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      Newsmax and Smartmatic settle 2020 US election defamation lawsuit

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      The voting machine company Smartmatic and the conservative outlet Newsmax have settled a closely watched defamation lawsuit days before it was set to go to trial in Delaware.A spokesman for the Delaware courts said the case had been settled on Thursday. He did not offer additional details. The trial was set to begin in Wilmington on Monday.The terms of the settlement are not public.“Newsmax is pleased to announce it has resolved the litigation brought by Smartmatic through a confidential settlement,” Bill Daddi, a spokesman for the network, said in a statement.After the 2020 election, Newsmax aired several false claims about the company, whose voting machines were only used in Los Angeles county in 2020. The network repeatedly aired false claims from Trump allies that the software was widely used across the country and that it had been hacked to change votes.Smartmatic sued Newsmax, Fox, One America News Network (OANN) and others for broadcasting their false claims. It settled the case with OANN earlier this year and the Fox case is still pending in New York.Smartmatic said in a statement: “We are very pleased to have secured the completion of the case against Newsmax. We are now looking forward to our court day against Fox Corp and Fox News for their disinformation campaign. Lying to the American people has consequences. Smartmatic will not stop until the perpetrators are held accountable.”First amendment scholars were closely watching the case and several others like it to see whether libel law can be used as an effective tool to police misinformation.The case was set to be a kind of sequel to the defamation litigation between Dominion, another voting machine company, and Fox over 2020 election lies. That case was settled just before the trial was set to begin, with Fox agreeing to pay Dominion $787.5m. Eric Davis, the judge who oversaw the Fox case, was also overseeing the Newsmax case.A settlement was not surprising in the case as trial neared. Davis ruled that Smartmatic could not seek punitive damages, a decision that significantly limited any possible financial payout for Smartmatic.Davis had also ruled that Newsmax could use the “neutral report privilege” as a defense in the case – a legal shield that allows media outlets to broadcast allegations if they are reporting on a newsworthy event and do so in a disinterested and neutral way. Davis had not let Fox used that defense in its litigation.Smartmatic executives were indicted by the justice department earlier this year on bribery charges in the Philippines. Even though the charges were completely unrelated to the 2020 election, it offered an opportunity for Newsmax lawyers to argue that the company’s poor reputation could not be attributed to what was said on its air.But Newsmax also had reasons to settle. In a pre-trial conference, a lawyer for the company had called it a “bet-your-company” case for the outlet. Newsmax, which is projecting $180.5m in revenue this year, saw a surge in audience under the Trump administration and a bump that caught Fox’s attention after the 2020 election as it broadcast false claims about voting.“The Newsmax surge is a bit troubling – truly is an alternative universe when you watch, but it can’t be ignored,” Jay Wallace, a Fox executive, wrote in an email to a colleague after the 2020 election.Unlike in the Fox and Dominion litigation, only a few details emerged in the case revealing internal discussions at Newsmax as they broadcast false claims about the election. One of the messages was an internal letter from Christopher Ruddy, the network’s CEO from November 2020, conceding the network did not have evidence of voter fraud.“Newsmax does not have evidence of widespread voter fraud. We have no evidence of a voter fraud conspiracy nor do we make such claims on Newsmax,” he wrote on 12 November 2020. “We have reported on significant evidence of widespread election irregularities and vote fraud. We will continue to report on that. We believe we should not censor allegations made by the President or his lawyers or surrogates. Our job is not to filter the news but report information and allow Americans to decide.”Another exchange included Bob Sellers, a Newsmax host, and a producer, wondering how long they would have to air false claims about the election. “How long are we going to have to play along with election fraud?” Sellers wrote on 9 November 2020. “Trump’s MO is always to play victim [] And answer this question. Is there anything at all that could result in another election? The answer is no. and are there enough votes that could be switched or thrown out from fraud or irregularities? No.”The lack of a trial may rob the public of the chance to hear about the state of mind of people who were behind broadcasting election lies, said RonNell Andersen Jones, a first amendment scholar at the University of Utah who has closely followed the defamation cases filed by those harmed by 2020 election lies.Still, she noted that Davis had already ruled that the statements at issue in the case were false, and cautioned against expecting defamation cases to be a cure for misinformation.“Defamation law can declare something a lie, but the question of whether a lie was told is only one of many questions that have to be asked and answered,” she said in an interview earlier this week. “It is a notoriously complex area of law, which means cases can be won or lost on a lot of grounds that have nothing to do with the truth or falsity of the statement. And I am not sure that translates well to public discussion.”Lyrissa Lidsky, a media law professor at the University of Florida, also cautioned against expecting libel law to be a cure-all for disinformation.“Defamation law is not a panacea for election misinformation. There’s just no two ways about it,” she said. “It’s just a small piece.” More

