The veteran US anchor has recalled how his show at RT was “shut down,” noting he hadn’t had similar editorial freedom with other outlets
Government pressure on journalistic freedoms in the US took on unprecedented proportions under ex-president Joe Biden, American news personality and former RT host Rick Sanchez has said.
Speaking on Tuesday with RT, where he worked between 2019 and 2024, Sanchez recounted how he had received “mysterious calls” regarding his place of employment, while still working at the network. Sanchez, who now hosts his own podcast named ‘Journalistically Speaking,’ lamented that his RT show was “veritably shut down by… my government” soon thereafter.
“Our government is not supposed to tell us who we can work for, where we can work, what we can say - these things are just paramount to everything that we stand for,” the journalist argued.
Sanchez added that “it was never worse” than under the Biden administration, the actions of which “went way beyond the pale,” with officials “essentially canceling people.”
The former RT host suggested that the Biden administration likely took issue with his program because it believed he was endorsing Trump and was critical of Ukraine.
Speaking of his experience at RT, Sanchez insisted that he had been given a level of editorial freedom at the Russian channel unparalleled by anything he had been allowed at CNN, Fox News and NBC.
He went on to laud RT’s “global perspective” – and claimed that he faced more pressure at US media outlets than at the Russian network, though the “average American would never… think that Russian media would be more fair, more transparent.”
He also pointed out the perceived absurdity of accusations leveled at him for working for Russian “state TV,” noting that many newscasters at American channels nowadays are “former members of the US government… in most cases, a spokesperson for the president of the United States, or for the State Department, or for the Pentagon.”