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Factchecking the Factchecker on Chomsky, Russia and Media Access John Kempthorne ([link removed])


Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, US-based media platforms have made an extraordinary effort to cut Western audiences off from news from a Russian perspective. When social critic Noam Chomsky pointed out how unprecedented this was, Newsweek's "factchecker" (7/26/22 ([link removed]) ) declared his criticism "clearly untrue"--a determination that did more to confirm the ideological strictures of US media than to debunk them.

Soon after Russia invaded Ukraine in February, Russia Today, funded by the Russian government, was removed from DirecTV and Dish Network (New York Times, 3/12/22 ([link removed]) ), YouTube (France24, 12/3/22 ([link removed]) ), TikTok, Meta (CNN, 3/1/22 ([link removed]) ) Google News (Reuters, 3/1/22 ([link removed]) ) and Spotify (Reuters, 3/2/22 ([link removed]) ) in the United States and/or Europe. RT and Sputnik (another Russian state–funded network) were removed from the Apple app store (TechCrunch, 3/1/22
([link removed]) ).
CNN: RT sees its influence diminish as TV providers and tech companies take action against the Russia-backed outlet

CNN (3/1/22 ([link removed]) ): "The actions taken by television providers and technology companies against RT have...reduc[ed] the Kremlin’s ability to peddle its narrative at a pivotal time."

Microsoft banned RT from the Windows app store, and deranked RT and Sputnik in Bing search results (TechCrunch, 3/1/22 ([link removed]) ). Google (Reuters, 3/1/22 ([link removed]) ), Meta (Reuters 2/26/22 ([link removed]) ) and Microsoft (Microsoft.com, 2/28/22 ([link removed]) ) barred RT from receiving any ad revenue through their platforms. RT was also banned by Roku, a streaming hardware company (CNN, 3/1/22 ([link removed]) ).

Motivations for banning RT and Sputnik were due to “extraordinary circumstances,” in Google’s words (Reuters, 2/26/22 ([link removed]) ), and to protect “against state-sponsored disinformation campaigns” (Microsoft.com, 2/28/22 ([link removed]) ). RT’s offices in the US had to close down their production completely (Washington Post, 3/3/22 ([link removed]) ).

PayPal has recently frozen the accounts of independent news outlets such as Consortium News (Democracy Now!, 7/12/22 ([link removed]) ) and MintPress (Democracy Now!, 5/4/22 ([link removed]) ; FAIR.org, 5/18/22 ([link removed]) ). The circumstances around PayPal's actions are less clear than with the actions against RT. The editor-in-chief of Consortium News, Joe Lauria, said he didn’t know why PayPal froze its account, but he suspects a clause in the user agreement against “purveying misinformation” may have been invoked (Democracy Now!, 7/12/22 ([link removed]) ).

One of the many chilling effects of the media blackout was that YouTube deleted its entire archive of commentary by the Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Chris Hedges (who formerly worked for the New York Times and NPR) because it was hosted by RT (Democracy Now!, 4/1/22 ([link removed]) ).

In May, the US announced new sanctions against Russian television networks Channel One Russia, Television Station Russia-1 and NTV Broadcasting Company (CNN, 5/8/22 ([link removed]) ), cutting them off from US advertisers.


** 'A kind of totalitarian culture'
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Newsweek: Fact Check: Noam Chomsky Claims American Access To News Worse Than In USSR

Newsweek (7/26/22 ([link removed]) ): "There are no justified parallels to be drawn between the Soviet Russia media landscape and that of the US today."

Noam Chomsky, professor emeritus of linguistics at MIT and a renowned media critic, responded to this consolidated effort to “counter the threat” posed by the “information war” (Newsweek, 7/26/22 ([link removed]) ) in an interview with actor Russell Brand (YouTube, 7/22/22 ([link removed]) ):

Take the United States today; it is living under a kind of totalitarian culture which has never existed in my lifetime, and is much worse in many ways than the Soviet Union before Gorbachev. Go back to the 1970s, people in Soviet Russia could access BBC, Voice of America, German television, if they wanted to find out the news.

Chomsky’s comments were “factchecked” recently by Tom Norton of Newsweek (7/26/22 ([link removed]) ). He wrote:

While the BBC and Radio Free America did broadcast in Russia post-WWII and during the Cold War, their frequencies were jammed by the Soviet government for decades. Any access that the Russian public did have was gained in spite of, not thanks to, their government's efforts.

