Sputnik (news agency)
 | |
| Type | News and Media |
|---|---|
| Country | Russia |
| Availability | Worldwide |
| Slogan | Telling the Untold |
| Owner |
|
Launch date | 10 November 2014 (2014-11-10) |
Official website | sputniknews.com |
Notes
| |
899 (October 2017[update])[1]Sputnik (Russian pronunciation: [ˈsputnʲɪk]; formerly The Voice of Russia and RIA Novosti) is a news agency, news website platform and radio broadcast service established by the Russian government-owned news agency Rossiya Segodnya.[2] Headquartered in Moscow, Sputnik has regional editorial offices in Washington, Cairo, Beijing, Jakarta, Singapore, London and Edinburgh. Sputnik focuses on global politics and economics and is geared towards a non-Russian audience.[3]
According to The New York Times Sputnik engages in deliberate disinformation,[4] and has often been described as a Russian propaganda outlet.[5][6][7] Sputnik employees run social media pages and blogs posing as citizens of various countries, and purchased paid advertisement to disseminate fake and misleading content according to CNN Business.[8]
Sputnik currently operates news websites, featuring reporting and commentary, in over 30 languages including English, Spanish, Polish, Serbian, and several others. The websites also house over 800 hours of radio broadcasting material each day and its newswire service runs around the clock.[9][10][11]
Contents
1 History
2 Radio services
3 Criticism
4 Other operations
4.1 Wire services
4.2 Online news
5 See also
6 References
7 External links
7.1 Links for Radio Sputnik's Washington DC station (W288BS-FM 105.5 MHz)
History
RIA Novosti was Russia's international news agency until 2013, and it continues to be the name of a state-operated domestic Russian-language news agency.[12] On 9 December 2013, RIA Novosti was reorganized into a new Russian international news agency Rossiya Segodnya.[13]Dmitry Kiselev, an anchorman of the Russia-1 channel was appointed to be the first president of the new agency.[14] He soon announced that Margarita Simonyan was to be editor-in-chief. Simonyan told The New York Times in 2017 that she choose Sputnik as the new name "because I thought that’s the only Russian word that has a positive connotation, and the whole world knows it."[15]
Sputnik was launched on 10 November 2014 by Rossiya Segodnya, an agency owned and operated by the Russian government, which was created by an Executive Order of the President of Russia on 9 December 2013.[2] Sputnik replaced the RIA Novosti news agency and Voice of Russia (which was the Russian government's international radio broadcasting service from 1993 until 9 November 2014) on an international stage.[16] Within Russia itself, however, Rossiya Segodnya continues to operate its Russian language news service under the name RIA Novosti.[16] According to its chief Dmitry Kiselyov, Sputnik was intended to "provide alternative interpretations that are, undoubtedly, in demand around the world".[5] President Vladimir Putin, visiting the Moscow base of the RT television network in 2013, said the objective behind both the then forthcoming Sputnik agency and RT was to "break the monopoly of the Anglo-Saxon global information streams."[15]
In September 2015, Sputnik announced their intention to locate the agency's UK Radio studio in Scotland's capital Edinburgh.[17] The agency established its radio studio and bureau in the city and at a press conference on 10 August 2016 launched its current affairs and news programme, World in Focus.[9]
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 is thought to have been in response to comments by the Russian leadership that were critical of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan regarding the Turkish administration's record on human rights and freedom of speech.[18][19] The website was subsequently unblocked later that same year.[20]
Radio services
Radio Sputnik is the audio service of the Sputnik platform operating in 30 languages "for a total of over 800 hours a day, covering over 130 cities and 34 countries on "FM, DAB/DAB+ (Digital Radio Broadcasting), HD Radio, as well as mobile phones and the Internet."[21] It is also available on various satellite transponders, including a 24 hour English service audible in North America via the Galaxy-19 satellite. Notable presenters on Radio Sputnik include Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert, who present the weekly economics based talk show Double Down;[22]Eugene Puryear, who hosts the talk show By Any Means Necessary; and liberal talk radio host Thom Hartmann, whose Thom Hartmann Program is syndicated daily on Sputnik.
