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That’s the way you do it

I’ve got my doubts about France’s new president, Macron, but I must say I like this:

Standing next to Putin, Macron told Xenia Fedorova, the head of the Kremlin-financed channel RT France, that her reporters had been denied access to his campaign headquarters before the vote because they had been acting not as journalists but as propagandists.

France 24 provided English subtitles of Macron’s complete reply, but even without them, many viewers of the exchange were struck by Putin’s visible discomfort when the French president described Russia Today and Sputnik — which are both financed directly by the Kremlin — as, essentially, Potemkin news organizations.

“When news outlets spread defamatory untruths, they are no longer journalists. They are influence operations,” Macron said, as Putin shifted uneasily from side to side. “Russia Today and Sputnik were influence operations during this campaign, which on several occasions told lies about me personally and my campaign.”

Macron added that he considered the blatant rumor-mongering by the two outlets — which included promoting false claims that he had a gay lover and an off-shore bank account — to have been part of an attempt to interfere in France’s democratic process.

“I will never give in to that,” Macron said. “Never.”

Instead of reporting on his campaign, Macron said, the two Kremlin-funded outlets aimed at readers outside Russia had simply published “serious falsehoods” and “lying propaganda.”

via The Intercept

Far be it from me to suggest that any of our right wing news outlets are financed by the Russians. Why should they bother, when we have licensed homegrown propagandists to do it for them. Perhaps its time that the Democrats take a page from Macron’s book, and start incessantly calling out Fox News for what it is: a propaganda network in which those on the tube and behind the camera are “acting not as journalists but as propagandists”.

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