C-SPAN Glitch Revives Shadows of the Cold War Amid Crisis in US-Russia Ties

On Thursday, American broadcaster C-SPAN was briefly interrupted by programming for the Russian news network RT. Many journalists and social media users traditionally blamed "Russian hackers" for the incident.

The glitch came right in the middle of a live feed of Democratic Representative Maxine Waters’ speech in the House of Representatives.

Commenting on the situation, Waters did not forget to mention "Russian hackers" as a possible reason behind the interruption.

"I just think it’s strange… At a time when our intelligence agencies are very confident and basically have confirmed that Russia hacked the DNC and other political interests, and then we have, while I’m on the floor of the House, talking about Trump and Russia, I get interrupted by Russia Today… It’s strange. It’s odd," Waters said on Thursday, as quoted by The New York Times.

Of course, many journalists and social media users were also quick to blame Russia for the incident.

For instance, website Fortune published an article under the headline "C-SPAN Confirms It Was Briefly Hacked by Russian News Site." However, after the official statement from the broadcaster, the headline was corrected to "C-SPAN Was Briefly Interrupted by a Russian News Network."

Later, C-SPAN said in a statement that the incident was a result of an "internal routing issue," since RT is one of the networks that the channel regularly monitors.

Statement from C-SPAN about January 12 Online Signal Interruption pic.twitter.com/dlkSOntJgz

— CSPAN (@cspan) 13 января 2017 г.

​"C-SPAN itself has already said the feed interruption was an internal malfunction, but mainstream [media] are still hysterically saying we hacked them. Our newsroom ran out of popcorn watching this," RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan told RIA Novosti.

Talking to RT, former British lawmaker George Galloway underscored that the situation is the outcome of anti-Russia "hysteria" fueled by certain media outlets in the United States.

"In the 1950s, the times of McCarthyism and mass hysteria, the Americans literally looked for Russians under their beds. […] So, if similar tensions are fueled now people would react the way it was shown by RT. It seems this incident proves that C-SPAN workers watch RT and somehow RT interrupted their programming," Galloway said.

Talk2me Radio host Jon Gaunt described the incident as hilarious and said that the RT programming was more interesting than the speech by the US politician.

"The Russians and [Russian President] Vladimir Putin are to blame for everything in the world," Gaunt ironically said.

"Anything can happen but we live in a time when people are concerned over each minor detail. Everyone should calm down. I found this hilarious and even more interesting than their usual programming. Mainstream media wants to portray Russia as an enemy and blames it for everything. Thus, they create a climate of fear. In fact, the incident was just a glitch, not a conspiracy," he told RT.

Journalist Ted Roll said that the current level of tensions between Washington and Moscow is unprecedented since the Cold War ended.

"We’re living  in a time when anti-Russian hysteria is being fueled in media and social media. […] But the most likely explanation would be the fact that C-SPAN is not the most advanced network. They have a small budget. They just hit the wrong button," Roll said.

Political commentator Adam Harry described the incident as comical.

"It is clear that it was a technical problem. But I think this story helped take the heat out of the situation. This week was full of bad news. People supposed to be trustworthy said crazy conspiracy things. But this incident was comical. This is how it should be seen by all normal people," he concluded.