Russia’s Federation Council are examining actions taken by the US government toward Russian media and American media on the territory of the Russian Federation, in order to protect Russian sovereignty and prevent outside interference in the internal affairs of the nation. Maria Zakharova and Margarita Simonyan are participating in the discussion.
Sputnik and RT Editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan said that the US has labeled RT a foreign agent.
She claimed that the label violates freedom of press considerations, eliminating journalists' access to information.
"If the US orders the closure of RT, we can do it," Simonyan said.
The US actions against Sputnik and RT make our work impossible, Simonyan emphasized. People are leaving the company and it makes it difficult for RT to hire part-time correspondents, Simonyan noted.
"People are afraid to work with us, because the US labels RT and Sputnik as criminals. But we do our job, nothing else. We didn't interfere in the US 2016 Presidential election, we just wrote about it as normal journalists."
"People and experts stopped talking to us because the US government labeled us a Kremlin tool, as Russian propaganda," she concluded.
The Russian Foreign Ministry expressed its position on the issue last week, Maria Zakharova said during the discussion. But from the standpoint of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the activities of the US government against Russian media violates of its own domestic policy regarding freedom of speech guarantees.
"The breach of the US domestic legislation and the principle of the freedom of speech is evident and objective… Restrictive measures of political and fiscal nature are being used against the Russian media outlet [RT]," Zakharova said.
According to the spokeswoman, "not only the principles of the freedom of speech claimed by the United States are broken, these are the very principles that the United States is actively exporting, this is the very basis of the US foreign policy."
On Tuesday, the Bloomberg news agency reported that Google, which owns YouTube, dropped RT from its packages of most popular channels aimed at ad buyers. In September, the US Department of Justice asked a contractor of RT in the United States to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), while in June US congressmen introduced the Foreign Agents Registration Modernization and Enforcement Act bill, which would broaden the scope of FARA to include RT, by expanding DoJ authority to investigate attempts to "unlawfully influence the political process."
Zakharova also said that for example the Japanese broadcaster NHK was also labeled a foreign agent by the US, but it didn't face restrictive measures such as RT.
"What we see today, the sanctions which have been imposed against the Russian media, we see as restrictions against Russia," Zakharova said.