The article briefly covers the history of signal jamming in the Soviet Union and other comments made by Chomsky, concluding:

To suggest that Americans have less access to information than citizens in Soviet Russia is therefore, not only clearly untrue, but an argument that neglects the sacrifices and perils that journalists have endured to deliver accurate news about the country, and continue to endure to this day.

The official ruling of Newsweek declared Chomsky’s comments false:

By all accounts, Americans are able to access news from Russia despite many Western journalists having fled the country, and Russia having blocked its public's access to most Western social media and news platforms.


** 'A ubiquitous phenomenon'
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BBC: BBC Russian radio hits the off switch after 65 years

BBC (3/23/11 ([link removed]) ): "Listening to the [BBC's] Russian Service as well as other Western broadcasters had, by the 1970s, become a ubiquitous phenomenon among the Soviet urban intelligentsia."

One of the articles used to support the certification of falsehood was a New York Times article (5/26/87 ([link removed]) ) from 1987 that reported “Russia had begun broadcasting Voice of America after blocking its signal for seven years.” A BBC article (3/23/11 ([link removed]) ) from 2011 was also used to explain that between 1949 and 1987 the Soviets spent significant funds developing jammers to block Western transmissions.

Interestingly, the same New York Times article reported that “a Harvard University study in the mid-1970's estimated that 28 million people in the Soviet Union tuned in [to US-funded VoA] at least once a week.'” And similarly, from the same BBC article cited by Newsweek:

However, jamming was never totally effective, and listening to the [BBC's] Russian Service as well as other Western broadcasters had, by the 1970s, become a ubiquitous phenomenon among the Soviet urban intelligentsia.

Using just two articles from Western sources selected by the factchecker, it seems that millions of people, including virtually all intellectuals in the Soviet Union, had access to and tuned into Western media in the 1970s, which is fairly consistent with Chomsky’s comments: “Go back to the 1970s, people in Soviet Russia could access BBC, Voice of America, German television, if they wanted to find out the news."

Newsweek reached out to Chomsky for comment, who responded:

I was explicit. I referred to the banning of RT and other channels, comparing it with pre-Perestroika Russia when Russians were getting their news from BBC and VoA, according to US studies.


** A mass Soviet audience
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Cold War Broadcasting

Cold War Broadcasting (CEU Press, 2010 ([link removed]) ): "Some 52 million people in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe tuned in weekly to the Voice of America in the early 1980s."

A collection of studies were published ([link removed]) in 2010 in the book, Cold War Broadcasting: Impact on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, edited by A. Ross Johnson, a former research fellow at the Hoover Institute (a conservative think tank) and director of Radio Free Europe (US-funded media), and R. Eugene Parta, also a former director of RFE and a contributor to the Hoover Institution. The studies corroborate the claim that people in the Soviet Union were frequently listening to Western media.

In the 1970s, simulations estimated by MIT put VoA weekly listenership reaching highs of 19% of the adult Soviet population, with the BBC topping out at 11%. “Study results showed that by the end of the 1970s, more than half of the USSR urban population listened to foreign broadcasting more or less regularly,” according to Cold War Broadcasting.

Out of curiosity, what do the US studies have to say about the 1980s?

Some 52 million people in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe tuned in weekly to the Voice of America in the early 1980s. That was approximately half of VoA’s global audience at the time.

The Soviet war in Afghanistan apparently did not stop people from listening to Western broadcasts. In 1984, 40% of the urban population received information on the war in Afghanistan from Western radio, and in 1987 it was 45%.

In the contemporary United States, however, this is not permitted. We cannot have people listening to the enemy in times of war.

Cold War Broadcasting noted that

the size of Western radio stations’ audience grew gradually from the beginning of broadcasting in the early post-war period to reach more than 50% of the Soviet urban population in the early 1980s.

In other words, Western radio stations had a mass audience in the former USSR. The number of regular listeners was as high as 20–25%.

Soviet listeners appeared to use their access to news from multiple perspectives to get a more comprehensive picture of events:

Despite a relatively high level of trust in Western radio stations, most listeners did not totally accept all the information they heard. The Soviet audience took a more deliberate approach to understanding information that was based on a comparison of information obtained from Soviet mass media with that from foreign radio programs.

So Western outlets and US studies seem to agree with Chomsky: Despite jamming, people had access and often listened to Western sources in the Soviet Union and were critically engaged with the news at the time, especially during the '70s.
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ACTION ALERT: You can contact Newsweek here ([link removed]) or via Twitter: @Newsweek ([link removed]) . Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective. Feel free to leave a copy of your message in the comments thread of this post.
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FEATURED IMAGE: Noam Chomsky on Democracy Now! (12/7/21 ([link removed]) ).


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