''Forbes'' analyzed Earnest's White House press briefing from that week, and found the word "sanctions" was never used by the Press Secretary.
Russia was discussed in eight instances during the press conference, but never about sanctions.
The press conference focused solely on Russian air raids in Syria towards rebels fighting
President of Syria
The president of Syria, officially the president of the Syrian Arab Republic (Arabic: رئيس سوريا) is the head of state of the Syrian Arab Republic. They are vested with sweeping powers that may be delegated, at their sole discretion, to ...
Bashar al-Assad
Bashar Hafez al-Assad, ', Levantine pronunciation: ; (, born 11 September 1965) is a Syrian politician who is the 19th president of Syria, since 17 July 2000. In addition, he is the commander-in-chief of the Syrian Armed Forces and the ...
in
Aleppo
)), is an adjective which means "white-colored mixed with black".
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was hired by Sputnik News after his departure from ''
Breitbart News
''Breitbart News Network'' (known commonly as ''Breitbart News'', ''Breitbart'', or ''Breitbart.com'') is an American far-rightMultiple sources:
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
* syndicated news, opinion, and commentary website founded in mid-2007 b ...
'' and, according to ''The Washington Post'', he is Sputnik's most visible Trump supporter".
In early 2020, at the time of the
Impeachment of President Trump, Stranahan stated "the entire impeachment is a lie.”
''The Washington Post'' stated that "many Sputnik hosts profess skepticism that Russia meddled in the 2016 presidential election," in contradiction to the assessment of the US intelligence community.
Andrew Feinberg's account
On 26 May 2017,
Andrew Feinberg
Andrew Feinberg is an American journalist and White House Correspondent whose work has appeared in ''The Independent'', ''Newsweek'', ''Politico'', '' Washington Business Journal'', and other news outlets.
Early life
Feinberg was born to a Jew ...
, who had been Sputnik's White House Correspondent since the
Trump administration
Donald Trump's tenure as the List of presidents of the United States, 45th president of the United States began with Inauguration of Donald Trump, his inauguration on January 20, 2017, and ended on January 20, 2021. Trump, a Republican Party ...
came into office the previous January, announced on Twitter that he would no longer be reporting for the agency.
He said those in charge were more interested in employing "propagandists" rather than "real journalists".
In one tweet he explained the agency's policy in article's attribution: "The truth is they don't want their reporters to have their own reputations, b/c a lie is easier when it doesn't come with a byline."
He told
Erik Wemple
Erik Wemple is an American journalist who works as a columnist and media critic at ''The Washington Post''. He was formerly the editor of the alternative weekly ''Washington City Paper''.
Early life
Wemple was raised in Niskayuna, New York, and a ...
of ''The Washington Post'': "It's the fact that if you don't have bylines on stories and there's no one accountable for words, then you can really print whatever you want.
Sputnik, in a statement to ''The Washington Post'', accused Feinberg of making "false accusations" and expressed the "hope that the fruits of his rich imagination would not create more conspiracy theories around Sputnik."
Feinberg, in discussing his period at Sputnik, said that Sputnik's editors
asked him to write stories and ask questions at the White House press conference about the
conspiracy theory
A conspiracy theory is an explanation for an event or situation that invokes a conspiracy by sinister and powerful groups, often political in motivation, when other explanations are more probable.Additional sources:
*
*
*
* The term has a nega ...
between the murder of Democratic National Committee staffer
Seth Rich
Seth,; el, Σήθ ''Sḗth''; ; "placed", "appointed") in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Mandaeism, and Sethianism, was the third son of Adam and Eve and brother of Cain and Abel, their only other child mentioned by name in the Hebrew Bible. A ...
in Washington and the leaking of DNC documents to WikiLeaks. Feinberg wrote of his discomfort as "there was absolutely no factual basis for doing so."
The
District of Columbia police believed that Rich had been murdered while being robbed. Feinberg believed that the editors wanted to shift blame for the leaking of the DNC documents from Russian hackers to Rich.
Sputnik News has published articles promoting conspiracy theories about the
murder of Seth Rich
The murder of Seth Rich occurred on July 10, 2016, at 4:20 a.m. in the Bloomingdale neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Rich died about an hour and a half after being shot twice in the back. The perpetrators were never apprehended; police ...
