist army,” said Margarita Simonyan, RT’s editor-in-chief. “We see this as an international scandal and demand an explanation.”

Apart from BBG itself, RT is also seeking clarification from the US State Department and the US Embassy in Russia.

It’s not the first time the BBG, a bipartisan agency that supervises government-sponsored media, targeting international audiences, has referred to RT as a ‘challenge.’

“Let’s put together a plan of how much that would cost and how to do something that we could compete with Russia Today [RT] and then let’s go to the Hill and then let’s go to the White House and tell them what it’s going to cost to compete, and let’s see if we can do it,” BBG chairman Jeffrey Shell said in August 2014.

US politicians have lashed out at RT in the past. John Kerry attacked the channel for its coverage of the Ukraine crisis last spring and called RT a “propaganda bullhorn.”

Following Kerry’s rant, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov decried John Kerry’s comments about RT as “uncivilized” and “prosecutorial.”

“[The West] has been convinced for some time that it has a full monopoly on mass media,” said Lavrov in a statement. “Russia Today has won a large audience in the US and Western Europe, not to mention in Latin America and the Arab world."

US television professionals have, however, been more amenable to RT and have nominated its reporting for media awards. RT received an Emmy nomination for its series of Guantanamo hunger strike reports in 2014, and the channel was earlier nominated for Emmies in 2010 and 2012.

Continued - Head of US state media put RT on same challenge list as ISIS, Boko Haram

[tod evans]

Failure to trumpet the party propaganda is now terroristic?

[Natural Citizen]

Failure to trumpet the party propaganda is now terroristic?

Yep. It's a hoot, for sure.

Some relevant reading with regard to how broad these fears actually are...

BBC World Service fears losing information war as Russia Today ramps up pressure

The BBC World Service is being financially outgunned by Russian and Chinese state-owned news channels, its former director Peter Horrocks has warned, amid high-level concerns that Britain and the US are losing a global “information war”...

“We are being financially outgunned by Russia and the Chinese but there’s no way we’re being outgunned on the results [global audience]. The role we need to play is an even handed one. We shouldn’t be pro-one side or the other, we need to provide something people can trust.”

[The Gold Standard]

I would assume RPF is on the list as well.

[Natural Citizen]

Seems llike the State Department isn't keen on tough questions either.

State Dept Sideshow: Jen Psaki’s most embarrassing fails, most entertaining grillings

[Natural Citizen]

Mainstream corporate media, I don't think, appreciate the blunt truth about their reporting and preferred terms of controversy when it is presented to them. This is gold... CNN stooge got her rear end handed to her.

RT foreign policy correspondent basically took the CNN talking head to the woodshed but then CNN cut it from what they aired...




Relevant thread - Media Malfeasance

[Natural Citizen]

State Dept disagrees with head of US state media over equation of RT with ISIS...

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki does not agree with the newly-appointed chief of the US Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), who put RT on the same challenge list as ISIS and Boko Haram.

“Would the US government put those three in the same category? No, we wouldn’t,” Psaki said at a briefing on Friday answering a questing posed by RT’s Gayane Chichakyan, related to the comments made by BBG head Andrew Lack.

Psaki tried to explain the “concerns” the new chief of BBG was trying to express “which we agree with.”

However, she stressed that “that wouldn’t be the way we would state it” referring to Lack’s listing RT as a challenge along with the Islamic State (formerly ISIS) and Boko Haram.

RT’s editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan called the association of an international news network with terrorist groups an “outrage.”

“We are extremely outraged that the new head of the BBG mentions RT in the same breath as world’s number one terrorist army,” said Simonyan. “We see this as an international scandal and demand an explanation.”

In turn, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov decried John Kerry’s comments about RT as having been “uncivilized” and “prosecutorial.”

Meanwhile, back in 2011, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared that the US was losing a media war against up-and-coming, alternative outlets like RT saying: “We are in an information war and we are losing that war.”

Continued - State Dept disagrees with head of US state media over equation of RT with ISIS

[jmdrake]

The Obama administration is just mad that RT isn't under Operation Mockingbird.

[Natural Citizen]

Ex-BBG member: News outlets should never be compared to terrorists...

Comparing news outlets to terror organizations is jeopardizing the very foundations of freedom of speech in the US, Blanquita Cullum, ex-Broadcasting Board of Governors member, said after BBG’s new boss placed RT on par with ISIS and Boko Haram.

“The First Amendment has always meant freedom of speech and a variety of voices. A news outlet isn’t a terrorist,” Cullum told RT’s show, The Big Picture.

The conservative journalist, who was with the BBG for eight years, said that she’s “very adamant that a news outlet should never be compared with a terrorist organization.”

“I may disagree vehemently with, for example, MSNBC, but I will always fight for their right to be heard because if they are not able to be heard, I am not able to be heard,” she explained.

Earlier this week, the new chief of the US Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), Andrew Lack, told the New York Times that RT poses a significant challenge for his organization, putting it on the same list as ISIS and Boko Haram terror groups.

BBG is a bipartisan US federal agency, which is responsible for supervising all American government-sponsored international media – from Voice of America to Radio Free Europe.

The Big Picture host, Thom Hartmann, suggested that Lack’s words indicate that he “apparently, has a problem with news.”

