In Germany, the Kremlin’s global media operation is giving lavish coverage to populist far-right and leftist parties critical of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open-door immigration policy. In France, Macron’s sudden rise has undercut the candidacy of conservative François Fillon, a former prime minister who’s called for warmer relations with the Kremlin and an end to sanctions on Russia. Stories by Sputnik and RT have been largely sympathetic to Fillon, who’s been hurt by allegations that he gave his wife and children no-show government-paid jobs, and to Marine Le Pen of the far-right National Front, stressing her pro-Russian and anti-European views. Both outlets have been harder on the pro-European Macron, suggesting that the former economy minister used his position to help foreign banks and companies. [...]
With 22 bureaus around the world and a staff of 1,000, RT has seen its budget jump from $30 million in 2005 to about $320 million this year, even as most other government spending has been slashed in a recession. Its current budget includes $20 million to start a French-language channel, expected to begin operating later this year, adding to its English, Spanish, German, and Arabic services. [...]
RT’s impact may be limited. The channel is “very polemical, ideological, and anti-Western, especially anti-American,” says Ellen Mickiewicz, a Duke University political science professor who’s studied RT. She says only about 1 percent of RT’s YouTube videos—which the company says have gotten more than 4 billion views—are political and that its TV audience is tiny. In Britain in January, RT had 0.05 percent of viewers, fewer than the Welsh-language Channel 4. So the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on RT can seem like “wasted money,” Mickiewicz says.
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