The editor-in-chief of the Kremlin’s main propaganda outlet RT said Thursday that “masses” of its employees in the United States were quitting their jobs because they “fear for their security.”
Amid concern over Russian interference in the 2016 presidential elections, the U.S. Department of Justice has requested the state-run network to register under the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA). U.S. Congressional committees are investigating RT’s role in purchasing misleading campaign ads.
“There is another enormous negative effect we are having today,” Russia's state-run TASS news agency cited Margarita Simonyan as saying in testimony at a Russian parliamentary hearing Thursday. “People are scared, people are afraid,” she said.
Simonyan heads the state media conglomerate Rossiya Segodnya, which owns a number of media companies including RT and Sputnik International, a Russian radio broadcaster under FBI investigation also asked to register under FARA. She denied that RT had ever published fake news.
“It’s hard for us now even to find a stringer in the USA,” she added.
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