Posted on 05/18/2024 9:46:09 AM PDT by MeganC
The outlets include Voice of Europe, which was foiled as a Russian influence operation by Czech secret services in March.
The European Union has announced a ban on four media outlets accused of spreading pro-Kremlin propaganda and "destabilising" Ukraine's neighbouring countries.
The four blacklisted outlets - Voice of Europe, RIA Novosti, Izvestia and Rossiyskaya Gazeta - are "under the permanent direct or indirect control" of Russia and have been "instrumental" in fostering support for its illegal invasion of Ukraine, the European Council said in a statement on Friday.
"The Russian Federation has engaged in a systematic, international campaign of media and information manipulation (...) to justify and support its full-scale aggression against Ukraine, and to enhance its strategy of destabilisation of its neighbouring countries, and of the EU and its member states," the statement reads.
It also added that, "In line with the Charter of Fundamental Rights, the measures agreed will not prevent the targeted media outlets and their staff from carrying out activities in the EU other than broadcasting, e.g. research and interviews".
The decision was anticipated by the bloc's commissioner for values and transparency, Věra Jourová, on Wednesday when EU ambassadors greenlighted the move despite Russia's Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova warning that Moscow would retaliate against Western correspondents in Moscow.
Jourová also vowed to ban Russian funding of media outlets, NGOs and political parties in the EU.
It comes just three weeks before some 370 million voters are summoned to the polls in European elections, a vote feared to be vulnerable to Russian-backed disinformation campaigns.
The bloc is on high alert for online Russian disinformation campaigns aimed at undermining the integrity of the vote, with officials concerned the EU is deeply unprepared for new forms of foreign interference.
EU-listed media in the crosshairs Three of the targeted outlets, RIA Novosti, Izvestia and Rossiyskaya Gazeta, are all partly owned or controlled by the Russian state.
But Voice of Europe is a Dutch-listed company with its official headquarters in a small village in the province of North Brabant. The outlet is at the heart of an ongoing sprawling investigation into allegations lawmakers across Europe were paid to peddle the Kremlin's propaganda.
The news company claimed to provide "uncensored news from Europe and the world" and as recently as this March held one-on-one interviews and debates with sitting MEPs broadcasted from the European Parliament in Brussels and in Strasbourg.
In late March, Czech authorities announced it had busted a Russian influence operation conducted through Voice of Europe, alleging financial transactions had been made to elected officials in the European Parliament and in national parliaments.
According to Czech media citing officials from intelligence services, the allegations involve politicians from Germany, France, Poland, Belgium, the Netherlands and Hungary.
On Thursday, German police opened an investigation into EU election hopeful Petr Bystron of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, on allegations of receiving up to €20,000 from individuals linked to Russian President Vladimir Putin to spread Kremlin propaganda.
Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala said last month that the uncovered operation aimed to destabilise the whole of Europe, and revealed other European countries had instigated investigations as the result of Czech efforts.
Belgium has confirmed it has opened a judicial investigation given that members of the European Parliament, whose headquarters is in the Belgian capital of Brussels, are under suspicion.
You keep proving what a silly little girl you really are.
When they come for you over something you disagree with them about, don't you start whining little girl.
But then again, you will probably remain loyal to your country, because in your mind it is unpatriotic to point out when your government is being dishonest, because they must be doing it to benefit the citizens of this nation.
Have I got that right, sully little girl?
Don’t you realize that only the Eurotrash Globohomo media are allowed to issue propaganda and disinformation.
Filthy scum-bucket overlords think that citizens aren’t capable of determining for themselves what to believe. It has to be “filtered” by official state run press organs like MSNBC. /spit
This is the real reason:
“ On Thursday, German police opened an investigation into EU election hopeful Petr Bystron of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, on allegations of receiving up to €20,000 from individuals linked to Russian President Vladimir Putin to spread Kremlin propaganda.”
But people actually getting communist money, the Greens et al, are never investigated.
Yes, its reprehensible that Russia since the Ukraine invasion has had almost all independent media banned, blocked and/or declared "foreign agents" or "undesirable organizations".
Abolishing Free Speech in Russia is a crime.
The GloboHomoPedos hate propaganda competition!
Why don’t they ban ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN, MSNBC, NYT, WaPo, LAT, etc for peddling DemocRat propaganda?