.
In an interview with
Brian Stelter
Brian Patrick Stelter (born September 3, 1985) is an American journalist best known as the former chief media correspondent for CNN and host of the CNN program '' Reliable Sources'', roles he held from 2013 to 2022. Stelter is also a former medi ...
for
CNN
CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by the M ...
, Feinberg said that Sputnik management had insisted on approving or dictating questions he would ask at White House press briefings, and wanted him to ask questions to imply that the
April 2017 Sarin gas attack in Syria was a hoax: "I was asked to put questions to the White House that framed the issue in such a way that made it seem that the attack didn't happen, that it was staged," In particular, he was asked to raise at the White House the assertions made by Ted Postol querying Syrian responsibility for the attack. On that occasion, he was not called.
Feinberg wrote in a ''Politico'' August 2017 article, he had concluded after the request that Sputnik's "mission wasn’t really to report the news as much as it was to push a narrative that would either sow doubts about situations that weren’t flattering to Russia or its allies, or hurt the reputation of the United States and its allies."
Other United States responses
In April 2018, journalist John Stanton (journalist), John Stanton, who had been Sputnik's Pentagon Correspondent for roughly two years, published a report highly critical of Sputnik News, Sputnik Radio, and RIA Novosti, declaring that both the organizations were part of a larger Russian Information Warfare Operation. His public findings were part of an insider research effort while at Sputnik on behalf of the US government.
In May 2018, the PBS, Public Broadcasting Service's ''PBS NewsHour, NewsHour'' website published an article by Elizabeth Flock who reported that Sputnik News and Radio reports "seemed intended to polarize" and "to distract and confuse" after listening to them over a week. On a visit to the station, she discovered "a stranger picture than I anticipated, one in which I began to understand how persuasive disinformation could be."
According to Flock, Stanton told her "They mix real with unreal, use dubious sources". It was difficult for him to point to the real problem as it "was like pushing a wet noodle." In other words, establishing what can be labelled disinformation is extremely difficult, she concluded.
''Foreign Policy'' magazine has described Sputnik as a slick and internet-savvy outlet of Moscow Kremlin, Kremlin propaganda, which "remixes President Vladimir Putin's brand of revanchist nationalism for an international audience... beating a predictable drum of anti-Western rhetoric."
In January 2022, the United States Department of State, U. S. State Department's Global Engagement Center (GEC) published a report titled "Kremlin-Funded Media: RT and Sputnik's Role in Russia's Disinformation and Propaganda Ecosystem." Its case studies included one on "false narratives" published by Sputnik and RT justifying Russian military buildup on the Ukrainian border.
European coverage and responses
Ben Nimmo, in a paper for the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), wrote that Sputnik invitations concentrate on a select group of politicians for their east European services, especially those known for their pro-Russian (Tatjana Ždanoka in Latvia) or anti-EU opinions (Janusz Korwin-Mikke in Poland). These two political figures have limited support in their countries; Korwin-Mikke gained slightly more than 3% in Poland's presidential election in May 2015, while Ždanoka is barred from holding public office for her opposition to Latvia's independence from Russia.
Sputnik has spread a false claim about Angela Merkel, the chancellor of Germany, who was wrongly said to have posed for a selfie with an
ISIS
Isis (; ''Ēse''; ; Meroitic: ''Wos'' 'a''or ''Wusa''; Phoenician: 𐤀𐤎, romanized: ʾs) was a major goddess in ancient Egyptian religion whose worship spread throughout the Greco-Roman world. Isis was first mentioned in the Old Kingd ...
suspect.
In the opinion of Kevin Rothrock, Russia editor for Global Voices Online, Global Voices, Sputnik "acts as a spoiler to try and disrupt or blur information unfriendly to Russia, such as Russian troops' alleged Russian military intervention in Ukraine (2014–present), involvement in the war in Ukraine". Historical comparisons have been made to ''Pravda'', the former official newspaper of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, in particular Sputnik's alleged apologia for Joseph Stalin and Denial of the Holodomor, denial of the 1932–1933 famine in Ukraine known as the Holodomor.
German journalist and author Michael Thumann describes Sputnik as being part of what he calls Russia's "digital information warfare, information war against the West".
Peter Pomerantsev, in an article for the London ''The Sunday Times, Sunday Times'', wrote that in the 2017 German elections the Sputnik news agency was negative or neutral about the country's political parties, with the exception of the right-wing nationalist Alternative for Germany (AfD).
Alexander Podrabinek, a Russian journalist who works for Radio France Internationale (part of Government of France, French Government's France Médias Monde) and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Liberty
(supervised by Broadcasting Board of Governors, an Independent agencies of the United States government, Independent agency of the Federal government of the United States, U.S. Federal government) has accused Sputnik of disseminating Russian state propaganda abroad.
In a vote urging for the
European Union
The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been des ...
(EU) to "respond to information warfare by Russia", the European Parliament accused broadcasting channels Sputnik and RT (TV channel), RT of "information warfare", and placed Russian media organisations alongside terrorist organisations such as the Islamic State. The federal agency of ''Rossotrudnichestvo'' and the Russkiy Mir Foundation were also seen as tools for Russian propaganda. According to a study by Masaryk University, Sputnik is one of the major sources of Russian propaganda in the Czech Republic.
In August 2016, Sputnik opened offices in Edinburgh, Scotland, its headquarters in the UK. The agency established its radio studio and bureau in the city. In April 2021, ''The Times'' reported Russian sources had said Sputnik's London and Edinburgh offices were closing with the outlet's English language staff being concentrated in Washington DC and Moscow.
A January 2017 report by The Swedish Institute of International Affairs found that a Swedish-language version of Sputnik News website was one of the main tools used by the Russian government to spread false information in Sweden including publicizing documents posted on little-known Swedish and Russian websites which were found to be forgeries.
According to the report, Sputnik News frequently focused on negative stories about NATO and the EU, consistent with Russia's foreign policy interest of minimizing NATO's role in the Baltic region and keeping Sweden out of NATO.
A research analysis done by Martin Kragh and Sebestian Asberg at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs, found that Swedish Sputnik focused on depicting Russia as under attack by aggressive Western governments, describing EU as being in "terminal decline", and NATO as a dangerous military threat.
These efforts were believed to try to change how the public in Sweden viewed its government and the EU.
The Swedish-language version ran for a year from April 2015 to spring of 2016, where it was forced to shut down and removed from the internet in that year.
In April 2017, Emmanuel Macron's 2017 French presidential election, campaign team banned both RT and Sputnik from campaign events. A Macron spokesperson said the two broadcasting outlets showed a "systematic desire to issue fake news and false information". A report claiming the pro-Russian candidate, François Fillon, had returned to the lead prior to the election was the subject of a reprimand from the country's election commission. Sputnik had falsely attributed the result to an opinion poll, whereas the assertion had actually originated from Brand Analytics, a Moscow-based company. A few weeks after Macron won the presidential election, President Putin visited the Versailles Palace. During a joint press conference with the Russian leader, Macron himself accused Sputnik and RT of having "produced slanderous countertruths".
In June 2019, it was found that Serbian language outlet of Sputnik has infiltrated a disinformation hub in Bosnia And Herzegovina. These findings were published by internationally recognized fact-checking platform Raskrinkavanje, which wrote reports about Sputnik bias towards spreading disinformation, in a 106-page document.
With the intention of protecting democratic values and to combat Russian disinformation campaigns utilizing RT and Sputnik, the European Union established East StratCom Task Force, The East StratCom Task Force in 2015.
During the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Sputnik republished an RIA Novosti article titled "The arrival/attack of Russia and the new world" ("Наступление России и нового мира"), which falsely claimed that Russia had won the Russo-Ukrainian War, lauded Putin's invasion for solving the "Ukrainian question", and declared the end of "Western global domination" with the start of a "New world order (politics), new world order" that joined Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine against the rest of Europe. The article remained available on Sputnik's website after RIA Novosti took it down from its own.
COVID-19 disinformation
A report by Sputnik's Belarusian service claimed the virus was an "anglo-Saxon" plot to counter China while Sputnik's associated outlet in South Ossetia (currently occupied by Russian armed forces) said the COVID-19 virus was created as a weapon in the West for information warfare.
Its Armenian affiliate insisted the virus had been created in a US laboratory. A Sputnik-associated outlet in Latvia, suggested it might have been created in Latvia.
