State Department classifies six Russian state-owned news outlets ‘foreign missions’

The U.S. State Department is classifying six Russian state-owned media outlets as foreign missions as part of its efforts to counter alleged Russian interference in the 2024 election, it announced on Sept. 4, 2024.

The media organizations named were the state media group Rossiya Segodnya and the related news operations RIA Novosti, RT, TV-Novosti, Ruptly and Sputnik. The move makes the outlets subject to the same rules as foreign embassies and consulates located inside the U.S. under the 1982 Foreign Missions Act.

To continue operating in the U.S., the outlets would be required to regularly report a list of employees — including their addresses and ages — as well as disclose the property the organizations own within the U.S. and obtain approval from the State Department’s Office of Foreign Missions to lease or buy real estate. The State Department is also restricting visas for those it believes are using the media outlets as a cover.

During a Sept. 13 news conference, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the outlets are “no longer merely firehoses of Russian Government propaganda and disinformation; they are engaged in covert influence activities aimed at undermining American elections and democracies, functioning like a de facto arm of Russia’s intelligence apparatus.”

Blinken emphasized that the United States champions freedom of expression, even when it comes to purveyors of government propaganda. “But we will not stand by as RT and other actors carry out covert activities in support of Russia’s nefarious activities, and we’ll continue to respond forcefully to Moscow’s playbook of aggression and subversion,” Blinken continued.

As part of the efforts to address Russian influence on the upcoming election, on Sept. 4 the U.S. Justice Department unsealed an indictment of two Russian employees of RT, while the U.S. Treasury Department imposed sanctions on 10 top RT executives.

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland also announced that the Justice Department seized 32 web domains that it says the Kremlin used to influence the election, adding that the department’s investigation is ongoing.

Russian authorities have consistently denied allegations of U.S. election interference, Al Jazeera reported. When asked how Russia will respond to the sanctions, Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said: “We warn once again that any attempt to expel Russian journalists from the United States, create unacceptable conditions for their work or hinder their professional operation in any other way, including through visa restrictions, will be regarded as grounds for a symmetric and/or asymmetric action against American media outlets.”

Under former President Donald Trump’s administration, the State Department classified 15 Chinese state-run media outlets as foreign missions as part of a series of tit-for-tat reprisals between the U.S. and China, with journalists in the middle.

Russian outlet RT America was similarly ordered to register as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act in 2017, as were Russian outlets RM Broadcasting and RIA Global LLC in 2019 and Al Jazeera’s U.S.-based social media division, AJ+, in 2020.

Freedom of the Press Foundation, of which the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker is a project, called on the Biden administration to declassify the records used to justify the sanctions so they can be independently vetted.

“All state media outlets, including our own, seek to advance the interests of the government in some way, and Americans are constitutionally entitled to consume foreign propaganda if they so choose,” wrote Lauren Harper, FPF’s inaugural Daniel Ellsberg chair on government secrecy. “If RT’s alleged conduct is not starkly different from what other government media outlets do, then the investigation puts outlets worldwide at risk of retaliation.”