Telegram’s EU-wide ban of RT is illegitimate and (legally) avoidable.
Freedom to choose information is a human right.
Updated on March 10.
Summary
The European Council has vowed to ban RT and Sputnik on March 2. Their video streams are banned; their written publications are not.
However, Telegram has restricted RT France on March 3, RT News and RT en Español on March 4 (and also sweN TR on March 6) for holders of EU phone numbers.
Freedoms of information and of speech are human rights. The war affecting Ukraine is also a war on information. We believe that not censoring speech, surely, can help prevent a larger conflict between super powers.
Claims:
“RT violated local law”
a) Only the video/TV is illegal, after France withdrew RT's only European license
The decision of sanctions on RT and Sputnik has been published:
The EU Council decided measures “to urgently suspend the broadcasting activities of such media outlets in the Union, or directed at the Union” (Argument 10 of the decision).
These measures “do not prevent those media outlets and their staff from carrying out other activities in the Union than broadcasting, such as research and interviews” (Argument 11 of the decision).
“It shall be prohibited for operators to broadcast, or to enable, facilitate or otherwise contribute to broadcast, any content by the legal persons, entities or bodies listed in Annex IX (...) Any broadcasting licence or authorisation, transmission and distribution arrangement with the legal persons, entities or bodies listed in Annex IX shall be suspended.” (Article 1 of the decision)
A 'broadcast' is a multimedia stream, for which a broadcasting license usually applies: television, radio, and in some countries, video streaming on online platforms (YouTube or Twitch, in Germany since 2017) [2]. A broadcasting license by one EU country is valid for all other EU countries [3].
Posts on Telegram are not broadcasts per any definition. They are publications (like a blog). You don't need a broadcasting license for a Telegram channel – in particular for a textual channel.
France's Next Inpact explains that “the regulation imposes the suspension of video and TV streams, but the question of the sites of these two media remains [open]”.
Spain's Publico in the article “Brussels does not have competence to 'veto' the Russian media RT and Sputnik”, argues that blocking RT's publications would need a court order:
“In Spain, the intervention of a judge is necessary and in highly valued cases, such as terrorism, child pornography or cases that violate intellectual property, sometimes before a judge pronounces.”
In France, RT is not entirely banned. France is the only EU state to host a subsidiary of RT on its soil and to have granted it a broadcasting license [6]. Although RT's broadcasts have been immediately suspended by France's regulatory agency Arcom (and removed by all French ISP that provided TV on IP) [6], its websites are partially/mostly blocked as of 10 March 2022:
“Each operator had to manage to identify the targets to be cut. It was probably necessary to block francais.rt.com or actualidad.rt.com but what about arabic.rt.com ? In France, ISPs like Orange or Free have chosen to block [them all]”, writes Next Inpact on 7 March.
In Germany, “oddly enough, rt.com is not censored but the German version is by some [ISPs]”, according to Next Inpact [7].
In Austria? “No censorship” [7].
In Italy, reportedly no censorship. Two users confirmed to me that rt.com is not blocked, as of 10 March 2022.
The EU countries were expected to apply the measures in their own regulatory environments, reports Euractiv and details France Info. They may not or cannot ban all activities of RT and Sputnik.
This is why Telegram is wrong. RT does not “violate local law” by publishing text on Telegram.
b) Journalists' unions are outraged
The secretary-general of the International Federation of Journalists, which represents 187 trade unions and associations, Anthony Bellanger “highlights a 'really worrying' legal problem, because the [European] Commission does not have the competence to regulate the media” reports French newspaper 20 Minutes :
“It is managed by a specific structure in each country - Arcom (ex-CSA) in the case of France”, “we are simply witnessing an impoverishment of the media spectrum for political reasons”, Bellanger added.
France's National Union of Journalists (SNJ), the largest professional union, denounces:
“an act of censorship that reduces the pluralism of information” [10]
The union sees EU's sanctions as “a dangerous shortcut” between the work of an editorial staff and the politics of a country [10].
The trade union Force Ouvrière said that this “puts in immediate danger the existence of RT France, which employs some 175 employees, including a hundred journalists, holders of the press card”. “War is the enemy of press freedom,” said Emmanuel Vire, secretary-general of the SNJ-CGT [10].
