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By Alex Johnson
The Justice Department on Monday welcomed the decision of a federal judge that a radio station in Washington, DC, must register as a Russian government agent, saying the Americans " have the right to know if a foreign flag is floating behind a speech broadcast in the United States. "
With the exception of the five seconds per hour during which he identifies, WZHF-AM broadcasts Radio Sputnik 24 hours a day since December 2017.
Listeners in the Washington area can listen to presenters like Lee Stranahan, a former Breitbart News reporter; Eugene Puryear, two-time candidate for vice-presidency of the Party for Socialism and Liberalism; and John Kiriakou, the former CIA analyst, who confirmed for the first time that the United States used windsurfing to interrogate Al Qaeda prisoners.
Radio Sputnik is part of Rossíya Segódnya, the government press agency created in 2013 by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In June 2018, the Department of Justice ordered the owner of WZHF, RM Broadcasting, of Jupiter, Florida, to register as a foreign agent under the law of registration. foreign agents, an anti-propaganda law of 1938.
RM filed a counterclaim, arguing that it simply bought and sold airtime, regardless of that content or even its content. Moreover, according to court documents, the contract of RM with Rossíya Segódnya states expressly that "neither of the parties is" an agent for the other ".
But Judge Robin Rosenberg found last week at the US District Court in West Palm Beach, Florida, that what RM knows or is considering does not matter.
Rosenberg noted that under the contract, RM is required to provide services to Rossíya Segódnya in exchange for a payment, which, according to her, makes the company an agent of the Russian broadcaster under the law. And simply saying that you are not an agent does not mean that you are not, in fact, an agent, she discovered.
RM's lawyer, Nicole Hughes Waid, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Waid said last week that the company was planning to appeal.
Deputy Attorney General for National Security, John Demers, said in a statement Monday that the disputed topic was not a debate on freedom of expression on what WZHF was broadcasting.
"Our concern is not the content of the speech, but the transparency about the true identity of the speaker," Demers said.
The decision, however, fits into the wider context of the media war between the United States and Russia.
In a report released in January 2017, US intelligence agencies called RM's sister TV channel, RT America, "the state-run propaganda machine," accusing it of having participated in Russia's efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential campaign.
In November 2017, the United States ranked RT America as a foreign agent – even though services apparently similar to those of Britain, the BBC, CCTV in China and Deutsche Radio Deutsche Welle USA have not been listed.
Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of RT, sarcastically congratulated the United States for its "freedom of speech and all those who still believe in it".
Then, in the context of what was generally considered retaliation, Putin signed a bill authorizing Russia to register American media like Voice of America and Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty as foreign agents.
"Our attitude towards the American media is the result of the truly hostile actions of the American side towards our media," Aleksei Pushkov, a member of the Council of the Federation, said at the time. Russian Parliament.
"If the United States will reconsider the decisions they have made recently, Russian decisions may also be reconsidered," he said.
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