Ruptly

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Ruptly is an international news agency based in Berlin . The company belongs to the network of the TV broadcaster RT , a subsidiary of the Russian state media company Rossija Sevodnja .

history

The TV agency operating on behalf of the Russian state has been operating in Berlin as a GmbH (HRB 140522 B) in the German commercial register since July 2012 . Since December 2012, as a subsidiary, it has had rooms in a prominent location in Lennéstrasse 1 near Potsdamer Platz in Berlin-Tiergarten, right next to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe , together with a branch of the Russian state television channel Russia Today (RT) . Ruptly started operations on April 4, 2013. On December 9, 2013, Ruptly became part of the Russian news agency Rossiya Sevodnja , which was created through the merger of the propaganda station Voice of Russia and RIA Novosti .

organization

Ruptly has 25 freelance offices around the world, including in Washington, DC , Damascus , London , Madrid , Gaza and Cairo . Around 110 employees work on three floors at the company's headquarters in Berlin. The director is Dinara Toktosunova.

Business model

Ruptly sees itself as an alternative offer to the established (allegedly Anglo-Saxon influenced) news agencies such as Reuters TV and the Associated Press Television News. On the blogging platform Tumblr , she presented herself as follows: “The current media landscape is pulsating, the flow of information seems unlimited. But those who know the area from the inside see gaps in the existing offerings from video news agencies and mass media. We want to fill in these gaps, shed light on the darkness, be a mouthpiece for the unheard, show what is normally ignored. "

The Russian chief of staff Valery Vasilyevich Gerasimov wrote in an essay for the weekly Voenno-Promyshlennyi Kur'er (“Military-Industrial Courier”) in February 2013 : “Wars are no longer declared and once they have started they turn out to be unfamiliar Muster. “Non-military means are more important than ever, in certain cases even more important than weapons. Gerasimov explicitly mentions communication as a non-military means. Wars do not win who has more weapons. Wars win who controls the information. Accordingly, "Russia Today" is waging an information war against the entire western world, as editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan explained in an interview with the Russian newspaper Kommersant in 2012. Sputnik and Ruptly complete this "offer". In this context, there are threats by the Russian government to classify Deutsche Welle as a “foreign agent” as a “return coach” . The spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Sakharova in 2019 literally: “Recently, accounts of the television channel Russia Today were blocked in Germany - so that it reports on events in a balanced way. Can you imagine that? For a long time now, however, we have been acting according to the principle of reciprocity and the mirror-image approach when it comes to the work of journalists, both our journalists there and their journalists here with us ....... Sparkasse Berlin has three companies operating in Germany of the RT channel sent a notification of the closure of bank accounts within two months, without giving any reason. These are Ruptly, Redfish and Maffick Media. Some other German banks have also denied services to these companies. "

The agency offers television broadcasters film material as live streams or video-on-demand . Ruptly also switches live streams on YouTube with predominantly political content: in 2014 demonstrations by hooligans against Salafists from Cologne and PEGIDA from Dresden were broadcast. A demonstration on January 9, 2016 on the occasion of sexual assault on New Year's Eve 2015/16 was also broadcast live and, as always, without comment in full. Reports from the fields of business, sport, science, technology and entertainment are also offered.

Alignment

The content distributed via Facebook , YouTube and Twitter is aimed primarily at left-wing people and those interested in ecology. The subsidiaries Redfish and Maffick , which are entered in the commercial register as a GmbH with identical management, are also named. In the Now is a subsidiary channel with an international target group, with followers on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. As already criticized at RIA Novosti , Ruptly takes predominantly pro-Russian positions, which is why observers accuse him of disinformation , propaganda and support for Russia's political and economic interests and doubt the veracity of the format. Although the agency also addresses controversial issues such as how to deal with homosexuality in Russia , it takes a clear position on foreign policy issues such as the civil war in Syria and the crisis in Ukraine, as well as the external perception of the Russian armed forces in the spirit of President Vladimir Putin . Ivan Rodionov , who appears regularly in the German media, is perceived as very close to the Kremlin. According to the journalist Thomas Franke , work is being done systematically on a “ parallel reality ”.

