Sputnik (news agency)
Sputnik (news agency)
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Sputnik (news agency)

Sputnik (Russian pronunciation: [ˈsputnʲɪk]; formerly Voice of Russia and RIA Novosti, naming derived from Russian спутник, "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, Arabic 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.

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 was to be editor-in-chief. Simonyan told The New York Times in 2017 that she choose Sputnik 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 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.

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