It's depressing how utterly normal this level of censorship has become in Western society. Ten years ago there would have been at least a modicum of ho-hum about decisions to ban foreign media.
I've watched RT on a few occasions and I never thought their reporting outright propaganda. It does have a clear non-pro-West bias which gives you a dose of awareness that Western reporting is biased too.
Yes. One man's "propaganda" is another man's news. It's an assault on Freedom of Speech and Freedom of the Press.
I also note other news networks have been happily spouting anti-Russian propaganda as well (i.e. "Ghost of Kiev", "Miss Ukraine Fighting", and the "Snake Island Martyrs" to name but 3).
I also note none of the Western Media talk about shelling, murder, and rape of the ethnic Russian civilians in the Donbas since 2014. They call it "propaganda" now but 6 years ago these same western media outlets reported that "Fascist Azov Battalion Ukrainian Military were shelling and murdering Donbas "separatists" (now western media calls them terrorists).
News shouldn't have bias, full stop. news should just report the facts and let the viewer/listener decide. However, bar that both sides should have their voices herd in a democracy.
Sorry, but this sort of absolutist thinking is just naive. Nobody ever won a Pulitzer Prize in journalism for "just reporting the facts, full stop". Good journalism requires context which is messy and, indeed, political.
That said, propaganda isn't good journalism – it doesn't provide context so much as manufacture it. That isn't to suggest that propaganda is necessarily obvious. Bias lies on a spectrum, with facts-only reporting on one end and propaganda on the other. But just because grey areas exist doesn't prevent us from identifying the black.
It would be illegal, for example, for a publication to knowingly engage in defamation. As a society, we recognize that a publication's right to freedom of expression does not outweigh the harm dealt to an individual subjected to baseless harassment. Similarly, if a "news" organization is so divorced from the facts as to make its audience more ignorant of the actual happenings, then we as a society should recognize the harm caused by that organization and sanction them appropriately.
I haven't watched RT in the recent years, so I can't judge that instance (but I have do admit that, unless there is some heavy misrepresentation going on, I can understand why they want to ban it. That's without judging the ban as good or bad, which I find exceedingly difficult; and I don't want to [and will not] engage in that discussion, at least not without thinking more about it and considering the facts and implications).
However, I think you're [technically] wrong about "news shouldn't have bias".
I'd like to start by pointing out that there is a huge gap between biased news and propaganda. A conservative and a liberal news outlet might report on the same thing with different point of views and come to different conclusions (why did it happen? is it good that it happened? what effect has the thing happening? and so on). That's bias; and it's not even too bad a thing. Reading multiple outlets with different biases will give you a good idea of what different people think about an event, allowing the reader to keep an open mind and engage in a more fruitful discussion. Good journalism will even do that for you, by mentioning opposing views without discrediting them. That's the reasoning behind "I think you're [technically] wrong".
Now, what you have in mind goes beyond simple bias. Given the example, either outlet might use their news to push their own agenda, and in my book that's dangerous and on the verge of being propaganda. They might also knowingly misrepresent the facts to do so, or outright invent things (or leave out important bits), which I'd classify as full blown propaganda.
Yes, a lot of popular/mainstream "news", especially in the US (but also in the EU), are closer to propaganda than to being just biased (or are propaganda, think "stolen election" narrative). So one man's "propaganda" is indeed another man's news. Or, more precisely, some man's "news" is propaganda.
Yes, exactly. If we are talking about media in general I can think of only very few examples that should be banned (like CP). I don't need anyone to decide what I'm allowed or not allowed to consume. If I want to study russian propaganda or american propaganda or "Mein Kampf" than that's what I should be able to do--without any censor.
Lol, yeah January 6th truly is the important event here. Truly the benchmark for the worse that could happen. What a completely self centered comment, like I'm sorry but you realize we are talking about a war and you still managed to bring up January 6th as if that was even remotely comparable or similar to what is currently happening?
WTF? Where did I say Jan 6th is the worst that could happen? I just said it is the sort of shit that happens when you let people consume propaganda. Of course that what is happening right now is way worse, as other things in the past have been.
Sorry for the tone of my comment, I think I'm just tired of seeing Americans referencing that event everytime something bad happens as a benchmark for the worst thing ever (I'm exaggerating of course). But I can see that your comment didn't imply that, so again sorry for being rude.
