To what end would you make that distinction though?
Who should officially decide which organisations are legitimate news sources and which are not? In an open democracy any voice (that e.g. avoids criminal incitement) must be tolerated, even RT.
There is no "must" in tolerance. Tolerance is a peace treaty, if it is broken by one side of the deal, then the other side is no longer bound by it. Since Russia is activaly trying to destabilise "the West" (including central and eastern europe, including countries against which it literally wages war), we don't really have to tolerate Russian propaganda outlets.
Well I'm not American and also not a lawyer. But RT is not an American citizen either, so I doubt it has rights enshrined in the American Constitution. In fact as an agent openly financed and run by a foreign government, there are probably special rules for such organizations.
Not sure what are you talking about and also what the article has to do with that. Russia is actively interfering with politics in many European countries, including the one I live in. It's pretty well documented too. It's sad the Americans have woken up to that threat only after it was too late, but I can assure it is very real.
I can't blame anyone for skepticism because the press has taken leave of their senses and begun blaming Russia for everything from Black Lives Matter to the Standing Rock protests to the Catalonian Independent Movement, as though there were no local grievances involved in any of these matters until the Russians stepped in. And the stories about Russians swaying the US election with $100K in Facebook ads just seem completely beyond belief given the mind-melting amount of money spent on the election.
OK, but Montenegro is a small, relatively poor country in the former Soviet bloc. It's a bit more of a lift to create essentially every protest movement in the United States of the past decade. And accusing every protest movement of being unwitting dupes of the Russians also has the effect of delegitimizing all of them.
And a twist of irony is that the Russians are doing exactly the same - every protest movement, from ecology to lgbt rights to mothers of soldiers killed in wars that officially do not exist, is accused of being an agent of outside forces.
Yes, Montenegro is a small country that was about to join NATO at that time. Then you see the Russians befriending and supporting with finances, media coverage, bot and troll farms basically every far-right and/or independence movement across Europe, from Le Pen in France, FPO in Austria, AfD in Germany - again, this is well documented - to recent Catalonia independence events, where e.g. Assange was very vocal - and it's not always easy to stay cool.
It really must have taken a lot of foresight for Vladimir Putin to establish a distinct language and culture in Catalonia a thousand years ago, all in a bid to destabilize Spain.
Russia is actively interfering in politics so we should resort to burning books. Yeah what could go wrong. Next we'll start accusing people of being communists..
Yes, Russia is actively interfering with internal politics of many Eastern European countries (I'm from one). But I have a surprise for you, US is interfering as much if not a lot more.
>Since Russia is activaly trying to destabilise "the West" (including central and eastern europe, including countries against which it literally wages war), we don't really have to tolerate Russian propaganda outlets.
We don't have to tolerate anything. However, it is no sin to tolerate it.
Many see and have seen the US as a major destabiliser (invading a country on false pretenses, military outposts everywhere, including in countries that don't welcome them). By your logic, the world should minimize all American news establishments.
