Type News and Media Availability Worldwide | Country Russian Federation Slogan Telling the Untold | |
Owner Rossiya Segodnya
(wholly owned and operated by the Russian Government) Parent RIA Novosti
Voice of Russia | ||
Sputnik (pronounced spʊtnɪk, formerly The Voice of Russia) is a news agency, news websites and radio broadcast service established by the Russian government-controlled news agency Rossiya Segodnya. Headquartered in Moscow, Sputnik has regional editorial offices in Washington, Cairo, Beijing, London and Edinburgh. It focuses on global politics and economics and is geared entirely towards a non-Russian audience. Sputnik has been widely accused of bias, disinformation and being a Russian propaganda outlet.
Contents
Sputnik currently operates news websites, featuring reporting and commentary, in over 30 languages including English, Spanish, Polish, Serbian, and several others. The websites also house over 800 hours of radio broadcasting material each day and its newswire service runs around the clock. Alongside its news content, Sputnik also sells other products including photo essays, live streaming, infographics, and public opinion surveys.
Sputnik News is a successor to Russian state-owned RIA Novosti's international branch, which became defunct in 2013. Whereas RIA Novosti's output tended to emanate from a more concentrated base in Moscow, Sputnik's content is drawn from a number of international bureaux.
History
RIA Novosti was Russia's international news agency until 2013, and it continues to be the name of a state-operated domestic Russian-language news agency. On 9 December 2013, RIA Novosti entered liquidation and a new Russian international news agency Rossiya Segodnya was created. Dmitry Kiselev, an anchorman of the Russia-1 channel was appointed to be the first president of the new agency.
Sputnik was launched on 10 November 2014 by Rossiya Segodnya, an agency wholly owned and operated by the Russian government, which was created by an Executive Order of the President of Russia on December 9, 2013. Sputnik replaces the RIA Novosti news agency and Voice of Russia (which was the Russian government's international radio broadcasting service from 1993 until 9 November 2014) on an international stage (which remains active in Russia). Within Russia itself, however, Rossiya Segodnya continues to operate its Russian language news service under the name RIA Novosti. According to its chief Dmitry Kiselyov, Sputnik was intended to counter the "aggressive propaganda that is now being fed to the world".
In 2015, Sputnik announced their intention to locate the agency's new UK Radio studio in Scotland's capital Edinburgh. The agency subsequently established its radio studio and bureau in the city and launched its current affairs and news programme, World in Focus, at a press conference on 10 August 2016.
In March 2016, access to Sputnik's online content was blocked by Turkish authorities, as well as denying the Turkish bureau chief Tural Kerimov access to the country. The move is thought to have been in response to comments by the Russian leadership that were critical of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan regarding the Turkish administration's record on human rights and freedom of speech. The website was subsequently unblocked later that same year.
Wire services
As a news agency, Sputnik maintains six news wires:
Online news
Apart from wire services, Sputnik also operates online news in following languages:
Sputnik previously operated the following editions, which were later shutdown:
Radio
Radio Sputnik is the audio element of the Sputnik platform and aims to "operate in 30 languages in 2015, 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 also available on various satellite transponders, including a 24 hour English service audible in North America via the Galaxy-19 satellite. Notable presenters on Radio Sputnik include Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert, who present the weekly economics based talk show Double Down; Eugene Puryear, who hosts the talk show By Any Means Necessary; and liberal talk radio host Thom Hartmann, whose Thom Hartmann Program is syndicated daily on Sputnik.
Criticism
Foreign Policy magazine has described Sputnik as a slick and internet-savvy outlet of Kremlin propaganda, which "remixes President Vladimir Putin's brand of revanchist nationalism for an international audience... beating a predictable drum of anti-Western rhetoric." Such views were also voiced by the Washington DC-based think tank Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), which argues that Sputnik spreads biased information. For instance, CEPA argues that Sputnik invites only a select group of commenting politicians, especially those known for their pro-Russian views. According to Kevin Rothrock, Russia editor for Global Voices, Sputnik "acts as a spoiler to try and disrupt or blur information unfriendly to Russia, such as Russian troops' widely alleged involvement in the war in Ukraine." Historical comparisons have been made to Pravda, the official newspaper of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, in particular Sputnik's apologia for Joseph Stalin and denial of the 1932–1933 famine in Ukraine known as the Holodomor.
German journalist and author Michael Thumann has described Sputnik as being part of what he calls Russia's "digital information war against the West". Alexander Podrabinek, a Russian journalist who works for Radio France Internationale and Radio Liberty has accused Sputnik of disseminating Russian state propaganda abroad. In a vote urging for the European Union to "respond to information warfare by Russia", the European Parliament accused broadcasting channels Sputnik and RT of "information warfare", and placed Russian media organisations along terrorist organisations such as the Islamic State. The federal agency of Rossotrudnichestvo and the Russkiy Mir Foundation were also seen as tools for Russian propaganda in this report. According to a study by Masaryk University, Sputnik is one of the major sources of Russian propaganda in the Czech Republic.
In October 2016, Sputnik misreported the contents of Wikileaks e-mails in a story that attacked Hillary Clinton. Quotes from an article produced by Kurt Eichenwald were incorrectly attributed to Sidney Blumenthal (due to him quoting Eichenwald in an email) and taken out of context. Sputnik later took down the article. The false story was recited by the then-Republican nominee for president Donald Trump at one of his rallies, leading Eichenwald to accuse Trump of rebranding Russian propaganda for his own advantage. However, this has been disputed by the Washington Post, stating that "It's not that Trump is a Putin marionette, it's that he seems to have pulled bad information off a questionable website and presented it on live television to an audience of thousands without skepticism. This is an indictment of his judgment, not of his loyalty." Jon Passanto of BuzzFeed News notes that the language used by Trump is more similar to a viral tweet from Twitter user @republic2016, which went out 4 hours before the Sputnik article appeared.
Perpetuating falsehoods
Forbes reported that Sputnik International reported fake news and fabricated statements by White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest during the 2016 US presidential election. Sputnik falsely reported on 7 December 2016 that Earnest stated sanctions for Russia were on the table related to Syria, falsely quoting Earnest as saying: "There are a number of things that are to be considered, including some of the financial sanctions that the United States can administer in coordination with our allies. I would definitely not rule that out." Forbes analyzed Earnest's White House press briefing from that week, and found the word "sanctions" was never used by the Press Secretary. Russia was discussed in eight instances during the press conference, but never about sanctions. The press conference focused solely on Russian air raids in Syria towards rebels fighting President of Syria Bashar al-Assad in Aleppo.