The presence of Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik, media funded by the Russian state, is no longer desired in Europe. The war in Ukraine and its corollary, that of information, pushes the European Union (EU) to take measures. The president of its Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, indicated on Sunday February 27 that these press organs peddle “lies to justify the war of [Vladimir] Putin” in Ukraine.
Already criticized in France for their coverage of previous crises, such as that of the yellow vests, RT and Sputnik relay the perspective of the Kremlin according to editorials and reports. “We have been too naive, too lenient with these organs of propaganda and massive disinformation”, lambasted this Tuesday at the National Assembly the spokesperson for the deputies La République en Marche, Pieyre-Alexandre Anglade.
The banning of the two Russian media, “whatever their distribution channel”, was to be decided on Tuesday, in France, reported on RTL the European commissioner in charge of the internal market, Thierry Breton. Social media giants, owned by private companies, were the first to act.
The accounts of the French branch of Russia Today have thus been suspended on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube as well as on Telegram messaging. Same penalties for Sputnik, which for the moment retains its access to Telegram (with around 5,000 subscribers) and is now positioned on Odysee, an equivalent of YouTube. Their respective websites were still accessible from France on Tuesday afternoon. Sputnik warned that this access could be blocked from one moment to another, and recommended to bring VPN (virtual private networks) in order to circumvent these sanctions.
Twitter is an exception for the moment, but associates each of them with the mention “media affiliated with a state, Russia”. For RT in particular, the sanction is already very heavy, since the media enjoyed an audience of more than a million people on YouTube and 1.6 million on Facebook. His videos, on the Google-owned platform, reached 560 million views. According to BFM TV, RT France’s Facebook account generated around one million interactions – the sum of reactions, comments and shares – in February alone. It is as much, on this platform, as the public media Franceinfo.
End of game imminent for the RT channel?
As far as its television channel itself is concerned, its audiences would be more confidential. “TV audiences are minimal, they don’t even communicate on it, while they communicate on the channel in Arabic, Spanish and English”, underlines researcher Maxime Audinet, author of the book. Russia Today (RT): an influential media serving the Russian state (INA, 2021), with AFP.
RT, however, expects to see its broadcast interrupted at any minute. This Tuesday, during a general meeting attended by around a hundred employees, Xenia Fedorova, the president of RT France, affirmed that the channel would continue to work until it could no longer do so, confided a elected member of the National Union of Journalists at AFP. For its part, RT indicated on its site that the press services of the National Assembly and the Senate would have informed them that its journalists would no longer be accredited. More than 100 journalists work for RT France, according to its leader, Xenia Fedorova. The founder of the HQ media (Headquarters), Aude Lancelin, said this afternoon that a departure plan would be open.
A certain vagueness still remained, this Tuesday, on the legal mechanism of a ban on television broadcasting of RT, even if Thierry Breton seemed to indicate that there was no obstacle to this. France is the only EU member state to host a subsidiary of RT on its soil – its headquarters are in Boulogne-Billancourt, near Paris – and to have granted it a broadcasting license. Solid arguments for maintaining it, at least in the short term.
But a priori, the ban should be based on the provisions relating to the law of December 22, 2018 against the manipulation of information. This allows the regulator, here the Audiovisual and Digital Communication Regulatory Authority (Arcom, ex-CSA), to ask access providers and satellite packages “to prevent, suspend or interrupt the broadcast television services controlled by a foreign State or under the influence of this State and damaging the fundamental interests of the Nation”. An appeal to the Council of State, which would examine the case urgently, is also mentioned. In view of the extreme tension around the Ukrainian question, the imminent end of RT and Sputnik is therefore beyond doubt.
It remains to be seen what the Kremlin will decide in retaliation. In a statement, Russian media regulator Roskomnadzor opposed the suspension of RT and Sputnik on social media. When Germany had, in February, decided to disconnect RT, Moscow had in return prohibited the broadcasting of the German channel Deutsche Welle (DW). Something to worry about on the side of France televisions and its office in the Russian capital.