Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, US-based media platforms have made an extraordinary effort to cut Western audiences off from news from a Russian perspective. When social critic Noam Chomsky pointed out how unprecedented this was, Newsweek‘s “factchecker” (7/26/22) declared his criticism “clearly untrue”—a determination that did more to confirm the ideological strictures of US media than to debunk them.
Soon after Russia invaded Ukraine in February, Russia Today, funded by the Russian government, was removed from DirecTV and Dish Network (New York Times, 3/12/22), YouTube (France24, 12/3/22), TikTok, Meta (CNN, 3/1/22) Google News (Reuters, 3/1/22) and Spotify (Reuters, 3/2/22) in the United States and/or Europe. RT and Sputnik (another Russian state–funded network) were removed from the Apple app store (TechCrunch, 3/1/22).
CNN (3/1/22): “The actions taken by television providers and technology companies against RT have…reduc[ed] the Kremlin’s ability to peddle its narrative at a pivotal time.”
Microsoft banned RT from the Windows app store, and deranked RT and Sputnik in Bing search results (TechCrunch, 3/1/22). Google (Reuters, 3/1/22), Meta (Reuters 2/26/22) and Microsoft (Microsoft.com, 2/28/22) barred RT from receiving any ad revenue through their platforms. RT was also banned by Roku, a streaming hardware company (CNN, 3/1/22).
Motivations for banning RT and Sputnik were due to “extraordinary circumstances,” in Google’s words (Reuters, 2/26/22), and to protect “against state-sponsored disinformation campaigns” (Microsoft.com, 2/28/22). RT’s offices in the US had to close down their production completely (Washington Post, 3/3/22).
PayPal has recently frozen the accounts of independent news outlets such as Consortium News (Democracy Now!, 7/12/22) and MintPress (Democracy Now!, 5/4/22; FAIR.org, 5/18/22). The circumstances around PayPal’s actions are less clear than with the actions against RT. The editor-in-chief of Consortium News, Joe Lauria, said he didn’t know why PayPal froze its account, but he suspects a clause in the user agreement against “purveying misinformation” may have been invoked (Democracy Now!, 7/12/22).
One of the many chilling effects of the media blackout was that YouTube deleted its entire archive of commentary by the Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Chris Hedges (who formerly worked for the New York Times and NPR) because it was hosted by RT (Democracy Now!, 4/1/22).
In May, the US announced new sanctions against Russian television networks Channel One Russia, Television Station Russia-1 and NTV Broadcasting Company (CNN, 5/8/22), cutting them off from US advertisers.
‘A kind of totalitarian culture’
Newsweek (7/26/22): “There are no justified parallels to be drawn between the Soviet Russia media landscape and that of the US today.”
Noam Chomsky, professor emeritus of linguistics at MIT and a renowned media critic, responded to this consolidated effort to “counter the threat” posed by the “information war” (Newsweek, 7/26/22) in an interview with actor Russell Brand (YouTube, 7/22/22):
Take the United States today; it is living under a kind of totalitarian culture which has never existed in my lifetime, and is much worse in many ways than the Soviet Union before Gorbachev. Go back to the 1970s, people in Soviet Russia could access BBC, Voice of America, German television, if they wanted to find out the news.
Chomsky’s comments were “factchecked” recently by Tom Norton of Newsweek (7/26/22). He wrote:
While the BBC and Radio Free America did broadcast in Russia post-WWII and during the Cold War, their frequencies were jammed by the Soviet government for decades. Any access that the Russian public did have was gained in spite of, not thanks to, their government’s efforts.
The article briefly covers the history of signal jamming in the Soviet Union and other comments made by Chomsky, concluding:
To suggest that Americans have less access to information than citizens in Soviet Russia is therefore, not only clearly untrue, but an argument that neglects the sacrifices and perils that journalists have endured to deliver accurate news about the country, and continue to endure to this day.
The official ruling of Newsweek declared Chomsky’s comments false:
By all accounts, Americans are able to access news from Russia despite many Western journalists having fled the country, and Russia having blocked its public’s access to most Western social media and news platforms.
