Russian foreign television has long been criticized for spreading state propaganda. According to YouTube, the station has spread misinformation about the corona pandemic several times and is now permanently blocked.
The online service Youtube has blocked the German channels of the Russian broadcaster RT. As RT announced on its website, the blockage took place on Tuesday afternoon. According to its own information, the station had more than 600,000 subscribers on YouTube.
The broadcaster said it had not been possible to upload any current videos for a week because YouTube prevented this. In addition to RT DE, the “alternative channel” with the name “The missing part” is also affected. Youtube confirmed the blocking from the request. The editor-in-chief of RT, based in Moscow, Margarita Simonjan, sharply criticized YouTube’s move on Twitter and spoke of a “media war”.
YouTube accuses RT of having spread disinformation about the corona pandemic, which is not permitted according to community guidelines. First of all, Youtube had given the RT channel a “strike” for this reason – in other words, withdrew its permission to upload new posts. “During this suspension, RT DE tried to get around this restriction by using another YouTube channel to upload their videos,” said a YouTube spokesman. “As a result of this bypass attempt, both channels have now been terminated due to violations of the YouTube terms of use.” After the suspension, RT DE had aggressively referred to the channel “The Missing Part” on its website, which the broadcaster also called an “alternative channel” on its website.
RT, formerly Russia Today, is repeatedly criticized as the Kremlin’s propaganda tool for spreading conspiracy theories and disinformation on behalf of the Russian state.
The foreign broadcaster, which is financed by the Russian state, has been trying for a long time to obtain a broadcasting license for Germany, but it has so far not been successful. In August, RT tried to obtain a license for a German-language program in Luxembourg – but the application was rejected there because the German-language broadcaster is based in Germany and Luxembourg did not consider itself responsible.