Middle East coverage
In the Middle East, Russia used Sputnik and RT Arabic to promote its foreign policy goals through "informational warfare".
[Jensen, Donald N. "11. Russia in the Middle East: A New Front in the Information War?." ''RUSSIA IN THE'' (2018): 265. https://jamestown.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Russia-in-the-Middle-East-online.pdf?x75907#page=278] Russia tried to increase its power and presence in the Middle East as well as reduce United States influence in the region, fight terrorism, and establish allies in Syria with Bashir al-Assad.
In April 2017, Sputnik and RT reported little to no information on the Khan Shaykhun chemical attack in Syria.
During the attacks, Sputnik and RT did not report on the incident; there was no coverage provided on the survivors or their testimonies, and the history of violence in the area such as massacres, bombings, and chemical attacks that have occurred in the Syrian regime were not recorded.
After the massacre, Sputnik and RT widely questioned the cause and the history of the massacre through daily reports; false and missing information was frequently cited as the identities of the claimed "experts" were not shared, and alternative versions of the event were falsely reported as they claimed that the attacks were done by the White Helmets (Syrian Civil War), White Helmets, a Syrian civil volunteer organization.
Journalist Finian Cunningham wrote that the White Helmets were "propaganda conduits for al-Qaeda terror groups" which contributed to the controversy and negative news that the White Helmets faced.
[Czuperski, Maksymilian, et al. ''Disinformation''. Atlantic Council, 2017, pp. 54–61, ''Breaking Aleppo'', . Accessed 15 May 2020.] Published reports by Sputnik at the time were considered biased and did not consist of reliable sources or experts.
These statements were shared by Sputnik and RT throughout social media platforms as well as other news outlets that supported the Syrian regime.
International bans and restrictions
In March 2016, access to Sputnik's online content was blocked by Turkish authorities, as well as denying the Turkish bureau chief Tural Kerimov access to the country. The development was thought to have been in response to comments by the Russian leadership critical of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the Turkish government's record on human rights and freedom of speech. The website was unblocked later that same year. In 2018, the agency shut down its website in the Kurdish languages, Kurdish language without mentioning any particular reason for the decision. Former employees of Sputnik said that the news agency decided to shut it down at Turkey’s request, as part of both anti-Kurdish political movement and pro-Russian politics of Erdoğan.
In October 2017, Twitter banned both RT and Sputnik from advertising on their social networking service following the conclusions of the U.S. national intelligence report the previous January that both Sputnik and RT had been used as vehicles for Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections, Russia's interference in the 2016 US presidential election. It prompted a stern response from spokeswoman Maria Zakharova of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Russia), Russian Foreign Ministry. It said the ban was a "gross violation" by the United States of the guarantees of free speech. "Retaliatory measures, naturally, will follow". In November, Alphabet Inc., Alphabet chairman Eric Schmidt announced that Google will be "deranking" stories from RT and Sputnik in response to "weaponised" content and allegations about election meddling by President Putin's government, provoking claims of censorship from both outlets.
To reduce the spread of disinformation,
Facebook
Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...
and Google implemented fact-checking tools throughout their platforms. In January 2019,
Facebook
Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...
removed 289 pages and 75 accounts that the company said were used by Sputnik for misinformation on Facebook. The removed pages posed as independent news sites in eastern Europe and elsewhere but were actually run by employees at Sputnik. It was another in a series of actions taken by Facebook against Russian disinformation.
Along with Chinese and other Russian state media outlets, Twitter attached a "state-affiliated media" label to Sputnik's account.
In July 2019, British Foreign and Commonwealth Office banned both RT and Sputnik from attending the Global Conference for Media Freedom in London for "their active role in spreading disinformation". The Russian Embassy called the decision "direct politically motivated discrimination".
European Union External Action East StratCom Task Force and separate fact-checkers have discerned reoccurrences of Sputnik and RT publishing false information.
In January 2020, the Estonian offices of Sputnik were closed after police warned its journalists about potential criminal charges. The action taken by the Estonian government was a result of European Union sanctions imposed on Dmitry Kiselyov. Banks in Estonia suspended Sputnik related accounts in October 2019.