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      Rashida Tlaib was unfairly smeared by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Dana Bash | Arwa Mahdawi

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      Here’s a handy tip: before you comment on an article, read the whole damn thing. Don’t just read the headline, don’t just read a paragraph someone screenshot and put on social media – read the whole thing. This one weird trick is very helpful when it comes to ensuring you’re not taking something dangerously out of context or just making up facts entirely.This advice isn’t addressed to you, dear reader. I’m sure that you don’t need to be told something so basic. Rather it is addressed to everyone – including some very prominent cable news anchors – who has spent the last few days spreading inflammatory misinformation about the Michigan congresswoman Rashida Tlaib. It’s addressed to everyone who has falsely and dangerously claimed that Tlaib said that the Michigan attorney general, Dana Nessel, only filed charges against pro-Palestinian activists at the University of Michigan because she is Jewish. Which, if this is what Tlaib actually said, would obviously be an outrageous statement.But here’s what actually happened: on 13 September Tlaib had an interview with Steve Neavling from the Detroit Metro Times where she talked about crackdowns on pro-Palestinian protests. In this interview Tlaib criticized Nessel for filing charges against pro-Palestinian protesters at the University of Michigan when her office hadn’t done the same in relation to other protests. Tlaib said the following:“We’ve had the right to dissent, the right to protest … We’ve done it for climate, the immigrant rights movement, for Black lives, and even around issues of injustice among water shutoffs. But it seems that the attorney general decided if the issue was Palestine, she was going to treat it differently, and that alone speaks volumes about possible biases within the agency she runs.”Nowhere in the interview did Tlaib mention anything about Nessel’s personal identity, but Neavling’s article frames Tlaib’s quote with a sentence explaining “Nessel is the first Jewish person to be elected Attorney General of Michigan.”Neavling has since made clear that sentence was not meant to insinuate Tlaib was talking about Nessel being Jewish when she talked about biases; rather Tlaib was referring to anti-Palestinian attitudes that are pervasive in US institutions. Further on in the original interview, Tlaib also explains what she thinks influenced Nessel’s decision to charge pro-Palestinian protestors, suggesting the attorney general was being pressured by university authorities.Neavling quotes Tlaib as saying the following: “I think people at the University of Michigan put pressure on [Nessel] to do this, and she fell for it … I think President Ono and Board of Regent members were very much heavy-handed in this. It had to come from somewhere.”To recap: absolutely nowhere in the original interview did Tlaib say Nessel charged pro-Palestinian protesters because she’s Jewish. And yet that inflammatory claim has spread dangerously far and wide. On Friday, Nessel herself addressed it in a tweet also referencing a cartoon implying Tlaib was a member of Hezbollah.“Rashida’s religion should not be used in a cartoon to imply that she’s a terrorist. It’s Islamophobic and wrong. Just as Rashida should not use my religion to imply I cannot perform my job fairly as Attorney General. It’s anti-Semitic and wrong,” wrote Nessel on X.From there, the CNN anchor Jake Tapper picked up the smear. In an interview with Michigan’s governor, Gretchen Whitmer, on Sunday, Tapper said the following:“Congresswoman Tlaib is suggesting that she shouldn’t be prosecuting these individuals that Nessel says broke the law and that she’s only doing it because she’s Jewish.”Again, that’s not what Tlaib suggested; it’s a very dangerous contortion of what she said.Still, on Monday, CNN’s Dana Bash continued to advance this narrative. And then, on Tuesday, 21 House Democrats released a statement accusing Nessel’s critics of antisemitism. It didn’t specifically name Tlaib but it was very clear who this statement was directed to.While all this was going on, by the way, Neavling – the guy who interviewed Tlaib in the first place – was desperately trying to correct the narrative. Neavling repeatedly tweeted at Tapper and Bash that they were lying. “Now Dana Bash from CNN is lying about what happened,” Neavling wrote in a tweet on Monday. “US Representative @RashidaTlaib did not say Nessel filed the charges because she’s Jewish. She said there is an anti-Palestinian attitude among many institutions, and most of them are not run by Jewish people.” Neavling has also published a comprehensive factcheck of what happened.Despite this factcheck and repeated requests by Neavling for people to stop “spreading lies”, the people responsible for advancing this false narrative have not adequately walked it back or apologized.Nessel’s office has declined my request to clarify whether or not the attorney general believes Tlaib is antisemitic and what evidence Nessel has for spreading this claim. Instead it provided a statement saying: “Our department is staffed with many experienced, professional prosecutors and any allegation of bias within our agency is baseless and unfortunate.”CNN has also declined to speak on the record about the matter but has emphasized that Tapper said on Monday that he “misspoke” when characterizing Tlaib’s comments. Bash has also clarified that “Tlaib did not reference Nessel’s Jewish identity” but continued to say that “Nessel still says she believes it’s antisemitic.”Admitting to misspeaking just isn’t good enough. CNN has spent days amplifying a news story centered around a fabricated quote. And these smears aren’t just insulting, they put Tlaib in danger. The congresswoman, let me remind you, is the only Palestinian American federal lawmaker and has been the subject of death threats, smears and conspiracies since the start of her political career. She has suffered an immense amount of hate for speaking up about Palestinians and her words have routinely been twisted and taken out of context to paint her in the worst possible light. This latest misinformation campaign is yet more of the same.Of course, what’s happening to Tlaib isn’t unique. Advocating for basic Palestinian human rights has always been billed as somehow “controversial” in the US. Since 7 October, however, speaking up about what many human right experts have termed a “genocide” in Gaza puts you at the risk of losing your job and becoming the subject of smear campaigns. Calling out or protesting against a genocide now seems to be considered a worse crime than committing one.For almost a year now, being a Palestinian in the US has meant waking up every morning to images of children in Gaza who have been dismembered by US-made bombs. It means watching helplessly as Gaza is made completely uninhabitable. It means reading letters from doctors who have been in Gaza talking about treating “pre-teen children who were shot in the head” by Israeli soldiers. It means hearing violent and dehumanizing comments from elected officials like the US House representative Tim Walberg of Michigan, who said Gaza should “be like Nagasaki and Hiroshima”.Palestinians are being starved, displaced and bombed off the face of the earth. And as US politicians and pundits mock our pain and cheerlead our slaughter, they have the temerity to tell Palestinians and our supporters that we’re the hateful ones. As 2,000-pound bombs keep dropping on tent encampments full of starving children, Israel’s apologists have the audacity to tell us that we’re the violent ones.

      Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist More

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      Elon Musk’s Twitter coup has harmed the right. They are now simply ‘too online’ | Paolo Gerbaudo

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      In the aftermath of Donald Trump’s shock victory in 2016, one common explanation for why the Democrats had not seen it coming was that they had succumbed to the social media echo chamber. The fact that many digital platforms, such as Twitter (now X), tended to be dominated by liberals had lured Democrats into a false sense of security. This, so the explanation went, made them complacent, leading to inconsiderate gestures that alienated sections of the electorate: Hillary Clinton’s infamous jab at Trump’s supporters as “deplorables” was often cited as a prime example.With the internet ever more captive to the caprices of timeline algorithms, the risk of echo chambers is even greater in this election cycle. However, it is now Trump and the broader political right that is – to use the internet lingo – “too online”.The rightwing surge seen in many countries’ recent elections, especially in Europe, has been paralleled (and supported) by a significant rise of the right’s influence online. As documented by much academic research on social media and politics, the leading influencers on platforms such as YouTube, X and the instant messaging platform Telegram are rightwing. On many of these platforms, the conversation has increasingly shifted towards rightwing themes and positions, with rightwing messages tending to circulate more widely.This social media hegemony, which has been in the making for many years and was cemented by Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover, has now created a right that harbours a similar sense of delusion and complacency to the one that, in the past, has proved so detrimental for progressives.Consider the way vice-presidential candidate JD Vance has brazenly doubled down on his 2021 comment about “childless cat ladies”; or widely ridiculed – and dangerous – online hoaxes about cats and dogs being eaten by Haitian immigrants, which appear to have travelled from Facebook to the mouth of the Republican candidate in a matter of days; or Musk’s creepy rebuke concerning Taylor Swift after the pop singer endorsed Kamala Harris, offering to “give her a child”. Such extreme messaging does cater to the Maga (Make America great again) crowd of true believers – but it comes at the electoral cost of potentially alienating large swaths of the moderate voting-age population.As political scientists have long observed, a party’s rank and file is more ideologically extreme than its electorate. If leaders get trapped in the militant core, they can end up developing an unrealistic appraisal of the opinion of their target voters. This is precisely what 24/7 immersion in social media, with their plebiscitary pseudo-democracy of instant reactions and echo chambers, is all too likely to produce.Obsession with social media and its popularity contest can also lead to unwise choice of political personnel. JD Vance was appointed as running mate by Trump on the back of vocal support from Silicon Valley and the fervour of his social media followers. Yet, Vance is viewed favourably by a miserly 36% of the electorate, compared with 48% support for his opponent Tim Walz, according to a recent USA Today poll. Trump himself has been criticised by allies because of his closeness to internet personality Laura Loomer, a self-described “white advocate” who has built a successful career by catering to far-right digital cesspits.A key factor in this radicalisation spiral has been Musk’s transformation of broadly liberal Twitter into the reactionary X. Spending $44bn on the purchase certainly made no economic sense, but it seemed to make much political sense. Taking the reins of a platform widely recognised as a sort of “social media of record”, or official debating chamber of the internet, capable of shaping the news agenda and public perception, offered the opportunity to fiddle with the formation of public opinion – and this is precisely what Musk did in three waysFirst, he has shamelessly granted himself enormous algorithmic privileges, which reportedly boost his messages by a factor of 1,000. He has used this colossal power of amplification by conversing with, and therefore boosting, hard-right extremist accounts, spreading fake news and publishing AI-manufactured images, such as one showing Kamala Harris in communist attire.Second, by reactivating tens of thousands of accounts – including those of Nazis and antisemites – who had been suspended or banned for violating community guidelines, Musk has goaded liberal and left users to leave the platform out of disgust, therefore effectively shifting the balance of the conversation to the right.Third, there have been the effects of his “blue check” scheme, which has fundamentally transformed the dynamics of participation on the platform. Now, in any conversation, the top replies are from people with blue checks, who appear to be overwhelmingly right-leaning, largely because of the way more progressive users have boycotted the service out of their animosity towards Musk.Musk’s “Twitter coup” has offered a new home to those who had retreated to Maga platforms such as Truth Social and Parler. But in so doing it has also led to the creation of a macroscopic reactionary echo chamber, which feeds into the right’s confirmation bias and self-complacency.Ultimately, the reason why rightwing politicians and their billionaire allies invest so much energy and resources into social media is that these platforms can influence people’s opinions in a more organic way than traditional forms of political communication. The irony here is that in attempting to use its money and power to shift the discursive dial, the right might have inadvertently undermined its own prospects.

      Paolo Gerbaudo is a sociologist and the author of The Great Recoil: Politics after Populism and Pandemic More

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      in Elections

      Elon Musk’s X Backs Down in Brazil

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      In an abrupt reversal, the social network’s lawyers said it was complying with court orders that it had previously defied. Brazil’s Supreme Court could allow the site to return next week.Elon Musk suddenly gave up.After defying court orders in Brazil for three weeks, Mr. Musk’s social network, X, has capitulated. In a court filing on Friday night, the company’s lawyers said that X had complied with orders from Brazil’s Supreme Court in the hopes that the court would lift a block on its site.The decision was a surprise move by Mr. Musk, who owns and controls X, after he said he had refused to obey what he called illegal orders to censor voices on his social network. Mr. Musk had dismissed local employees and refused to pay fines. The court responded by blocking X across Brazil last month.Now, X’s lawyers said the company had done exactly what Mr. Musk vowed not to: take down accounts that a Brazilian justice ordered removed because the judge said they threatened Brazil’s democracy. X also complied with the justice’s other demands, including paying fines and naming a new formal representative in the country, the lawyers said.Brazil’s Supreme Court confirmed X’s moves in a filing on Saturday, but said the company had not filed the proper paperwork. It gave X five days to send further documentation.The abrupt about-face from Mr. Musk in Brazil appeared to be a defeat for the outspoken businessman and his self-designed image as a warrior for free speech. Mr. Musk and his company had loudly and harshly criticized Brazil’s Supreme Court for months, even publicly releasing some of its sealed orders, but neither had publicly mentioned their reversal by Saturday morning.The moment showed how, in the yearslong power struggle between tech giants and nation-states, governments have been able to keep the upper hand.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Reporter Olivia Nuzzi on leave after alleged personal relationship with RFK Jr revealed

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      A top politics writer for New York magazine has taken leave at the publication after it emerged that she allegedly had a personal relationship with Robert F Kennedy Jr, a scion of the Kennedy dynasty who ran a high-profile independent campaign for the White House before endorsing Donald Trump.Olivia Nuzzi, who has written extensive long-form pieces about US politics, including RFK Jr, violated the magazine’s standards around disclosing conflicts of interests, the publication said in a statement.“Our Washington Correspondent Olivia Nuzzi acknowledged to the magazine’s editors that she had engaged in a personal relationship with a former subject relevant to the 2024 campaign while she was reporting on the campaign, a violation of the magazine’s standards around conflicts of interest and disclosures,” New York said.It added: “Had the magazine been aware of this relationship, she would not have continued to cover the presidential campaign. An internal review of her published work has found no inaccuracies nor evidence of bias. She is currently on leave from the magazine, and the magazine is conducting a more thorough third-party review. We regret this violation of our readers’ trust.”In a statement Nuzzi acknowledged the relationship but said it had not been a physical one and that it had developed after Nuzzi had written a piece about Kennedy and his quixotic and ultimately doomed run for the White House.Nuzzi said that “the nature of some communication between myself and a former reporting subject turned personal” earlier this year.“During that time, I did not directly report on the subject nor use them as a source,” she said. “The relationship was never physical but should have been disclosed to prevent the appearance of a conflict. I deeply regret not doing so immediately and apologize to those I’ve disappointed, especially my colleagues at New York.”A spokesperson for RFK Jr told CNN that Kennedy “only met Olivia Nuzzi once in his life for an interview she requested, which yielded a hit piece”.RFK Jr is the son of Robert Francis Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1968 while running for the Democratic nomination for president, almost five years after his brother and the US president, John F Kennedy, was assassinated.RFK Jr’s 2024 independent campaign never really took off to challenge the Democrats or Republicans and his extreme stances on some issues, especially around vaccinations, did little to endear him to mainstream Americans.Nuzzi has become a high-profile American journalist and television pundit. One of her most recent pieces included an interview with Donald Trump in which the former US president invited her to examine his ear, injured in an assassination attempt at a Pennsylvania rally. Recounting the experience, she wrote: “An ear had never appeared to have gone through less.” More

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      JD Vance defends pet-eating remarks: ‘The media has a responsibility to fact-check’

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      JD Vance defended his comments about Haitian immigrants eating pets during a Tuesday rally, saying that “the media has a responsibility to fact-check” stories – not him.The rally in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, came two days after the Ohio senator told CNN host Dana Bash it was OK “to create stories” to draw attention to issues his constituents care about, regarding inflammatory and unfounded claims that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, had eaten residents’ pets.The comments, in which he appeared to say that politicians can brazenly lie, drew immediate rebuke. But during his rally, Vance defended them and claimed that numerous constituents had told him “they’d seen something in Springfield”.“On top of it, if there are certain people who refuse to listen to them, who refuse to take their concerns seriously,” he said, “that’s when it’s my job as United States senator to listen to my constituents.”Vance took questions from reporters but knocked the press repeatedly, a line of attack that brought the crowd to their feet.“When I said – and the media always does this, they’re very dishonest – when I say that I created a story, I’m talking about the media story, by focusing the press’s intention on what’s going on in Springfield,” said Vance.During his speech to a crowd of several hundred people, Vance spoke at length about immigration, invoking a crime committed by an undocumented person in the town of Prairie du Chien that Republicans in the state have already seized on to bolster Republican claims about immigrants committing violent crimes. In fact, research shows immigrants do not commit crimes at a higher rate than people born in the US.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Every community is a border state,” said Vance. “The problems that Kamala Harris has imported through that American southern border have now gone nationwide.”He also blamed the vice-president for the recent apparent assassination attempt at Mar-a-Lago.“The American media, the Democrats, the Kamala Harris campaign, they’ve gotta cut this crap out or they’re gonna get somebody killed,” said Vance, alleging that Democrats, who have highlighted Trump’s authoritarian rhetoric and attempts to overturn the 2020 election, are to blame for the two apparent assassination attempts that Trump has faced so far during his 2024 campaign.Vance described a chaotic, dark, and violent vision of the US under a Harris presidency.“We are closer, in this moment, to a nuclear war, or a third world war, than at any time in our country’s history and we have the chaos and incompetence of Kamala Harris to thank for it,” the Republican vice-presidential nominee said during a campaign event in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.Vance’s message, especially on immigration, was well-received by the crowd.“You don’t know who’s coming across that border. You don’t know the violence or the background of those people,” said Victoria Bischel, who owns a farm and a real estate business and appreciated Vance’s comments. “I believe in immigration. I believe in legal immigration […] I don’t hop over the fence to Saudi Arabia and decide that I want to live there.” More

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      The Guardian in Talks to Sell The Observer to Tortoise Media

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      The Observer, first published in 1791, could be bought by Tortoise Media, an outlet founded by a British media veteran that began publishing in 2019.The parent company of The Guardian said on Tuesday that it was in formal talks to sell The Observer, Britain’s oldest surviving Sunday newspaper, to the start-up Tortoise Media.A deal would signal that Guardian Media Group is willing to shed a pillar of the British media landscape — The Observer has run in print since 1791 — as it increasingly focuses on news of worldwide interest, delivered digitally.In an internal memo to employees, leaders of Guardian Media said that Tortoise had approached them with a “compelling” offer to buy The Observer. The approximately 70 employees of the Sunday publication were told about the talks on Tuesday.A final deal could be reached within about three months, according to a person briefed on the talks, who was not authorized to discuss the details publicly. The negotiations are ongoing and may not end in an agreement.For years, The Guardian, which was founded in Manchester in 1821, has sought to establish itself as a global media company. It established a digital U.S. edition in 2007, and has sought to expand aggressively across the Atlantic.Executives at The Guardian said that a deal to sell The Observer, which the company bought in 1993, would allow their company to focus even more on international expansion.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Meta bans Russian state media outlets over ‘foreign interference activity’

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      Facebook owner Meta said on Monday it was banning RT, Rossiya Segodnya and other Russian state media networks, alleging the outlets used deceptive tactics to carry out influence operations while evading detection on the social media company’s platforms.“After careful consideration, we expanded our ongoing enforcement against Russian state media outlets. Rossiya Segodnya, RT and other related entities are now banned from our apps globally for foreign interference activity,” the company said in a written statement.Enforcement of the ban would roll out over the coming days, it said. In addition to Facebook, Meta’s apps include Instagram, WhatsApp and Threads.The Russian embassy did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.The ban marks a sharp escalation in actions by the world’s biggest social media company against Russian state media, after it spent years taking more limited steps such as blocking the outlets from running ads and reducing the reach of their posts.It came after the US filed money-laundering charges earlier this month against two RT employees for what officials said was a scheme to hire a US company to produce online content to influence the 2024 election.On Friday, US secretary of state Antony Blinken announced new sanctions against the Russian state-backed media company, formerly known as Russia Today, after new information gleaned from the outfit’s employees showed it was “functioning like a de facto arm of Russia’s intelligence apparatus”.“Today, we’re exposing how Russia deploys similar tactics around the world,” Blinken said. “Russian weaponization of disinformation to subvert and polarize free and open societies extends to every part of the world.”The Russian government in 2023 established a new unit in RT with “cyber operational capabilities and ties to Russian intelligence”, Blinken claimed, with the goal of spreading Russian influence in countries around the world through information operations, covert influence and military procurement.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBlinken said the US treasury would sanction three entities and two individuals tied to Rossiya Segodnya, the Russian state media company. The decision came after the announcement earlier this month that RT had funneled nearly $10m to conservative US influencers through a local company to produce videos meant to influence the outcome of the US presidential election in November.Speaking to reporters from the state department on Friday, Blinken accused RT of crowdfunding weapons and equipment for Russian soldiers in Ukraine, including sniper rifles, weapon sights, body armor, night-vision equipment, drones, radio equipment and diesel generators. Some of the equipment, including the recon drones, could be sourced from China, he said.Blinken also detailed how the organisation had targeted countries in Europe, Africa and North and South America. In particular, he said that RT leadership had coordinated directly with the Kremlin to target the October 2024 elections in Moldova, a former Soviet state in Europe where Russia has been accused of waging a hybrid war to exert greater influence. In particular, he said, RT’s leadership had “attempted to foment unrest in Moldova, likely with the specific aim of causing protests to turn violent”.“RT is aware of and prepared to assist Russia’s plans to incite protests should the election not result in a Russia-preferred candidate winning the presidency,” Blinken said.Andrew Roth contributed reporting More