Regarding plans for the U.S. broadcast market, the editor-in-chief of Sputnik U.S. said in a June 2017 interview that there are no near-term plans for expansion into new markets beyond Washington, DC.[23] This came on the heels of a late June 2017 announcement[24][23][25] that Radio Sputnik would sublease Reston, Virginia-licensed translator station W288BS (105.5 FM) from Reston Translator, LLC, which transmits from the WIAD tower in Bethesda, Maryland, and begin broadcasting Sputnik on that signal; the station's reach includes DC proper and the western suburbs in Northern Virginia.[26] Since November 2017, Radio Sputnik is also carried on AM in Washington on WZHF 1390 AM. The American owners of the stations were required to register as a foreign agent by the United States Department of Justice.[27][28]
Sputnik cannot own an American radio station outright due to Federal Communications Commission rules against foreign ownership of broadcast assets, as enacted in the Communications Act of 1934. Prior to 1 July 2017, Radio Sputnik (initially as its predecessor) had broadcast in the Washington DC area on WTOP-HD2 (103.5-HD2) since June 2013 (if not earlier). W288BS translates Urban One's WKYS (93.9)'s digital HD3 signal for analog broadcasting.[23]
Criticism
Foreign Policy magazine has described Sputnik as a slick and internet-savvy outlet of Kremlin propaganda, which "remixes President Vladimir Putin's brand of revanchist nationalism for an international audience... beating a predictable drum of anti-Western rhetoric."[5] Such views were also voiced by the Washington DC-based think tank[29]Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), which argues that Sputnik spreads biased information. In the opinion of CEPA, Sputnik invites only a select group of commenting politicians, especially those known for their pro-Russian views.[6] According to Kevin Rothrock, Russia editor for Global Voices, Sputnik "acts as a spoiler to try and disrupt or blur information unfriendly to Russia, such as Russian troops' alleged involvement in the war in Ukraine".[30] Historical comparisons have been made to Pravda, once the official newspaper of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, in particular Sputnik's alleged apologia for Joseph Stalin and denial of the 1932–1933 famine in Ukraine known as the Holodomor.[31]
German journalist and author Michael Thumann has described Sputnik as being part of what he calls Russia's "digital information war against the West".[32]Alexander Podrabinek, a Russian journalist who works for Radio France Internationale[33][34] (part of French Government's France Médias Monde) and the Radio Liberty[35] (supervised by Broadcasting Board of Governors, an Independent agency of the U.S. Federal government) has accused Sputnik of disseminating Russian state propaganda abroad.[36] In a vote urging for the European Union to "respond to information warfare by Russia", the European Parliament accused broadcasting channels Sputnik and RT of "information warfare", and placed Russian media organisations along 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 in this report.[37] According to a study by Masaryk University, Sputnik is one of the major sources of Russian propaganda in the Czech Republic.[38]
In October 2016, Sputnik misreported the contents of WikiLeaks e-mails in a story that attacked Hillary Clinton. Quotes from an article produced by Kurt Eichenwald were incorrectly attributed to Sidney Blumenthal (due to him quoting Eichenwald in an email) and taken out of context. Sputnik later took down the article.[39] The false story was recited by the then-Republican nominee for president Donald Trump at one of his rallies, leading Eichenwald to accuse Trump of rebranding Russian propaganda for his own advantage. However, this has been disputed by The Washington Post, stating that "It's not that Trump is a Putin marionette, it's that he seems to have pulled bad information off a questionable website and presented it on live television to an audience of thousands without skepticism. This is an indictment of his judgment, not of his loyalty."[40] Jon Passanto of BuzzFeed News notes that the language used by Trump is more similar to a viral tweet from Twitter user @republic2016, which went out 4 hours before the Sputnik article appeared.[40]
A January 2017 report by The Swedish Institute of International Affairs found that Swedish language version of Sputnik News was one of the main tools by which the Russian government spread false information in Sweden.[7][41] According to the report, Sputnik News focused on highly negative stories about NATO and the EU, in particular.[41]
