RT, which has been operating in the U.S. for almost two decades in one form or another, has long been recognized for what it is: the voice of the Russian government. In 2017, the U.S. government made what was obvious formal when it forced RT to register its activities under the Foreign Agent Registration Act. “Americans have a right to know who is acting in the United States to influence the U.S. government or public on behalf of foreign principals,” said America’s acting assistant attorney general at the time. At this point, if you don’t realize RT is Russia’s sometimes subtle, other times overt propaganda channel, you haven’t been paying attention.
The case for restricting RT in countries that respect free speech is what? People allow themselves to be seduced by all sorts of media nonsense — the QAnon lunacy, for example, or the teachings of the Modern Monetary Theorists. But we don’t ask our government to ban the outlets that discuss and disseminate these wacky ideas, even if a foreign government endorses them in their broadcasts. Ideas, we generally agree, must fight for themselves, against “legitimate” contenders, fringe positions or outright propaganda. The government that insists on babysitting its citizens by endorsing some speakers and throttling others, is doing them no favor. Even if this were a good thing, who would you trust to decide which ideas from which governments should be allowed transmission and which ones should not.
Writing in the New Statesman Friday, my friend James Ball points out that any move to ban RT will only play into Putin’s hands. He notes that in the U.K., RT accounted for 0.04 percent of the nation’s total TV audience in 2017. Banning it, he continues, would give Putin a retaliatory pretext to ban the BBC in Russia. (Russia did retaliate against U.S. government-controlled media after RT was forced to register. It ordered Voice of America and other outlets to label their work as the product of foreign agents.) Plus, do we really want to give RT’s programming the enticing flavor of forbidden fruit? Ball writes, “RT belongs where it usually lives: entirely outside our thoughts.” A ban might make Putinism more appealing to some.
Nobody expects you to spend your energy lying awake at night fretting about RT’s right to speak. Even if governments put a crimp in RT, Putin and his propagandists will still have the resources to make their messages heard. In fact, knowing what Putin is thinking — or at least what he’s telling his people or the outside world — is essential to countering him, if need be.
The essence of this debate isn’t about RT’s right to speak. It’s your right to hear. Don’t let anybody relieve you of that without a fight.
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How lame is RT? Several times it invited me to appear on one of its shows. Declined. Send propaganda to [email protected]. My email alerts contain nothing but propaganda for my work. My Twitter feed can’t tell the difference between propaganda and advertisements. My RSS feed enjoyed the Sparks album Propaganda.