US research highlights RT role in media landscape

The New York Times published over 500 RT-related articles over the course of a decade, research published by Johns Hopkins University this week has claimed.

The Russian multimedia organization RT has faced unparalleled levels of scrutiny and limitations imposed by Western nations in recent years. Actions directed against the broadcaster escalated between 2022 and 2024.

According to the review, RT, as well as Chinese national broadcaster CCTV, “tend to dominate both popular and scholarly discourse about propaganda.”

“Since 2014, the New York Times has published more than five-hundred articles about RT alone, while the vast majority of articles about propaganda published in top political science journals explore the effects of media run directly by the state,” the review stated.

Washington imposed new sanctions against RT in September, with then US Secretary of State Antony Blinken accusing it of engaging in “covert influence activities” and “functioning as a de facto arm of Russian intelligence.” The head of the State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC), James Rubin, told reporters that the “broad scope and reach” of RT was one of the reasons many countries around the world did not support Ukraine. The GEC itself was closed in December 2024.

Also in September 2024, RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan and three other senior RT employees were sanctioned by the US over alleged attempts to influence the 2024 presidential election.

Moscow branded the crackdown on Russian media, including RT, “a declaration of war on free speech.”

In March, the former head of RT America, Ben Swann, called on US President Donald Trump to drop restrictions that his predecessor Joe Biden imposed against several Russian media outlets, including RT and Sputnik.