‘A ubiquitous phenomenon’
BBC (3/23/11): “Listening to the [BBC‘s] Russian Service as well as other Western broadcasters had, by the 1970s, become a ubiquitous phenomenon among the Soviet urban intelligentsia.”
One of the articles used to support the certification of falsehood was a New York Times article (5/26/87) from 1987 that reported “Russia had begun broadcasting Voice of America after blocking its signal for seven years.” A BBC article (3/23/11) from 2011 was also used to explain that between 1949 and 1987 the Soviets spent significant funds developing jammers to block Western transmissions.
Interestingly, the same New York Times article reported that “a Harvard University study in the mid-1970s estimated that 28 million people in the Soviet Union tuned in [to US-funded VoA] at least once a week.’” And similarly, from the same BBC article cited by Newsweek:
However, jamming was never totally effective, and listening to the [BBC‘s] Russian Service as well as other Western broadcasters had, by the 1970s, become a ubiquitous phenomenon among the Soviet urban intelligentsia.
Using just two articles from Western sources selected by the factchecker, it seems that millions of people, including virtually all intellectuals in the Soviet Union, had access to and tuned into Western media in the 1970s, which is fairly consistent with Chomsky’s comments: “Go back to the 1970s, people in Soviet Russia could access BBC, Voice of America, German television, if they wanted to find out the news.”
Newsweek reached out to Chomsky for comment, who responded:
I was explicit. I referred to the banning of RT and other channels, comparing it with pre-Perestroika Russia when Russians were getting their news from BBC and VoA, according to US studies.
A mass Soviet audience
Cold War Broadcasting (CEU Press, 2010): “Some 52 million people in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe tuned in weekly to the Voice of America in the early 1980s.”
A collection of studies were published in 2010 in the book, Cold War Broadcasting: Impact on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, edited by A. Ross Johnson, a former research fellow at the Hoover Institute (a conservative think tank) and director of Radio Free Europe (US-funded media), and R. Eugene Parta, also a former director of RFE and a contributor to the Hoover Institution. The studies corroborate the claim that people in the Soviet Union were frequently listening to Western media.
In the 1970s, simulations estimated by MIT put VoA weekly listenership reaching highs of 19% of the adult Soviet population, with the BBC topping out at 11%. “Study results showed that by the end of the 1970s, more than half of the USSR urban population listened to foreign broadcasting more or less regularly,” according to Cold War Broadcasting.
Out of curiosity, what do the US studies have to say about the 1980s?
Some 52 million people in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe tuned in weekly to the Voice of America in the early 1980s. That was approximately half of VoA’s global audience at the time.
The Soviet war in Afghanistan apparently did not stop people from listening to Western broadcasts. In 1984, 40% of the urban population received information on the war in Afghanistan from Western radio, and in 1987 it was 45%.
In the contemporary United States, however, this is not permitted. We cannot have people listening to the enemy in times of war.
Cold War Broadcasting noted that
the size of Western radio stations’ audience grew gradually from the beginning of broadcasting in the early post-war period to reach more than 50% of the Soviet urban population in the early 1980s.
In other words, Western radio stations had a mass audience in the former USSR. The number of regular listeners was as high as 20–25%.
Soviet listeners appeared to use their access to news from multiple perspectives to get a more comprehensive picture of events:
Despite a relatively high level of trust in Western radio stations, most listeners did not totally accept all the information they heard. The Soviet audience took a more deliberate approach to understanding information that was based on a comparison of information obtained from Soviet mass media with that from foreign radio programs.
So Western outlets and US studies seem to agree with Chomsky: Despite jamming, people had access and often listened to Western sources in the Soviet Union and were critically engaged with the news at the time, especially during the ’70s.
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FEATURED IMAGE: Noam Chomsky on Democracy Now! (12/7/21).
Never let the facts get in the way of a good defaming
What is Chomsky talking about?
Even with RT’s suppression by all these tech and media companies, their content is still readily available to anyone who wishes to access it. Just go to RT.com. Even if you don’t know the URL, Google “RT” and it’s the first result that pops up. This instant access to information was unthinkable in pre-Gorbachev Russia, or anyplace else during that era.
I don’t see how the nitpicking the “fact checker” makes Chomsky’s claim any less ridiculous.
