RT AND THE TERRIBLE, HORRIBLE, NO GOOD, VERY BAD MONTH: The Russian propaganda arm RT (formerly known as Russia Today) is not having a very good September. On Friday, the United States announced new sanctions against Russian state media. Secretary of State Antony Blinken accused Russia of using state-funded outlets to push propaganda around the world. On Monday, Meta, the outfit that runs Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram revealed that they are giving RT and other Kremlin-run propaganda organizations the heave ho from their platforms because of RT’s ongoing efforts to interfere in U.S. elections. In announcing their decision Meta said that “After careful consideration, we expanded our ongoing enforcement against Russian state media outlets: Rossiya Segodnya, RT and other related entities are now banned from our apps globally for foreign interference activity.” Dmitry Peskov, a Putin spokesman, declared Meta’s move “unacceptable” and said, “We have an extremely negative attitude towards this.” Meanwhile, thanks to Russia Media Monitor Julia Davis, we have clips of RT head Margarita Simonyan saying that her “media empire” is guilty as charged. “We did it, we’re doing it and we will keep on doing it,” she proclaimed. But it’s not only RT that’s working to spread Russian propaganda. Davis also pointed out that a meme mocking Ukrainian President Zelensky (that was reposted by Elon Musk) was apparently created by Russia’s “Social Design Agency.” Way to go, Elon.
ALL IN THE FAMILY: We also learned from Julia Davis, that RT Chief Simonyan’s husband, Tigram Keosaysan, appeared on Vladimir Solovyov’s state TV program to argue that if Ukraine gets permission from the West to conduct long-range missile strikes into Russia – it would not be all that big of a deal. Which made us wonder: Are the propagandists lowering the angst level on the home front just in case? If so, nobody informed Solovyov, who appeared to conflate any missile launched from Ukraine as being launched by NATO and he insisted that Russia should respond with a nuclear attack. (We kinda think the global media landscape would be a lot better off if Russia would just keep it’s propaganda at home – where it’s clearly doing well.)
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