Russia: 'Forced' to register TV channel 'RT'
Retaliation planned for restrictions put on media outlet.
Russia plans MOSCOW — new measures to restrict U.S. media working here after a Russian English-language TV channel said it was pressured into registering as a foreign agent in the United States, a senior legislator said Friday.
State Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said lawmakers will take up changes to the Russian law on foreign agents to extend it to the media.
Until now, that law has been applied to just nongovernmental organizations that receive financing from abroad, and engage in what the government determines “political activity.” The law has been criticized as a way for the Russian government to marginalize civil society institutions.
U.S. intelligence agencies said in January that RT and the news agency Sputnik, along with a network of “qua- si-government trolls,” inter- fered in the 2016 U.S. pres- idential election on behalf of the Russian government by pushing anti-American propaganda, claims that RT denies.
Volodin’s address to the Duma signaled that the Russian government now plans to treat U.S. media in Russia as agents of the United States seeking to meddle in Russian affairs.
The Duma is obliged to give its laws two preliminary approvals before pass- ing them, which Volodin said could happen next week. After that, the law would move to Russia’s upper house, which supported retaliating to the restrictions on RT at a hearing yesterday
“All actions of American media outlets indicate that their policy and positions are totally unfriendly and that this interference is absolutely undisguised,” Volodin said. “Since such decisions are being made on U.S. territory in relation to our TV channels, it will be right for us to respond to these actions.”
The current Russian law does not restrict activity, but requires organizations to place the “foreign agent” label on all their documents.
It was not clear how this label would apply to U.S. media and how it would potentially affect their work, or how many media outlets would be affected.
Pyotr Tolstoy, a deputy speaker of the State Duma, suggested that one possibility is that media outlets affected by the new law could be required to include a statement identifying themselves as foreign agents on their social media pages.
RT’s registration as a foreign agent follows a monthslong back-and-forth with the Justice Department over whether it was required by U.S. law to register as an agent of the Russian government.
“The American Justice Department has left us with no choice,” RT’s editor in chief Margarita Simonyan said in a statement posted on the organization’s website Thursday.
“Our lawyers say that if we don’t register as a foreign agent, the director of our company in America could be arrested, and the accounts of the company could be seized. In short, in this situation the company would not be able to work. Between those consequences and registering as a foreign agent, we are forced to choose registration.”
She added: “We will continue to work and continue to fight this as long as it’s possible.”
RT, previously known as Russia Today, disputes that it is an agent of the Kremlin, arguing that it merely offers alternatives to mainstream news coverage.
“Reciprocal measures will be put in place to ensure the same restrictions as the Americans are now trying to impose on Russian media outlets,” Tolstoy said.