With the seemingly harmless “ grassroots ” label, In the Now's task is to infiltrate left-of-the-center media with covert disinformation campaigns, while strictly concealing their close ties to the Russian government. “Our target audience is anyone who is tired of a mainstream media industry that is one of the most socially exclusive industries in the world and employs journalists who often have a greater connection with those in power who are supposed to challenge and hold them accountable than with the masses of people our profession should serve, ”says Redfish . The underlying message is: The West is neither golden nor democratic. A mixture of facts and fiction is all about non-Russian grievances, cases such as Natalja Estemirowa , Anna Politkovskaya , Sergei Magnitsky and Boris Nemtsov or the pollution of Lake Baikal are not mentioned. The chairman of the German Association of Journalists (DJV), Frank Überall , says: “Here, cheap polemics against journalists are fueling the prejudice that the media are the extended arm of state power. What nonsense! "

According to journalists of the Spiegel ( Holger Stark et al.), Ruptly has no fear of contact with established right-wing extremists such as the Holocaust denier Nick Griffin , chairman of the British National Party , and Olaf Rose , member of the board of the NPD . Ruptly also offers the editor-in-chief of right-wing extremist magazine First! , Manuel Ochsenreiter , a platform.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Commercial register announcements of July 25, 2012.
  2. ↑ Commercial register announcements of December 11, 2012.
  3. ↑ a b c Christoph Lanz : Russia Today. Putin's world . In: Berliner Zeitung , December 14, 2012. (also published on: fr-online.de)
  4. ↑ a b c d ZAPP of September 11, 2013
  5. ^ A b c d e Moritz Gathmann, Christian Neef, Matthias Schepp, Holger Stark : Die Meinungsmacher . In: Der Spiegel , 22/2014, May 26, 2014, pp. 80–82.
  6. ↑ Imprint Ruptly GmbH
  7. ^ Embassy of the Russian Federation, press office
  8. ↑ Video news agency Ruptly starts in Berlin . on: derStandard.at, December 10, 2012.
  9. ↑ Patrick Beuth, Marc Brost , Peter Dausend, Steffen Dobbert , Götz Hamann : War without blood . In: Die Zeit , No. 9/2017
  10. ↑ Silvia Stöber, Russian foreign broadcaster: Arms in the information war. on tagesschau.de from April 26, 2018
  11. ↑ Thielko Grieß, Russian politicians threaten Deutscher Welle with a work ban . on Deutschlandfunk.de from September 30, 2019
  12. ↑ Jutta Sommerbauer: The Kremlin's opinion makers are expanding their global network . In: Die Presse , November 12, 2014, p. 5.
  13. ↑ Anna Reimann: World press about German Islamophobes: "The rhetoric of Pegida is poor" . on: SPON , January 6, 2015.
  14. ↑ a b c Jan-Henrik Wiebe, Mitten in Berlin: Russia's secret media center in Europe on T-online from October 18, 2018, accessed on November 10, 2018
  15. ↑ Sabine Sasse: Independence looks different. Putin's trumpets . In: Der Tagesspiegel , May 15, 2014, p. 25.
  16. ↑ a b Thorsten Schmitz , How Russian Online Media Want to Destabilize Democracy on Süddeutsche.de from November 1, 2018, accessed on November 10, 2018
  17. ↑ Jens Mühling : Ivan Rodionov. Putin's best talk show representative . In: Der Tagesspiegel , March 21, 2014, p. 23.
  18. ^ Barbara Kerneck: Russian Journalists in Germany. Putin's chat bags . In: taz , May 10, 2014, p. 39.
  19. ↑ Claudia von Salzen: Just no Ukrainians . In: Der Tagesspiegel , March 19, 2014, p. 23.
  20. ↑ Thore Barfuss: Röttgen counters the Russian editor-in-chief perfectly . on: Welt Online , March 18, 2014.
  21. ^ Thomas Franke: Political reporting in the Russia-Ukraine conflict . on: Deutschlandfunk , December 7, 2014.
  22. ^ Charles Davis, No Amateur Act: 'Grassroots' Media Startup Redfish Is Supported by the Kremlin on The Daily Beast, January 2, 2018, accessed November 10, 2018
  23. ↑ Viral “Manspreading” Video is Staged Kremlin Propaganda on EU vs Disinfo from October 8, 2018, accessed on November 10, 2018
  24. ↑ Musa Okwonga , My new post, on Redfish and Russia Today on okwonga.com, August 12, 2018, accessed November 10, 2018
  25. ↑ Julian Feldmann: Rodionov: appearance before right-wing extremists canceled ( memento from April 26, 2015 in the Internet Archive ). On: Ndr.de , April 22, 2015.