We are literally blocked from doing that. So what is your point?
How are we blocked from doing that? You’re free to access RT.com anytime you wish.
Dan got it right. One can currently access RT.com today (although I noticed that immediately after Russia’s invasion for an unknown amount of time, I could not). However, one can also find a YouTube video on the life of Crow chief Pine Leaf but that doesn’t mean that one will make the effort to find it.
The Soviets attempted to create a media drought and offer water. Today we drown in a flood of (dis)information from numerous directions so we live in a very different time and context.
With RT’s US offices closed, networks having removed RT, and YouTube having banned it, few people in the U.S. will seek out RT’s website (probably far less than the number of Soviets seeking VoA).
Another reason has to do with what Chomsky (borrowing from Walter Lippman) called “manufacture of consent”. Soviet citizens knew their media lied and searched for alternative sources. The very fact that so many people in the U.S. seem content with various brands of U.S. corporate media ensures that few will ever look to RT as an alternative source.
Instead of focusing on whether Chomsky’s claim seems “ridiculous”, one might ask: “how much RT or any Russian-based news have you or anyone you know consumed lately?” If the U.S. engages in a proxy war against Russia right now, would it not make sense to at least give a fair hearing to the opposition?
What John (below) referred to as “a lack of interest in Russian disinformation” seems like a huge unwillingness to critically examine the U.S. government narrative and seek other views.
Especially considering the potential for nuclear peril and current precarity, it seems astonishing that so many in the U.S. seem content with myths such as “Putin is an inexplicable madman,” “We must wholeheartedly support Ukrainian nationalism,” “Ukrainian neo-Nazis are a total fabrication,” and “NATO is innocent.”
Doesn’t it trouble you that Google and Facebook and Twitter and YouTube are promoting a government narrative that is full of holes?
I use Google Chrome. My broadband supplier is TalkTalk. If I type http://www.rt.com in the search bar, the result is ‘This site can’t be reached’. RT is blocked across the UK. You need to check your information, Dan.
A VPN might work for you to get around country and network based restrictions.
The point is that RT is banned in the UK, contrary to what other commenters claim.
I understand that. But is it really “banned” if it’s still easily accessible with a simple VPN connection? Assuming it is, of course; I’m just guessing about whether that would work or not.
It’s not banned in the US, which is the country that Chomsky is commenting on.
In the US we can watch RT live stream on rumble.com and odysee.com. May want to try those.
I’m in California, US and I cannot access rt.com.
Lots of channels that even skirt the issue of Ukraine are being shut down on the social media websites, and the fear and chilling effect of getting shut down is keeping other sites and commenters from saying certain things.
And mostly what these sites are doing is just talking about the verified history of the Ukraine, and the US, and Russia, etc.
The soviets blocked public access to western propaganda. But due to the citizens interest, western media was very popular.
The west has not blocked access to blocked access to Russian propaganda.
Unlike the former soviets, we can legally watch Russian news in the west, as it is not banned by the government. But due to a lack of interest in Russian disinformation, interest from the west is very low out side of the fringe right and left.
The article wasn’t only about so-called Russian propaganda. It was about how western news media sources have obscured or censored the Russian *perspective* on the war. Hence the section on how PayPal and other services have taken to throwing outlets like Consortium News out.
“we can legally watch Russian news in the west” is a claim not backed by evidence. RT has been banned by any previous conduit such as YouTube and Freeview. I have no means to watch it. I have no wish to watch Western disinformation as peddled by the BBC, Guardian etc., and I would like to see what I’m missing on RT. The fact that it is banned makes me much more curious, as I rarely looked at it before it was banned in the UK.
The good thing about RT on Youtube was that the American presenters, unlike our MSM who are just stenographers for our State Department, weren’t afraid to criticize our (USA) government.
Americans are like good German Nazis. They eat up uncritically the disinformation that their own government vomits. Like other totalitarian systems, the U.S. oligarchy knows that the people cannot be trusted to compare information from its official sources with information from other perspectives.
We have a free press, they don’t. We have freedom of speech, they don’t. We have freedom to access their news, they don’t have access to ours. They have interest in ours, we have none in theirs.
