The editor of a Moscow-funded news outlet accused of being a foreign agent hopes that the U.S. and Russia can mend a growing riff that began during the 2016 presidential election.
Rifts happening between Russia and the U.S. are sad, Margarita Simonyan, the editor of RT America, told NBC News in an interview earlier this month. She also indicated that Americans have nothing to fear from her country.
“I lived in America. I love America,” she said, referring to the year she spent in the U.S. as an exchange student in 1995. “We are not Communists anymore. We have changed, but for some reason the establishment doesn’t recognize it and doesn’t give us a chance to show that we have changed.”
RT America was forced to register as a “foreign agent” in November, prompting the Kremlin and Russian President Vladimir Putin to excoriate lawmakers for supposedly violating the outlet’s freedom of speech. Putin eventually leveled a similar designation on American media operating inside of Russia’s borders.
Simonyan, for her part, also reacted harshly to U.S. lawmakers’ decision in November to strip away RT’s press credentials.
“To all the self-righteous defenders of the ‘freedom of speech’ … in the US: withdrawal of Congressional credentials speaks much louder than empty platitudes,” she said in a press statement shortly after the group’s designation was revoked.
Simonyan dismissed other charges leveled against RT during the NBC News interview. In particular, she believes the outlet is no more a propaganda machine than any other foreign media arm operated by the U.S.
“I don’t understand why any country is given a chance to make its point of view seen and heard by the world, and Russia is not given that chance,” she said. “Russia is said to be propaganda for doing exactly that. We are no more propaganda than the Voice of America or Radio Free Europe is propaganda.”
U.S. intelligences agencies deny her rosy view of RT. The group’s criticism of the U.S. election was the latest broadside in a longer-standing anti-American messaging technique aimed at undermining viewers’ trust in U.S., according to a now-declassified version of the “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections” report.
The report also suggested that RT’s reports characterize the U.S. as a surveillance state and allege that the government infringes on citizens’ civil liberties. Some American reporters at RT agree with Simonyan’s representation of the outlet.
“By definition, there is an editorial concept here to show the other side. But you can say that about any media organization,” RT anchor and correspondent Kate Partridge told NBC News reporters.
She thinks RT is misunderstood. “I think it’s just a fear because it’s so unknown and because of the Cold War history, because of so many things — where it gets kind of a bad press and I think it has built up almost as de facto truth,” Partridge said.
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