“News is never dangerous – except for people who don’t want information in the public realm – even when this news has an edge, a point of view of foreign ownership, news and commentary isn’t terrorism,” he said.

Abby Martin, the talent behind RT’s Breaking the Set program, reminded that the news outlets overseen by BBG are “exactly the other side of a coin of RT in order to spread the Western perspective around the world – in countries across Asia and Europe.”

“Funny that the West is allowed to have a $700 million operating budget to spread its pro-American points and talking points across the planet, yet when Russia does it – it’s downright unacceptable,” she said.

The host of another RT show The Resident, Lori Harfenist, said that to compare a news outlet to terrorists “is an insane perspective to have, especially, for a guy, who’s now heading up a huge network of his own.”

Coordinator of the Global Media Observatory in Venezuela, Maryclen Stelling, said that Lack’s attack on RT is explained by the fact that the broadcaster “defies America’s media hegemony.”

“It destroys this hegemony, opening space for new perspectives on the news, giving word to new characters that are ignored by the US media,” he told RT’s Spanish channel.

The head of Ecuador’s Radio Publicade, Giovanna Tassi, underlined the “important role,” played by RT in the global media field.

“It balances the information, using sources which the US is unlikely to take into account,” he explained.

International organizations should condemn US policies aimed against RT “as if it was a military target,” the director of Venezuela ‘s Ultimas Noticias paper, Eleazar Diaz Rangel, said.

Continued - Ex-BBG member: News outlets should never be compared to terrorists

[AngryCanadian]

The majority of westren news outlets news anchors and reporters arent real reporters they dont even have any credentials. If they did have any credentials the westren news outlets would understand what real journalism is.

Putting RussiaToday on the same level ISIS and Boko just goes to show that the westren news outlets wont report anything truthful.

[Suzanimal]

‘US Spends Millions on Overseas Propaganda, But No One is Buying it’

RT interviews RPI's Daniel McAdams.

Despite the US’ bottomless PR budget to influence overseas, people are not attracted by what’s on offer as they are tired of US interventionism, exceptionalism, and the bombing of their countries, Daniel McAdams of the Ron Paul Institute told RT.

US Secretary of the State, John Kerry, said he is concerned the US is falling behind when it comes to putting out information. He stressed that RT’s influence is growing worldwide and the US doesn’t have“an equivalent that can be heard in Russian.” Claiming that RT has huge costs he asked for money to be provided for the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) in the US. RT’s budget for 2015 is $220 million while the budget of the BBG is $721 million. Kerry also heaped praise on the appointment of Andrew Lack as a head of BBG who recently put RT into the same context as ISIS and Boko Haram.

RT: John Kerry insinuated the US is losing the public relations war with Russia. What do you make of that?

Daniel McAdams: The numbers speak louder than words: $700 and some million versus $200 and some, maybe up to $300 million for RT. I think the problem the US has is they have an unlimited advertising budget, but the product they’re selling is not very attractive overseas. People are tired of US interventionism; they’re tired of US exceptionalism; they’re tired of the US bombing their country – if you’re a Somali, you don’t care about listening to a radio broadcast from the US, you just wish the US would stop bombing you.

But I’ll say one thing: the BBG budget is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how the US government influences media overseas. There’s probably another $100 million in direct support to so-called ‘independent news publications’ overseas, and these are all different newspapers and broadcasting outfits that tow the US line that aren’t directly US-related.

There are also various programs within the US government. There is a program that brought over about a thousand journalists from overseas to come train in the US; this is one of the State Department projects. And just one bureau of the State Department has by their account 86 media programs overseas. Even the $700 million figure… is just a tip of the iceberg on how much the US spends to influence the media overseas. And, sorry, the effect is not very good.

RT: Given what you’ve just said, do you think there will be people in the US government that might disagree with John Kerry?

DM: Yes, then there is a solution- you got to double the money. They want to double the money to sell something that nobody is buying - that is the problem. The problem is the policy, not the PR that tries to sell the policy. In that hilarious clip from Victoria Nuland, she says: “Oh, RT is just a tiny audience and we have a great wonderful diversity in the media in the US.” Sorry, that is not the case. I’m personally not a fan of any government-funded media, but the fact of the matter is that the so-called private media in the US marches lockstep in line with the White House and the State Department, there is no diversity in the mainstream media. So she is just absolutely wrong in what she says.

RT: What’s the reason do you think that RT is getting so much attention amongst the US government officials at the moment?

DM: You have alternative people like The Ron Paul Institute on your program…(ha ha) The fact that you have diverse and interesting shows, you challenge the paradigm, and people are interested in that. People are tuning out of new news in the US at record levels - they don’t watch TV news, they don’t take newspapers. It’s all boring; they all say the same things. When something comes along the alternative media is a different story in the US and it is growing by leaps and bounds. People that are offering a different perspective - Americans are increasingly finding it very attractive.

RT: Do you think that there is any significance in the timing of Mr. Kerry’s remarks?

DM: I think he is always looking at a way to poke Russia, and he is also looking for a way to get more money, there is never enough money for these things. That is all about spending the money and influencing things overseas.

http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/arch...-is-buying-it/