Sputnik (news portal)

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Sputnik (Russian “companion” or “companion”) is the name of a Russian news agency that operates worldwide and operates news portals and radio stations at the same time. Sputnik was founded in 2014 by the state-owned Russian media company Rossija Sevodnja as the second Russian news medium after Russia Today .

Director General Dmitry Kisselev said in 2014 that the service is aimed at an auditorium looking for “alternative opinions”. On its German-language page, the portal advertises with the statement: “Sputnik reports on what others are silent about.” Sputnik shows the way “to a multipolar world based on respect for the national interests, culture, history and traditions of each country . “Critics see the station as a tool for the Russian government to spread its own propaganda in other countries.

Organization and development

Sputnik has been online since November 10, 2014. In 2015, it stated that it had editorial offices in 130 locations in 34 countries and broadcast in 30 languages.

Among other things, Sputnik took over the employees of the RIA Novosti news agency and of the former international broadcaster Voice of Russia , whose program was briefly known as Radio Sputnik . RIA Novosti was Russia's international news agency until it was disbanded in 2013. By order of the President, the new news agency Rossiya Sevodnja was founded on December 9, 2013, with Dmitri Kisselev as General Director.

The investment budget in 2015 is said to have been 15.4 billion rubles (about 263.2 million euros), 41 percent more than in 2014. An additional 6.48 billion rubles are said to have been earmarked for “Sputnik News”. According to the Süddeutsche Zeitung , Sputnik contacted German broadcasters in mid-2015 with the wish to purchase airtime. In the letter, which was confirmed as genuine by Sputniknews, it was said that Sputnik wanted to "expand the audience in Germany" and offered "alternative news content to world events". A German broadcaster (as of September 2, 2015) took over the Sputnik content: Mega Radio SNA .

Media reach

Meedia editor-in-chief Stefan Winterbauer expects Sputnik News, with around 600,000 social media interactions in February 2016, to be one of the most successful “so-called alternative media” “from a right parallel universe”. He suspects that there are also many Russian- Germans among the German readers of Sputnik. In terms of media penetration in the German-speaking region, Sputnik has lost market share to RT in social networks since 2015, as RT is the more successful of the two Russian state media. "Sputnik News" is said to have managed to place its Google News results higher through skill in search engine optimization.

Political orientation and criticism

Julian Hans wrote in the Süddeutsche Zeitung that Sputnik was a new attempt to spread Russian state propaganda in Germany. On the occasion of the presentation of the Sputnik media service , the Moscow ARD radio correspondent Markus Sambale spoke of an information war in which Vladimir Putin sees himself with the West and which he is waging with means that contradict the freedom of the press. The FAZ criticized that interview partners were exposed to emotionally charged leading questions, the answer of which left them in a bind, and that they could not prevent such a wrong conclusion.

In the Lisa case , which reported in January 2016 about the alleged rape of a Russian-born schoolgirl by migrants in Berlin, Sputnik was in charge of disseminating misleading and unsubstantiated reports that led to considerable unrest among Russian Germans and even demonstrations with several hundred participants led to the Chancellery . The false claims were subsequently picked up by right-wing extremist circles and used against refugees and the federal government's migration policy. The Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Viktorovich Lavrov finally intervened personally in the "affair" and wrongly accused the German investigative authorities of hiding a rape in order to paint over migration problems in a politically correct manner . Federal Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier then sharply criticized his Russian counterpart and warned against using the untruthful reports for “political propaganda”. In this context, the director of the Berlin-Hohenschönhausen Memorial , Hubertus Knabe , stated that since the Sputnik news portal was founded in 2014, there has been massive propaganda with often xenophobic and right-wing extremist orientation; The Kremlin systematically uses social media to raise awareness.

In the case of the United Kingdom leaving the EU , it was reported that Sputnik and Russia Today had systematically supported it in their reporting. An analysis of the reports on the planned EU referendum published on Sputniknews.com at the beginning of February 2016 showed a systematic preference for the “out” position. Proponents of the exit from the EU were cited twice as often as opponents, their statements were positioned more conspicuously (e.g. in the headline) and they were given more space in the articles. Warnings that the exit from the EU could have a negative impact on the economy were raised through editorial comments and the like. a. referred to as "scare tactics". Texts contained evaluations and pejorativa , such as the claim that David Cameron was “desperately” looking for an agreement with EU representatives or that the compromise negotiated in February meant a “serious step downwards” for Cameron.

In a study published in August 2016 by the Center for European Policy Analysis on the influence of Sputnik in Eastern and Central Europe, its approach is described as "one-sided hostility towards the mainstream". Sputnik granted protest, anti-establishment and pro-Russian MPs in these countries disproportionate coverage; this is systematic, and even if they are mainstream politicians, only those comments are selected that further support the portrayal of a corrupt, decadent and Russophobic West.