Hate to break it to ya, but what you’re referring to as our “news” is merely state sponsored propaganda. Of course they have access to ours in the same way we have access to theirs. In many cases, you must use a proxy/VPN to access theirs now, just as it’s likely they need to do the same for ours.
https://consortiumnews.com/2022/03/03/caitlin-johnstone-freedom-democracy-via-censorship/
You can’t send a message to Newsweek unless you subscribe. The link you published is almost totally concerned with subscription issues.
A very good analysis, John. Thank you for sharing your homework.
Somewhat ironically, it has been Newsweek (long rumored to be rife with intelligence operatives) who’s reported on Russia’s side the most accurately of any mainstream sources I can think of in the “west.”
It was them who published the needlessly controversial article demonstrating that Russia, unlike US-led invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, was intentionally minimizing civilian casualties when they easily could have leveled every major Ukrainian city in a few weeks a la “Shock and Awe.”
https://www.newsweek.com/putins-bombers-could-devastate-ukraine-hes-holding-back-heres-why-1690494
No idea how that one made it through the censors.
WTF is the actual issue here ?? These Russian links (RT.com, etc) work fine from my New York City based ISP.
We are being drowned in misinformation & GovCorp propaganda, and part of that ‘drowning’ is making too many of us Americans *Believe* we’re being offered a life-preserver to save us from the dangerous sea of Russian (or Chinese or Iranian or Syrian or N.Korean or Venezuelan, etc etc) ‘misinfo’.
Pretty amazing how Russia, for ex, with a population Half our size and a GDP 1/17th ours (Russia is 11th in world–behind..Italy) is (supposedly) able to con most Americans with their barrel-loads of propaganda.. meanwhile, who has owned our Washington Post for the past 10 yrs?
Oh yeah, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos.. one of our many Uber-Oligarchs.
So IF Russian propaganda is magically overpowering our media & The Narrative.. then who is Allowing such?
It must be…our Uber-Oligarchs & their Mega-Corps..working hand-in-glove with Govt.
Good points, however I’d like to add a bit of clarification to the whole GDP thing. At some point in the not-too-distant past, the US started counting the FIRE sector as part of GDP. Now I believe it makes up for the majority of our claimed economic output. One of the main reasons the FUKUS/NATO alliance is so keen on countries like Venezuela, Russia and China is that these countries have resisted allowing ‘western’ bankster rent seekers and energy companies access to their economies.
Also keep in mind that much of the US GDP is tied to the MIC and weapons manufacturing, which of course – on a bit of a side note – naturally leads to promotion of wars and revolutions abroad.
Regardless, when you realize that healthcare and debt (inclusive of health care and education related debt) comprise something like 30% of US GDP, I’d much rather be in an economy like Russia’s. US GDP numbers are fake and/or manipulated to present a picture that isn’t accurate in real world terms.
Dude, you are a total kook. Is anything REAL in your little conspiracy world ? Consider traveling back to the USSR (errr Russia) and take a rest on the trolling.
If you have counter arguments to rebut Tom_Q_Collins’ comment, then let’s see them. Otherwise, you have nothing.
Putting aside the MSM propaganda topic and one of the main reasons we tune in to Fair.org, exactly WHO in the United States can’t access these documented foreign sites ???? Cause if you can, it’s a bit of a false flag being raised in the article. Just calling it the way I see it, OK.
You’re coming from an American exceptionalist POV there. RT and other Russian outlets along with dissenting news sites in the US, Canada and Europe have been blocked in various places. In the EU, RT has been mostly blocked. The same applies to TASS, Sputnik and Rybar. The FAIR article directly pointed to MintpressNews and Consortium News as examples. If you think that your access to Russian sources hasn’t changed since the invasion of Ukraine began, it’s just because you’re not looking at all of the potential victims – OR – you’re not a subscriber to an ISP that blocks Russian content.
https://www.protocol.com/entertainment/rt-ban-roku-apple-directv
Chomsky has always been the gold standard for citing sources to back up what he says and often enough these sources are the New York Times and other state/corporate propaganda organs when they accidentally provide real information, Mike Liston