In April 2017, Emmanuel Macron's campaign team banned both RT and Sputnik from campaign events. A Macron spokesperson said the two outlets showed a "systematic desire to issue fake news and false information".[42]
On 26 May 2017, journalist Andrew Feinberg, who had been Sputnik's White House Correspondent, announced on Twitter that he would no longer be reporting for the agency, citing pressure from Sputnik's Russian editors to write stories and ask questions at the White House that implied that murdered Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich was killed in retaliation for leaking documents to WikiLeaks despite the lack of any evidence to support such a conclusion. In an interview with CNN's Brian Stelter, Feinberg also noted that Sputnik management had insisted on approving or dictating questions he would ask at White House press briefings, and wanted him to ask questions that implied that the April 2017 Sarin gas attack in Syria was a hoax, and that Sputnik tried to prevent reporters from having bylines to avoid accountability for falsehoods in stories.[43]
In October 2017, Twitter banned both RT and Sputnik from advertising on their social networking service amid accusations of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections, prompting a stern response from the 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,” ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.[44] In November, Alphabet chairman Eric Schmidt announced that Google will be "deranking" stories from RT and Sputnik in response to allegations about election meddling by President Putin's government, provoking an angry response from both publications.[45]
In April 2018, 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.[46]
In May 2018, the Public Broadcasting System's NewsHour website published an article by Elizabeth Flock who reported that after immersing herself for a week in Sputnik News and Radio reports she began "questioning everything...What I found was a stranger picture than I anticipated, one in which I began to understand how persuasive disinformation could be." According to the article, Stanton told her that "'They mix real with unreal, use dubious sources...But trying to pin down what he really found problematic...was like pushing a wet noodle.' What he meant is that proving disinformation can be impossibly slippery."[47]
Forbes reported that Sputnik International reported fake news and fabricated statements by White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest during the 2016 US presidential election.[48] Sputnik falsely reported on 7 December 2016 that Earnest stated sanctions for Russia were on the table related to Syria, falsely quoting Earnest as saying: "There are a number of things that are to be considered, including some of the financial sanctions that the United States can administer in coordination with our allies. I would definitely not rule that out."[48]Forbes analyzed Earnest's White House press briefing from that week, and found the word "sanctions" was never used by the Press Secretary.[48] Russia was discussed in eight instances during the press conference, but never about sanctions.[48] The press conference focused solely on Russian air raids in Syria towards rebels fighting President of Syria Bashar al-Assad in Aleppo.[48]
Sputnik News published articles that promoted conspiracy theories about the murder of Seth Rich.[49] According to The Washington Post, "many Sputnik hosts profess skepticism that Russia meddled in the 2016 presidential election," in contradiction to the assessment of the US intelligence community.[50]
Lee Stranahan, known for conspiratorial articles about the yogurt producer Chobani, was hired by Sputnik News after his departure from Breitbart News.[51][52][50][53] Stranahan had claimed that Breitbart had been insufficiently supportive of his investigations and theories which without any evidence asserted that Chobani was at the center of a grand conspiracy to replace American workers with Syrian refugees, and conceal sexual assaults and outbreaks of tuberculosis.[51][54] Stranahan also said that Breitbart had prevented him from covering the Trump White House.[52] According to The Washington Post, Stranahan is "Sputnik’s most visible Trump supporter".[50]
In 2018, the agency shut down its website in the 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.[55]
In January 2019, Facebook removed 289 pages and 75 accounts that the company said were used by Sputnik for misinformation on Facebook.[56]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.[8][57]