“Fourth Reich”, Usage to indicate German influence in the European Union:
Some commentators in Europe have used the term “Fourth Reich” to point at the influence that they believe Germany exerts within the European Union.[2][11][12]
For example, Simon Heffer wrote in the Daily Mail that Germany’s economic power, further boosted by the European financial crisis, is the “economic colonisation of Europe by stealth”, whereby Berlin is using economic pressure rather than armies to “topple the leadership of a European nation”. This, he says, constitutes the “rise of the Fourth Reich.”[13]
Likewise, Simon Jenkins of The Guardian wrote that it is “a massive irony that old Europe’s last gasp should be to seek ... German supremacy”.[13] According to Richard J. Evans of the New Statesman, this kind of language had not been heard since German reunification which sparked a wave of Germanophobic commentary.[13] In a counterbalancing perspective, the “Charlemagne” columnist at The Economist reports that the German hegemony perspective does not match reality.[14]
In August 2012, the Italian newspaper Il Giornale had as headline the phrase “Fourth Reich” (Quarto Reich) as a protest against German hegemony.[15]
This perspective gained particular traction in the United Kingdom in the run up to 2016 EU referendum and the subsequent negotiations.[16]
In December 2021, against the background of the 2015–present Polish constitutional crisis, Jarosław Kaczyński, Polish deputy Prime Minister and head of Poland’s ruling party, told the far-right Polish newspaper GPC that “Germany is trying to turn the EU into a federal ‘German fourth Reich’”.[17] He explained that he was referring to the connection with the first Reich (the Holy Roman Empire), not the third one (Nazi Germany), and there was nothing negative about the comparison. But he criticized the vision of greater federalism, as displayed by Olaf Scholz and his coalition, as “utopian and therefore dangerous”. Kaczynski remarked that, “if we Poles agreed to such a modern submission we would be degraded in many ways”.[18]
Usage to describe the rise of right-wing populism:
The term has come to be used by commentators on the left, seeing the rise of right-wing populism as akin to the emergence of fascism in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s. In a 1973 interview, black American writer James Baldwin said of Richard Nixon’s reelection, “To keep the nigger in his place, they brought into office law and order, but I call it the Fourth Reich.”[3]
In 2019, a professor of history at Fairfield University named Gavriel D. Rosenfeld remarked that “Too many hyperbolic comparisons – for example, between Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler – dulls the power of historical analogies and risks crying wolf. Too little willingness to see past dangers lurking in the present risks underestimating the latter and ignoring the former.”[3]
https://preview.redd.it/5mnc2you8ho21.png?auto=webp&s=ae6c2487bc19447d1b2d7137814c9435fa53feb0
What is Russia’s current situation for the Russian population in regard to media?
Accounts of domestic Russian TV are breathtaking. Wall to wall indoctrination. It works there, so why wouldn't they export it to the weak minded in Europe and America?
Because there’s no indoctrination with our media. /s
There IS a difference between our media and state-owned, state-managed Ruzzian media such as the EU wants to ban.
A distinction, maybe, but not a difference.
Does the US.gov own any media outlets in the USA? NPR gets a portion of it's funding from public money, true, but there are no commissars sitting in their studios. There's Voice of America, of course, which is jammed in China. These days the emphasis is on the Internet. China has TikTok. Russia isn't technologically advanced enough to do that, so they rely on phony internet "news", anonymous utewb videos, and malware exploits.
“Propaganda” = any information which innacurately portrays Russia positively.”
Fixed that for you. Accurate but positive/negative information would simply be fact.
Is this accurate and/or current?
Media landscape
All privately owned independent TV channels are banned from the air, except for cable entertainment channels. Many western media such as Euronews, France 24 and the BBC are no longer accessible in the country, without an announcement of any legal, administrative or judicial decision. The media regulator, Roskomnadzor, has censored most independent news sites, and the most popular ones, such as Meduza and TV Rain, have been declared “undesirable organisations”, which means that mentioning them or quoting them can lead to criminal proceedings. The remaining media are owned by the state or by Kremlin allies. Their employees must follow orders issued by the president’s office regarding subjects to be avoided, and must censor themselves closely. Radio stations are in the same situation.
Give us an example of an accurate positive portrayal of Russia.
OMG, but, but Russia is third world and, and depressing and old and no eggs and chicken....
That’s the zeeper talk. 🤣
Freepers extolling the virtues of any kind of censorship sicken me.
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