French President Emmanuel Macron attacked the Russian media Sputnik and Russia Today (RT) during his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin . Macron said their staff are not journalists but "tools of influence and propaganda - false propaganda." Macron justified why he had not given their employees access to his election campaign. He also recalled that RT and Sputnik had spread falsehoods about his personal life that he was gay.

The American journalist Andrew Feinberg worked for Sputnik as a White House correspondent for several months before he was fired in May 2017. According to his testimony, his work did not serve to correctly describe what happened, but primarily to portray US politics as hypocritical or dubious. The final rift was his refusal to pursue apparently baseless allegations against Hillary Clinton.

In its annual report for 2018, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution stated that Sputnik was one of the most important players in the veiled and subtle influence of the Russian state media on the German public.

In 2019, the chairman of the German Association of Journalists (DJV), Frank Überall Sputnik, was one of the "propaganda instruments of the Kremlin".

Even during the COVID-19 pandemic , Sputnik was one of the Russian media, which passed propagandistically colored representations and false news abroad. The news portal spread the wrong information on Facebook and Twitter , according to which "washing your hands is of no use" to prevent infections with the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus . The English service of Sputnik warned of "authoritarian trends" in Europe in the wake of the measures to contain the virus.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Felix-Emeric Tota: Propaganda channel “Sputnik News”: These messages are entirely to Putin's taste . In: FAZ.NET . ISSN  0174-4909 ( faz.net [accessed June 12, 2018]).
  2. ↑ Hubertus Volmer: "Media war with the West: Russia brings Sputnik to the start" , n-tv , November 12, 2014. Date of query: December 31, 2014.
  3. ^ Frank Rauschendorf: Sputnik - Russia on the news offensive . On: Arte.tv , February 12, 2015.
  4. ↑ a b Kopp, Sputnik, Epoch Times & Co: News from a right parallel universe ›Meedia. Retrieved June 12, 2018 .
  5. ↑ Указ о мерах по повышению эффективности деятельности государственных СМИ. In: Kremlin.ru. Retrieved January 21, 2018 (Russian).
  6. ↑ Путин ликвидировал РИА Новости. In: Lenta . December 9, 2013, accessed January 21, 2018 (Russian).
  7. ^ A b Julian Hans: Russian Propaganda in Germany: Greetings from Moscow . In: sueddeutsche.de September 2, 2015.
  8. ↑ "Mega Radio SNA starts on DAB +" , rein-hoeren.de, February 17, 2015.
  9. ↑ http://www.russland.news/bald-eine-million-follower-fuer-deutschsprachige-russland-nachrichten/
  10. ^ "Operation 'Sputnik'. Putin's media offensive ” ( Memento from January 2, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), WDR 2 , November 11, 2014. Date of query: January 17, 2020.
  11. ↑ Sputnik: Berlin: Minors raped, police inactive , January 17, 2017, accessed on February 4, 2017
  12. ↑ Katja Bauer: Invented rape The "Lisa case" and its bitter aftermath , Stuttgarter Nachrichten of June 20, 2017
  13. ↑ Felicitas von Lovenberg (editor): We have the choice: Why we should stand up for our freedom right now , Piper Verlag, Munich 2017, ISBN 978-3-492-97838-5 , e-book without page numbers, second page of the Stefan Orth wrote the contribution Fauler Hering
  14. ^ Berlin: Steinmeier puts Lavrov in his place . In: The time . January 27, 2016, ISSN  0044-2070 ( zeit.de [accessed November 14, 2017]).
  15. ↑ Die Welt: “They let them in. And we are not given anything! ” , Article about the influence of Russian-Germans by Russian media, January 31, 2016, accessed on February 4, 2017
  16. ↑ Ivan Nechepurenko and Neil MacFarquhar: Despite Russia's Somber Facade, Glimpses of Joy Over EU Referendum . In: The New York Times , June 24, 2016.
  17. ↑ Ben Judah: Those who call for Brexit are handing European power to the Kremlin . In: The Independent , March 9, 2016.
  18. ↑ Ben Nimmo: Lobbying for Brexit: How the Kremlin's media are distorting the UK's debate ( Memento of the original from June 26, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . In: The Institute for Statecraft , February 13, 2016. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.statecraft.org.uk
  19. ↑ CEPA: Winning the Information War , published in August 2016, therein: Case study: Sputnik , p. 37 ff. (English, pdf)
  20. ↑ spiegel.de May 30, 2017
  21. ↑ zeit.de February 24, 2017: Macron is gay, NOT! (Reconstruction of a fake news)
  22. ^ My Life at a Russian Propaganda Network . In: POLITICO Magazine . ( politico.com [accessed August 25, 2017]).
  23. ↑ Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Report on the Protection of the Constitution 2018, Berlin 2019, page 287
  24. ↑ We do not give ourselves up for propaganda. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , April 18, 2019, p. 15.
  25. ↑ Thomas Gutschker: Disinformation from Russia: "Washing hands is of no use". In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , April 3, 2020, accessed on the same day.