Two reasons:
- It is fully aware of the broad, global reach RT has
- The news RT reports is not the news the US wants people be informed of
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 such 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 the as the US government is looking to silence 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.
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