BRICS Media Summit Meets in Moscow as State Department Tries To Silence All Dissent
Sept. 17—Media leaders from 45 countries gathered in Moscow to participate in the seventh annual BRICS Media Summit, which began on Sept. 14. The theme of the event, leading into the Oct. 22-24 BRICS Summit in Kazan, is the role of the media in a multipolar world, and it is being hosted by Russian state news agency TASS, which celebrated its 120th anniversary on September 1.
Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered welcoming remarks to the delegates, and Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov, Russia’s BRICS sherpa, noted that “BRICS is not a platform for settling political scores, sorting out relationships, even international ones. It is a platform designed to improve the lives of those countries that are part of it and interact with it…. This is the task that we are solving by deepening cooperation, expanding BRICS.”
The sharpest remarks came from Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, who used her opening remarks at the summit to blast the Sept. 13 State Department announcement of total sanctions against Russian media, including RT and Sputnik, and anyone who works with them. Zakharova said this is an “emergency situation” that should be of direct concern to all media participants. "Yesterday, Russian journalists became victims of the aggression from the United States of America. They were subjected to a real terrorist and information attack both as corporations and as individuals….
“We cannot remain silent. What is happening now to Russian journalists and media organizations … could happen to each and one of you,” she warned, urging the global community to express solidarity. “This is a crime. This is an assault of freedom of speech. This is an assault on the profession of journalism. This is an assault on human dignity.”
In remarks to Russia’s TVC on Sept. 14, Zakharova said: “This is not about sanctions, not about some restrictive measures. This is a declaration of information war, a direct one, without any alternative…. This information war is based upon a distinctive Russophobic, nationalist ideology, the very same one we’ve repeatedly seen in history, including the most visible one in the 1930s. The methodology is the same, the driver is the same, and the technological means are different. But it is all the same."
She argued that one of the goals is to “restrict free speech for their own American citizens, and, ultimately, their right to speech altogether.”
And then to RT: “The degree of aggression with which all of this was expressed is off the scale. I think this is definitely a declaration of information war. It went on behind the scenes through the sanctions policy, but there was no declaration that the Russian media would now be openly attacked."
“This suggests that journalists all over the world should now understand that tomorrow this will be done to them. Therefore, if the media community does not unite now, if every media corporation head does not understand this, tomorrow … it will be too late,” the spokeswoman warned.