Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) is a private, nonprofit, multimedia broadcasting corporation founded and funded by the US government during the Cold War to counter Soviet propaganda. According to their about page, their mission is “RFE/RL journalists report the news in 20 countries where a free press is banned by the government or not fully established. We provide what many people cannot get locally: uncensored news, responsible discussion, and open debate.”
They’ve got a good rating, it just feels like implicit bias.
Something can still be propaganda even if it’s true, and it’s hard to quantify bias in article selection.
Not a “non profit” controlled by the US government.
I think it’s an important difference there, but I understand some people would be fine with it as long as they agree with government administration currently in power.
Unfortunately very few people think both parties should be held accountable
I believe this sub requires articles, doesn’t it? I don’t think an official statement would qualify, but I’m mot a mod.
Never mind. It appears that’s not the case. I must have gotten confused with the rules for /c/politics
Not a “non profit” controlled by the US government
Are these scare quotes meant to imply they are actually for profit?
Frankly, I kind of feel like you’re looking awfully hard for a way to stir shit.
We use news articles all the time reporting statements from governments; there’s certainly no requirement to only use primary sources. If any news source would be acceptable as a secondary source to report a government’s statements, I’d think BBC in the UK, DW in Germany, France24 in France, or RFE/RL in the US would be the one you’d use.
And I don’t see what this business about two parties has to do with the matter.
I don’t disregard instances when I see Reuters report a TASS statement verbatim because I know that is just the official Russian state position. I similarly don’t take an issue here
The U.S. Justice Department doesn’t allege any wrongdoing by the influencers, some of whom it says were given false information about the source of the company’s funding. Instead, it accuses two employees of RT, a Russian state media company, of funneling nearly $10 million to a Tennessee-based content creation company for Russia-friendly content.
It’s like living in Minnesota, except the months of the year where you don’t go outside are swapped. Winter is very nice, in summer you don’t go outside. In the colder places, it’s the opposite.
It once was. I followed my dad out here because of his arthritis and seeking a new career years ago. Stayed because, heat aside, it’s generally stable.
As the other person said, our summers are New England’s winters, basically. 9 months out of the rest of the year, it’s beautiful. We have some of the least traffic congestion in the country for our cities, have alpine forests 1.5 hours away and the Pacific ocean 3-6 hours away, depending on if you want to go to Mexico or California. No wild fires (well, south/central), no earthquakes, etc.
Apparently they were duped into thinking the money came from pro-Russian US conservatives or something like that instead of directly from the source.
I disagree that they were duped in any way since the pro Russian messaging was still pro Russian messaging and the source of the money is not important.
The coordinated messaging all emphasizing how this was accidental and these longtime trolls didn’t know (or bother to ask) where the money coming from is… something.
Isn’t that just trickling down from the DOJ though? The article says:
The U.S. Justice Department doesn’t allege any wrongdoing by the influencers, some of whom it says were given false information about the source of the company’s funding. Instead, it accuses two employees of RT, a Russian state media company, of funneling nearly $10 million to a Tennessee-based content creation company for Russia-friendly content.
True, but these people have been completely aligned with Kremlin talking points for years, and I wish the article and others would take the time to point that out. I’m sure it can be phrased in an ambiguous enough way that the reader can draw conclusions without it being libelous.
Doesn’t MBFC already rate AP as “left”? Any factual reporting outlet is going to be called “left” because facts are seen as “left” in today’s Overton window.
I think it’s dishonest to pretend these Russian operatives had any plausible deniability. There is absolutely nothing plausible about their denial. Just because they weren’t charged with knowingly accepting Russian money doesn’t mean it wasn’t extremely obvious that they knew where the money was coming from.
No, it’s worse than that. That’s the DOJ’s excuse for refusing to indict the traitorous influencers themselves and only going after their Russian handlers.
There needs to be a law against what they did before they could be indicted for anything. Afaik there is no law against being a foreign propagandist.
Even the two handlers themselves would have been fully legal if they had simply registered as foreign agents.
Our first amendment protects these things, for better or for worse. It protects the right to lobby the government (petition for redress in the official language), with no bar to people doing it on behalf of foreign governments, which is why all we do is make them register under FARA for transparency. We’ve lived under this legal system through the whole Cold War.
Speech is similarly protected, even if it is at the behest of foreign governments.
Our first amendment protects lies and propaganda just the same as everything else, which is why any of us can still go look at RT right now if we wanted. If we can’t even ban RT with all the sanctions we have on Russia right now, how the hell are we supposed to go after these American citizens?
Johnson is an outspoken Trump supporter and internet personality who was fired from BuzzFeed after the company found evidence he’d plagiarized other works.
This is interesting. I never liked the guy. Could never put my finger on exactly why, but he always seemed fishy to me.
Pool, a journalist-turned-YouTuber who first gained public attention for livestreaming the Occupy Wall Street protests, hosted Trump on his podcast earlier this year.
Johnson is an outspoken Trump supporter and internet personality who was fired from BuzzFeed after the company found evidence he’d plagiarized other works.
So these two were formally “journalists”, and should know at least something about confirming sources and information before publishing, or in this case I guess making a video/podcast, about the topic given them by this company that wanted to just give them hundreds of thousands of dollars. And maybe look into why a company would pay you that kind of money out of nowhere if they were supplying all the talking points, and they just want you to say them into a camera? Maybe?
I think anyone with any background in media should see right through something like this, and has no leg to stand on when crying “we had no idea!”. They saw a check and all morals/questions went out the window.
If what you say is true, they are guilty of crimes and should be prosecuted. I think the DOJ is unlikely to do this. What legitimate reason would the DOJ have to not prosecute these people?
You’re taking the position of a catastrophic extreme in response to someone saying they should have been more circumspect about where their money came from.
They should have been more circumspect, though. There’s leagues between acknowledging that and saying that they should be prosecuted by the DOJ.
Prosecution isn’t execution, it is trying them for a crime that they may have committed. If they’re found guilty, even punishment could include things like seizing the money paid to them for those videos and putting watermark warnings on those videos explaining who funded them or taking them down entirely, not exclusively jail time.
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