Following the
Russian invasion of Ukraine
On 24 February 2022, in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, which began in 2014. The invasion has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths on both sides. It has caused Europe's largest refugee crisis since World War II. An ...
in late February 2022, the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, announced the banning of Sputnik, along with RT and their subsidiaries, from the European Union.
Social media services including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube blocked Sputnik and RT content for their European Union users, while Reddit blocked outgoing links to Sputnik's and RT's websites in all regions. On 2 March, the regulation was published which meant the ban was in force. Microsoft and Apple Inc. responded by removing the Sputnik and RT apps from the Microsoft Store and the App Store (iOS/iPadOS), App Store, respectively. On 11 March, YouTube blocked Sputnik and RT worldwide.
Other operations
Wire services
As a news agency, Sputnik maintains the following news wires:
;English
* Sputnik News Service
* Sputnik News Service: Russia
* Sputnik News Service: Russia, Ukraine & the Baltics
* Sputnik Exclusives
* Sputnik Defense and Space
;Spanish
* Sputnik Nóvosti
* Sputnik Hispano (news from Spain, Latin America and other Spanish-speaking communities)
* Sputnik Rusia y CEI (Russia and the CIS)
* Sputnik Economía (economy)
;Chinese
* Sputnik Chinese News Service
* Russian-Chinese relations
* News about Russia
* International news
;Arabic
* Sputnik Arabic News Service
* Sputnik Middle East
* Sputnik Russia in the World
* Sputnik Telling The Untold (exclusive reports and interviews)
;Persian
* Sputnik Farsi News Service
Online news
Apart from wire services, Sputnik also operates Online newspaper, online news in following languages:
* Abkhaz language, Abkhaz
* Arabic
* Armenian language, Armenian
* Azerbaijani language, Azerbaijani
* Belarusian language, Belarusian
* Chinese language, Chinese
* Czech language, Czech
* Dari language, Dari
*
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
* Georgian language, Georgian
* Italian language, Italian
* Japanese language, Japanese
* Kazakh language, Kazakh
* Kyrgyz language, Kyrgyz
* Latvian language, Latvian
* Lithuanian language, Lithuanian
* Ossetian language, Ossetian
* Persian language, Persian
*
Polish
Polish may refer to:
* Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe
* Polish language
* Poles, people from Poland or of Polish descent
* Polish chicken
*Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin screenwr ...
* Portuguese language, Portuguese for Brazil
* Romanian language, Romanian for Moldova
** (edition for Romania, hosted by the Moldovan edition)
*
Serbian
* Tajik language, Tajik
* Turkish language, Turkish
* Uzbek language, Uzbek
* Vietnamese language, Vietnamese
Sputnik previously operated the following editions, which were later shut down:
* Danish language, Danish
* English for India
* Estonian language, Estonian
* Finnish language, Finnish
* French language, French
* German language, German
* Greek language, Greek
* Hindi
* Indonesian language, Indonesian
* Korean language, Korean for South Korea
* Kurdish languages, Kurdish
* Malay languages, Malay
* Norwegian language, Norwegian
* Pashto
*
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Cana ...
* Swedish language, Swedish
* Thai language, Thai
* Urdu
Broadcast languages
In 2020, the Sputnik radio had broadcasts in nine languages, including:
* Arabic language, Arabic
* Chinese language, Chinese
*
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
* German language, German
* Portuguese language, Portuguese
* Russian language, Russian
*
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Cana ...
*
Serbian
* Turkish language, Turkish
See also
* Disinformation in the 2021–2022 Russo-Ukrainian crisis
* Mass media in Russia
*
Radio Moscow
Radio Moscow ( rus, Pадио Москва, r=Radio Moskva), also known as Radio Moscow World Service, was the official international broadcasting station of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics until 1993. It was reorganized with a new name ...
* Russian–Ukrainian information war
* Sputnik (magazine), ''Sputnik'' (magazine)
Notes
References
External links
*
{{Authority control
International broadcasters
Internet properties established in 2014
Internet radio stations
Mass media companies of Russia
Multilingual news services
Multilingual websites
News agencies based in Russia
Propaganda radio broadcasts
Russian companies established in 2014
Russian news websites
Russian propaganda organizations
State media
Conspiracist media
Disinformation operations