© youtube.com
"What they [Washington] have been doing in regard to us is tantamount to driving us out of the country. They put us in conditions in which we cannot work," Margarita Simonyan said in interview with Russia's NTV channel. "This is their renowned freedom of speech," she added, saying that RT has been under pressure for showing the American audience "a different point of view," allegedly affecting the 2016 US election.
This month, the US Department of Justice has warned the company that supplies all services for the RT America channel that it is obligated to register as a foreign agent. The demand came under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), adopted in 1938 to counter Nazi Germany's activities on US soil.
In the current situation, "if worst comes to worst" the channel "will leave the US and no longer broadcast there. In the worst-case scenario, Russia would respond in kind as to American media," Simonyan said, adding that as a journalist she would not like such a situation to occur. "We have been taught that freedom of speech is sacred," she told NTV's host Irada Zeynalova.
The channel has no choice but to comply with the demand under the FARA act, Simonyan said, citing lawyers who have warned that otherwise its "staff will be put in prison and property will be seized."
The pressure on RT has become "avalanche-like." The US Congress is currently hearing a separate bill on the channel which seeks ways for its distributors in America to stop broadcasting RT. If approved, US cable networks might refuse to provide services for the channel.
Comment: The US can't see itself for what it has become. It takes an outside observer to point out the obvious...America is in deep political crisis and likely to implode. It should be thanking independent contributors for every reality check. If they are forced to leave, all will be lost and there will be no skid marks on the downhill slide.