Radio Sputnik

Sputnik (; formerly Voice of Russia and RIA Novosti, naming derived from Russian , "satellite") is a Russian state-owned news agency and radio broadcast service. It was established by the Russian government-owned news agency Rossiya Segodnya on 10 November 2014. With headquarters in Moscow, Sputnik maintains regional editorial offices in Washington, D.C., Cairo, Beijing, Paris, Berlin, Madrid, Montevideo and Rio de Janeiro. Sputnik describes itself as being focused on global politics and economics and aims for an international audience.

Sputnik is frequently described by academics and journalists as a Russian propaganda outlet. In 2016, Neil MacFarquhar of ''The New York Times'' wrote: "The fundamental purpose of ''dezinformatsiya'', or Russian disinformation, experts said, is to undermine the official version of events—even the very idea that there is a true version of events—and foster a kind of policy paralysis." The Russian government rejects the validity of such assertions. In early 2019, Facebook removed hundreds of pages on its social media platform passing as independent news sites but were actually under the control of Sputnik employees.

Sputnik operates news websites, featuring reporting and commentary, in 31 languages including English, Spanish, Polish and Serbian. The websites house over 800 hours of radio broadcasting material each day, and its newswire service runs a 24/7 service.

Sputnik was banned in the European Union in February 2022 (along with RT) following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Technology companies and social media services responded to the invasion by removing Sputnik from their platforms, while many versions such as the French, the German and the Greek ones have closed their operation.

History

RIA Novosti was Russia's international news agency until 9 December 2013 when it became known as Rossiya Segodnya. Dmitry Kiselev, an anchorman of the Russia-1 channel was appointed to be the first president of the reorganized agency. He soon announced that Margarita Simonyan as the new name "because I thought that's the only Russian word that has a positive connotation, and the whole world knows it."

Sputnik was launched on 10 November 2014 by Rossiya Segodnya, which is itself funded through RT, owned and operated by the Russian government, and was created via an Executive Order of the President of Russia on 9 December 2013. As well as the RIA Novosti news agency, Sputnik's origins can be traced to 1929 when Radio Moscow was launched as the official international broadcasting station of Soviet Union airing across the country, Eastern Europe and Cuba until it was replaced by Voice of Russia in 1993 along with the foreign language services of RIA Novosti. RT UK was launched a fortnight earlier. According to its editor-in-chief Dmitry Kiselyov, Sputnik was intended to reach a worldwide audience "tired of aggressive propaganda promoting a unipolar world and who want a different perspective". The station claims it "tells the untold". However, President Vladimir Putin, while visiting the Moscow base of the RT television network in 2013, said the objective behind both the then forthcoming Sputnik agency and RT was to "break the monopoly of the Anglo-Saxon global information streams."

In April 2017, Sputnik signed a personnel exchange deal with the ''Global Times'', a Chinese Communist Party tabloid.

Radio services

''Radio Sputnik'' is the audio service of the Sputnik platform operating in 30 languages "for a total of over 800 hours a day, covering over 130 cities and 34 countries on " FM, DAB/DAB+ (Digital Radio Broadcasting), HD Radio, as well as mobile phones and the Internet." It is available on satellite transponders, including a 24-hour English service audible in North America via the Galaxy-19 satellite. Among the station's presenters are Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert who host the weekly talk show ''Double Down'' which concentrates on economics. Another talk show is ''By Any Means Necessary'' which is hosted by Eugene Puryear, while liberal talk radio host Thom Hartmann presents his own program which is syndicated on Sputnik each day.

Regarding plans for the U.S. broadcast market, the editor-in-chief of ''Sputnik U.S.'' said in a June 2017 interview that there were no immediate plans for expansion into markets beyond Washington, D.C.(replaced discontinued dcist.com link) This came on the heels of a late June 2017 announcement that Radio Sputnik would sublease Reston, Virginia-licensed translator station ''W288BS'' (105.5 FM) from Reston Translator, LLC, which transmits from the WIAD tower in Bethesda, Maryland, and begin broadcasting Sputnik on that signal; the station's reach includes DC proper and the western suburbs in Northern Virginia. From November 2017, Radio Sputnik began to be carried on AM in Washington, D.C., on WZHF 1390 AM. The American owners of the stations were required to register as a foreign agent by the United States Department of Justice.

Sputnik is blocked from owning an American radio station outright due to Federal Communications Commission rules against foreign ownership of broadcast assets, as enacted in the Communications Act of 1934. Prior to 1 July 2017, Radio Sputnik (initially as its predecessor) had broadcast in the Washington, D.C., area on WTOP-HD2 (103.5-HD2) since June 2013, if not earlier. W288BS translates Urban One's WKYS (93.9)'s digital HD3 signal for analog broadcasting.

Sputnik distributes its programming to American stations via brokered programming, through agent Arnold Ferolito and his holding company RM Broadcasting, LLC. Its availability in Kansas City, Missouri on stations KCXL and KOJH from the beginning of January 2020 was contentious, especially in the latter case because the station has a jazz-centered community radio format and led to a clash on the radio spectrum.

Following the closure of the Echo of Moscow station on 3 March 2022, its frequencies were taken over by Radio Sputnik.

Coverage of the United States

Trump and Clinton

During the 2016 presidential election campaign, according to former US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul writing in ''The Washington Post'', Sputnik made clear publicly its preference for the then- Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump over the Democrat's nominee Hillary Clinton.

According to a fake news story circulated by Sputnik, President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton created ISIS; the website praised Trump, before he was elected in 2016, for making such an assertion. The website published an article entitled "Secret File Confirms Trump Claim: Obama, Hillary 'Founded ISIS' to Oust Assad", while tweets from Sputnik used the hashtag #CrookedHillary. Trump revived another discredited conspiracy theory promoted by Sputnik that Google was suppressing bad news about Clinton.

In October 2016, Sputnik improperly cited an article written by Kurt Eichenwald for ''Newsweek'' misattributing comments to Hillary Clinton confidante Sidney Blumenthal (who quoted Eichenwald in a non-verified email released by WikiLeaks). Sputnik took down the article. Aspects of his story as it related to Trump were disputed at the time, Sputnik then put up an article reputedly denying its control by the Kremlin and attacking ''Newsweek'' and Eichenwald. He wrote that the Trump campaign emailed reporters a link to the Sputnik article and asked them to follow up on the story. The author of the Sputnik article, Bill Moran, successfully sued ''Newsweek'' over his assertion that Eichenwald had used bribery and threats.

''Forbes'' reported that Sputnik International reported fake news and fabricated statements by White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest