{"id":21947,"date":"2020-02-13T20:18:22","date_gmt":"2020-02-14T04:18:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=21947"},"modified":"2020-02-13T20:18:22","modified_gmt":"2020-02-14T04:18:22","slug":"say-no-to-russian-propaganda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=21947","title":{"rendered":"SAY ‘NO’ TO RUSSIAN PROPAGANDA"},"content":{"rendered":"

A group of House Democrats criticized the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on Thursday for not taking action to curb Russian propaganda aired on U.S. radio stations, and urged the agency to take steps to remedy this ahead of the 2020 elections.<\/p>\n

In a\u00a0letter<\/a>\u00a0to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, the House members led by Reps. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) and Michael Doyle (D-Pa.) pointed to concerns around WZHF, known as Radio Sputnik, which is based in the Washington, D.C., metro area and airs Russian propaganda without informing listeners that the information is propaganda.<\/p>\n

A federal judge\u00a0ruled last year<\/a>\u00a0that the station had to register as a Russian foreign agent due to the station continuously airing Sputnik International news from Moscow.<\/p>\n

The FCC opened an inquiry into the station in 2018 to rule on whether the station was complying with an\u00a0agency rule that requires stations to fully disclose the identity of sponsors of programs.<\/p>\n

The Democratic members \u2013 who also included Reps. Jerry McNerney (Calif.), Jimmy Panetta (Calif.), David Cicilline (R.I.), Sharice Davids (Kan.), and Del.\u00a0Eleanor\u00a0Holmes Norton<\/a>\u00a0(D.C.) \u2013 noted that they were told by the FCC in December that the investigation is ongoing, with the members writing that they found the lengthy investigation “shameful.”<\/p>\n

“The FCC has failed to enforce its own rules as they apply to registered foreign agents, allowing hostile Russian propagandists to attack our democracy as another election is upon us,” the members wrote. “The FCC’s continued inaction, after receiving many Congressional letters from us about this critically important issue, is a stunning abdication of its responsibility to protect American airwaves.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A group of House Democrats criticized...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-u-s-a","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21947"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21947\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21948,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21947\/revisions\/21948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}