Yes, because the protests on January 6th were literally the worst thing to ever happen in the United States, way worse than 9/11 or the Japanese Bombing of Pearl Harbour. Kamala Harris and Joe Biden told me so. January 6th was WAY WORSE than the riots and arson that took place in multiple cities the previous summer. Those were "mostly peaceful" where as the Boomers on Jan. 6th are terrorists and should be held without trial indefinitely.
The difference is, RT is pure, unadulterated, lie. It's government-sponsored infowars. It's under complete control by FSB/KGB and serves exclusively as a platform for launching russian PsyOps.
You don't have to be legally required to spread propaganda to be effective at spreading it.
Seriously, relying a on state media matching non-state media to determine if either is propaganda is an ineffectual strategy. You need to find reporting that contradicts the media source and then try to independently verify the disputed information.
IMO they should be closed after due process. Not by administrative decision, i. e. censorship. If they were closed because after a short trial, a judge determining that they were spreading disinformation systematically, that would be completely fine.
But some administrative authority claiming that it should be closed, then getting it closed in a few hours? with hundreds of actual professional journalists getting shown the door as a consequence? That's just the sort of shit Putin does. I want my country to do better than Putin in all matters, please.
I disagree with these sort of bans on speech as well, and it has never been because I naively believe that the speech is harmless. It is because I believe that granting the government the authority to pick and choose which speech is harmful is far more dangerous, and prone to abuse. It is because I think it is beneficial for reasonable members of the public to be able to see what garbage the other side is being indoctrinated with. It is because I believe that the portion of the public who is mostly likely to believe the harmful speech will see the censorship as more proof that they should. Most importantly it is because I believe that sheltering people from harmful ideas might protect them in the short term, but won't prepare them to deal with the seductiveness of harmful ideas that sound right when they do slip through.
> I've watched RT on a few occasions and I never thought their reporting outright propaganda.
This is the problem. For effective propaganda you don't want it to be easily detectable as such. Therefore the majority of your material isn't directly propaganda. I read somewhere it's 5-10% is the payload. You don't make that obviously propaganda of course too.
On a channel like RT or Sputnik this is how you are going to operate - not least because those channels are for an external audience, who does have other sources.
Inside of Russia your propaganda probably works roughly similarly, but you can have more of it, and you can be more confident the audience doesn't regular access other sources. In a time of war you can go full propaganda.
I've watched RT in the past and been surprised by some of the reporting, and covering things that seemed not really covered by regular sources.
The problem is because of what it is it's very hard to know what's real reporting and what is propaganda payload.
So I avoid it.
I don't think there is a problem limiting it's availability. Right now it's super freely available.
What's the bar you might ask? That's hard. Partly it's intent, and that's hard to prove. You could also work out how much and how bad the propaganda is on a channel. Again not necessarily easily.
Really though the problem here is a trust problem with Putins Russia. It's well documented their activities in disinformation and with election interference.
They are not currently a good actor. This is covered in part of Hypernormalization documentary (and others).
If you believe this is the case (as I do) then the bar for their restriction is actually pretty low. I think it's in the interest of the world that access to propaganda vehicles, such as RT and Sputnik, should be limited.
> I've watched RT on a few occasions and I never thought their reporting outright propaganda
Now watch it more often and you'll notice even more bias and outright wrong translations of interviews, along with well cut footage.
Now make it the only source of news (well, along with other channels, RT is not the only one) for Russian speakers and you'll understand why they're seemingly stupid - every single Russian outside Russia I've spoken with believes in some dumbass shit like Covid conspiracies, or "the West" always antagonizing Russia, or Putin being a good leader, or the war being justified, or there being no war.
It's not only RT, these people actively go to Odnoklassniki (Russian Fecebook) or Russian Fecebook sites for their news.
It would be fine if these news are accurate/neutral. But they're always against "the West" (which now includes half of Asia, so I don't even know anymore).
If one guy seems like an asshole, he may be an asshole. If two guys are assholes, you may be unlucky. If three guys are assholes, maybe you're the asshole.
I've watched RT on a few occasions and I never thought their reporting outright propaganda. It does have a clear non-pro-West bias which gives you a dose of awareness that Western reporting is biased too.