RT: A First Shoe Dropping?

      During the Israeli attack on Gaza last year, in spite of the billions the U.S. sends each year to Israel for the purchase of arms, a vote was taken in the U.S. Senate to send additional aid for arms to Israel.  In spite of widespread horror at the death of so many innocents taking place in Gaza, the measure passed unanimously.  Not one U.S. senator had the courage to oppose Israeli policy in a publicly recorded vote.  Americans would have been hard-pressed to learn of the event were it not for the fact that RT covered the vote on its internet outlet, RT.com.  The New York Times, on the other hand, ignored the vote entirely.  This is just one among many examples of why RT has acquired so large and faithful a following in the West.  For those Americans who include the Russian news outlet, RT, and its internet site, RT.com, among their sources of information, there has always been a certain tension around just how long the U.S. government would continue to tolerate a media voice that so effectively counters its own spin on events. If they are anything like me, "How long will we (that is, the U.S. government) allow this to go on?" is a thought that many faithful viewers of RT who count on it for information (that is often downplayed if not outright suppressed here) have often had.  It's been almost too good to be true. 

       Now, finally, a long feared but not surprising shot has been fired across the bow of RT in a statement by the new chief of the US Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), Andrew Lack, in which he puts RT in the same category as such organizations as ISIS and Boko Haram.  The ham-fisted nature of the statement may be an indication of just how irksome, to put it mildly, our own propaganda machine finds it to have to coexist with any contrary point of view.  

       RT delivers news in a wide number of languages and it might be argued has as good if not better "production values" than news sources in the West.  Moreover, RT has proven itself to be, if anything, more transparent than U.S. news outlets by a long shot.  During the opening days of the crisis in the Ukraine, for example, RT allowed the broadcast of one of its journalists resigning on the air, stating that she could not lend her efforts to the support of Russian policies with which she disagreed.  I cannot recall ever seeing anything similar occurring on U.S. media even during some of our most controversial overseas adventures.  It is hard to believe that there were not ever any journalists who were chagrined to have to lend themselves to our own policies and were not tempted themselves to resign on the air.  The likelihood, however, of Fox News or even CBS or CNN giving a resignation air time seems to be negligible to zero.

      Reacting to Lack's pronouncement, RT broadcast excerpts from statements by both the current Secretary of State, John Kerry, and former secretary Hillary Clinton.  Kerry called RT "a propaganda bullhorn to promote President Putin's fantasy about what is playing out on the ground."  Clinton asserted that "we are in an information war, and we are losing that war," adding, "I'll be very blunt in my assessment."  Now, if all of this wasn't so outrageous, it would be hilarious.   During the cold war, Voice of America, Radio Free Europe and the United States Information Agency (USIA), with the assistance of the C.I.A, deluged foreign air waves with our own propaganda, and we continue to do so.  The Soviet Union, of course, had its own propaganda outlets, but now, with the internet and cable media capable of delivering high quality news coverage to wider audiences, the game has changed.  One can only imagine how history might have been different if a source like RT had been available during the height of the Cold War, how alternate coverage of events like the Tonkin Gulf incident, the "secret" bombing of Cambodia and Laos, or even, more recently, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, just to cite a very few examples, would have had been seen.

      For this American, the "jamming" of RT would be a tragic loss.  Let's hope it doesn't happen.