“RT does systematic disinformation”
a) RT's licenses and professionalism
Before the war, RT's license has not been withdrawn in the countries it was operating, despite its 'propaganda';
France’s regulatory agency Arcom has investigated RT France for several years and found mishaps in notably one instance: “An investigation against RT France is already underway after a formal notice issued in 2018 by Arcom’s predecessor, CSA, [because] RT France had failed to ensure honesty, rigorous reporting and diversity of views after the channel broadcast a story disputing the reality of chemical weapons attacks in Syria”, reports Euractiv on 1 March 2022.
“Arcom is particularly vigilant in ensuring that RT France complies with its legal and contractual obligations. If it considers it justified, the regulator will not hesitate to use, without delay, [to] go as far as [suspending] its broadcasting,” the authority told AFP [11].
On 5 March, Xenia Fedorova, the head of RT France, a French company with 176 employees, commented to L'Opinion on the sanctions:
“This decision to ban us was not part of any adversarial procedure and it is absolutely not proportionate. The decision was made because of the origin of our funding, in other words, our media was discriminated against for its sources of investment, while no inquest was conducted to support the accusations of imbalance in our treatment of information.” [12]
The UK Ofcom is still investigating, opened new probes into RT on 3 March [13], and despite huge governmental pressure [14], has not banned RT as of 6 March 2022, although the channel's UK feed coming through EU transmitters was halted.
On 6 March, Ireland's biggest-selling newspaper, Irish Independent, denounced in an opinion: the “decision to pull the plug on RT’s propaganda is a profound error.”
Besides, RT never promoted war with Ukraine, by judging from the content in its Telegram channels.
b) In war time, Telegram did not ban 'war disinformation' in 2021
In a shocking example, at midnight on 14 May 2021, Israeli and Western media reported an 'Israeli ground invasion' in the midst of a war with Gaza (May 10-21). As the New York Times later explained, it was disinformation released in a military strategy to kill in a bombardment campaign the Palestinian soldiers running to the tunnels to fight the alleged “ground invasion”.
The Israeli media later confessed that they knowingly (and willingly) shared the fake news: Al-Arabiya quoted Or Heller, a veteran military correspondent on Israel’s Channel 13 TV: “Heller said veteran Israeli correspondents, who have close ties to the military and in many cases have served themselves, knew that there was no way Israel was sending troops across enemy lines at this stage”. Israeli media are greatly shaped by the IDF Military Censor; the unit must approve every bit of information related to Israel's security.
Yet, Telegram did not ban those Israeli channels.
c) The West cannot give lessons on disinformation
Western media spread the fake news of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. As a result, 650,000 Iraqis died in the illegal NATO invasion of Iraq between 2003 and 2006 [The Lancet, Wikipedia]. Some European countries illegally participated in this campaign, such as Italy and Ukraine [Wikipedia].
In the current Ukraine war, disinformation has been reported on both sides [22] [23].
Two state-propaganda examples:
- “Mobile crematoriums”. On 23 Feb, the British Daily Telegraph (that is not a tabloid, but a 'serious' newspaper) wrote an article about Russia's alleged use of a mobile crematorium “to 'evaporate' one human body at a time”, along with footage released by “Britain's MoD”. It quoted Defense Secretary Ben Wallace, who “suggested the use of such a system may be a way for the Kremlin to cover up” its losses... It was a fake news, as Snopes reported [24]: “We found the video with the exact same footage posted on YouTube in 2015”. The footage is from a business advertisement. Yet, UK Ministry of Defence released it as part of the propaganda machine.
- The “Ghost of Kyiv”. On 28 February, several media including Ukraine's official Twitter account and Belarus opposition's Nexta wrote about a Ukrainian fighter pilot who had taken down multiple Russian aircraft. He was nicknamed the “Ghost of Kyiv”. A video clip was accompanying it. It was a fake news, Reuters fact-checked the claim, and the video was from a video game.
Conclusion
Despite accusations, RT France and other RT channels have, for years, kept professional standards.
“Local law”: banning RT's Telegram channels sets a dangerous precedent for all other news channels.