Other operations
Wire services
As a news agency, Sputnik maintains six news wires:[58]
Sputnik News Service in English, covering international events
Sputnik News Service: Russia in English
Sputnik News Service: Russia, Ukraine & the Baltics in English- Sputnik Arabic News Service
Sputnik Nóvosti in Spanish- Sputnik Chinese News Service
Online news
List indicator(s)
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Apart from wire services, Sputnik also operates online news in following languages:
Abkhazru
ArabicRIA VOR
Armenianru
Azerbaijaniru
Belarusianru
ChineseRIA VOR
CzechVOR
DariVOR
EnglishRIA VOR
Estonianru
FrenchRIA VOR
Georgianru
GermanRIA VOR
GreekRIA VOR
IndonesianVOR
ItalianVOR
JapaneseRIA VOR
Kazakhru
KurdishVOR
Kyrgyzru
Latvianru
Lithuanianru
MalayVOR
Ossetianru
PersianRIA VOR
PolishVOR
Portuguese for BrazilVOR
Romanian for Moldovaru
- (edition for Romania, hosted by the Moldavian edition)
SerbianVOR
SpanishRIA VOR
Tajikru
ThaiVOR
TurkishVOR
Uzbekru
VietnameseVOR
Sputnik previously operated the following editions, which were later shut down:
DanishVOR
- English for IndiaVOR
FinnishVOR
HindiVOR
Korean for South KoreaVOR
NorwegianVOR
PashtoVOR
SwedishVOR
UrduVOR
See also
- Media of Russia
- Radio Moscow
- Sputnik (magazine)
References
^ "sputniknews.com Site Overview". Alexa Internet. Retrieved 11 October 2016..mw-parser-output cite.citation{font-style:inherit}.mw-parser-output .citation q{quotes:"""""""'""'"}.mw-parser-output .citation .cs1-lock-free a{background:url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/65/Lock-green.svg/9px-Lock-green.svg.png")no-repeat;background-position:right .1em center}.mw-parser-output .citation .cs1-lock-limited a,.mw-parser-output .citation .cs1-lock-registration a{background:url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d6/Lock-gray-alt-2.svg/9px-Lock-gray-alt-2.svg.png")no-repeat;background-position:right .1em center}.mw-parser-output .citation .cs1-lock-subscription a{background:url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/aa/Lock-red-alt-2.svg/9px-Lock-red-alt-2.svg.png")no-repeat;background-position:right .1em center}.mw-parser-output .cs1-subscription,.mw-parser-output .cs1-registration{color:#555}.mw-parser-output .cs1-subscription span,.mw-parser-output .cs1-registration span{border-bottom:1px dotted;cursor:help}.mw-parser-output .cs1-ws-icon a{background:url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4c/Wikisource-logo.svg/12px-Wikisource-logo.svg.png")no-repeat;background-position:right .1em center}.mw-parser-output code.cs1-code{color:inherit;background:inherit;border:inherit;padding:inherit}.mw-parser-output .cs1-hidden-error{display:none;font-size:100%}.mw-parser-output .cs1-visible-error{font-size:100%}.mw-parser-output .cs1-maint{display:none;color:#33aa33;margin-left:0.3em}.mw-parser-output .cs1-subscription,.mw-parser-output .cs1-registration,.mw-parser-output .cs1-format{font-size:95%}.mw-parser-output .cs1-kern-left,.mw-parser-output .cs1-kern-wl-left{padding-left:0.2em}.mw-parser-output .cs1-kern-right,.mw-parser-output .cs1-kern-wl-right{padding-right:0.2em}
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^ "FCC licensing data for radio broadcasting station W288BS". fccdata.org. 15 September 2011. Retrieved 2 July 2017.
^ "A U.S. Station Switched From Bluegrass to Radio Sputnik—and Got Threats From the Feds". 13 December 2017 – via www.bloomberg.com.
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^ abc Moyer, Justin Wm (12 July 2017). "From the Kremlin to K Street: Russia-funded radio broadcasts blocks from the White House". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 20 February 2018.
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^ ab Gray, Rosie. "From Breitbart to Sputnik". The Atlantic. Retrieved 20 February 2018.
^ Balluck, Kyle (6 April 2017). "Former Breitbart reporter joins Russian propaganda network: 'I'm on the Russian payroll now'". TheHill. Retrieved 20 February 2018.
^ "Chobani coverage is a reminder of one company's experience with Breitbart". mcclatchydc. Retrieved 27 September 2017.
^ "Russian Sputnik shuts down Kurdish website at Turkey's request". Ahval News. 30 June 2018.
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^ Sputnik. "Sputnik International - Breaking News & Analysis - Radio, Photos, Videos, Infographics - Products and services". sputniknews.com. Retrieved 13 April 2017.
External links
sputniknews.com, the official website of "Sputnik" news agency
Links for Radio Sputnik's Washington DC station (W288BS-FM 105.5 MHz)
- Query the FCC's FM station database for W288BS
- Radio-Locator information on W288BS
