When Is a TV Channel a Foreign Agent?
A Russian lawmaker thinks RT should register as a lobbyist with the U.S. government. Does he have a case?
Where do the limits of a free press lie? If one were to ask Ilya Ponomarev, a
member of the Russian parliament and the only lawmaker to vote against his country’s annexation of Crimea, the answer might be at the doorstep of RT, formerly known as Russia Today. In a recent interview with BuzzFeed, Ponomarev—who currently lives in exile in California and was stripped earlier this month of his parliamentary immunity from prosecution, thereby exposing him to criminal charges and likely expulsion from the Duma—proposed that the flashy, Kremlin-funded international news network register as a lobbyist. “It’s a great mistake that the west is doing, that it’s acknowledging [RT] as a media tool
. I think it’s a lobbying tool and it should be regulated as a lobbyist rather than media,” Ponomarev argued.
It was far from the first time that RT has been accused of being a mouthpiece for the Russian government. In fact, students at Columbia’s School of Journalism, under the direction of professors Ann Cooper and Linette Lopez, have an entire Tumblr dedicated to tracking the controversy surrounding RT’s reporting. But Ponomarev’s comments did suggest that a debate about how to respond to news outlets like RT, already well underway in Europe, has reached the United States, where the network is available via cable (mostly in and around major metropolitan areas) and satellite TV, and online. BuzzFeed’s Rosie Gray notes, for example, that the network has been subject to official investigations and threatened with sanctions in the United Kingdom—where RT is the fourth-most-watched 24-hour news station—for alleged bias in its reporting on the crisis in Ukraine.
RT “started out in 2005 by telling positive stories about Russian history and culture—no one cared and ratings were terrible,” Peter Pomerantsev wrote last year in The Atlantic.
“Gradually, RT changed its strategy, becoming a platform for Western conspiracy-theorists, far-right nationalists, and far-left radicals who sympathize with Russia.
The formula works: RT claims that it now reaches more than 644 million people worldwide, and it can slip in messages about Kremlin policy between more popular programming.” Operating with a budget that, at an estimated $300 million, rivals the BBC’s, RT has translated that formula into a major online presence, including more than a million YouTube subscribers.
RT, for its part, claims that it “delivers stories often missed by the mainstream media” and “provides an alternative perspective on major global events, and acquaints an international audience with the Russian viewpoint.”
In the United States, designating RT a lobbyist would involve invoking the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), a law passed in 1938 to counter German propagandists operating in the United States prior to the Second World War. The statute’s scope is broad, but in its most general sense, it is designed to identify any individual or organization that engages in political or quasi-political activities on behalf of a foreign government or organization. “Political activities” are defined as attempts to “influence any agency or official of the Government of the United States or any section of the public within the United States with reference to formulating, adopting, or changing the domestic or foreign policies of the United States,” and include public-relations and publicity work.
With some exceptions, the act obligates organizations that meet this criteria to register as a foreign agent with the U.S. Department of Justice. Registration requires, among other things, the semi-annual reporting of the foreign agent’s activities and funding, and a disclaimer on “informational materials” that “the information is disseminated by the agents on behalf of the foreign principal.” Penalties for failing to comply can include a $10,000 fine or up to five years in prison (one of the more interesting applications of the law was its use in arresting Anna Chapman and 11 other members of a Russian spy ring in 2010).
Does RT fall under FARA’s auspices? The statute explicitly states that its definition of a foreign agent does not include news or press agencies, but then goes on to say that the exemption only holds if the company is at least 80-percent owned by U.S. citizens and “not owned, directed, supervised, controlled, subsidized, or financed, and none of its policies are determined by any foreign principal …” Given that RT is funded by the Russian government and appears to lack full—if any—editorial independence from the Kremlin, the channel may not be exempt under FARA. Still, by my count,
only four media organizations are registered under FARA at the moment: two Asian television networks and the distributors for two Chinese dailies.
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