FBI looking at Cassandra Fairbanks and Sputnik and RT employees 
FBI document cache sheds light on inner workings of Russia’s U.S. news (and propaganda) network
FBI document cache sheds light on inner workings of Russia’s U.S. news (and propaganda) network
Quote from the Rossiya Segodnya [Sputnik] Style Guide. (Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: AP[2], Getty Images [3]).
WASHINGTON — On Jan. 23, 2017, the day he started as a Washington correspondent for Sputnik, Andrew Feinberg was emailed a copy of a “style guide” that laid out the organization’s mission.
The 103-page handbook for publications of Sputnik’s Kremlin-owned parent company, Rossiya Segodnya, made it clear that traditional journalistic neutrality was not the company’s mandate. Instead, Sputnik reporters were told they should provide readers “with a Russian viewpoint” on issues and “maintain allegiance” to the country.
“Our main goal is to inform the international audience about Russia’s political, economic and ideological stance on both local and global issues,” the guide reads. “To this end, we must always strive to be objective but we must also stay true to the national interest of the Russian Federation.”
“I can assure you there is no hidden agenda,” Gorshkov said.
Contacted by Yahoo News, Sputnik spokeswoman Beverly Hunt denied that the style guide applied to the work of the company’s American reporters.
“To our knowledge, Feinberg has never been employed by Rossiya Segodnya, which is a Russian news agency and does not provide services on US territory,” Hunt said in a written statement.
In fact, Feinberg’s email shows the style guide was sent to him by his editor at Sputnik, Peter Martinichev.
Feinberg, who worked at Sputnik from January until May, turned over the flash drive filled with emails during an interview by an FBI agent and Justice Department national security lawyer for over two hours on Sept. 1. In August, another ex-Sputnik staffer, Joe Fionda, also gave the Justice Department a packet of information with hundreds of documents. Yahoo News obtained copies of the documents Feinberg and Fionda provided to law enforcement.
Hunt, the Sputnik spokeswoman, noted that the ex-staffers had “copied corporate emails and internal documents.”
Yahoo News has independently verified the authenticity of some of the Sputnik emails Feinberg gave to the Justice Department. The messages depict a company that stuck closely to the Kremlin’s party line.
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“I introduced myself, told him I was Sputnik’s WH reporter and that I’d love a chance to give him and his dad to tell their story without the Russia conspiracy mongering. He said he and his dad are BIG fans of Sputnik and gave me his contact information,” Feinberg wrote.
It’s unclear exactly how many people Sputnik is reaching. In an April email, Feinberg asked Vasily Minakov, the company’s head of global public relations and communications, for information about the size of Sputnik’s audience. Minakov would not divulge those figures, but he noted Sputnik’s large social media footprint.
“We are not disclosing these figures openly. What we may say that Sputnik has around 14 M subscribers in total on social media,” Minakov said.
The emails Feinberg provided to the Justice Department show how Sputnik echoed the Kremlin’s message. In one instance, Feinberg’s bosses urged him to come up with stories deflecting blame for the chemical-weapons attack on Syrian civilians last spring away from Russia’s Syrian ally, President Bashar Assad. Feinberg told Yahoo News that he left the company earlier this year over pressure to advance a conspiracy theory, heavily promoted by Fox News commentator Sean Hannity, about the death of a young staffer at the Democratic National Committee.
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At Sputnik’s newswire, Feinberg’s work was edited by a group of four editors that included D.C. journalist Michael Hughes and Zlatko Kovach. The team was led by Martinichev and his deputy, Anastasia Sheveleva, both Russians. Multiple emails Feinberg provided to the Justice Department indicate he had to get approval and instructions from his superiors on “angles” for everything he wrote. A Feb. 23 message from Hughes was one of many times this rule was communicated to Feinberg.
“Always pitch story angle BEFORE you do anything, get approval before writing and submitting a story. You should never submit an unapproved story. We might kill it if angle does not fit,” Hughes wrote.
The word “before” was bolded, underlined and highlighted in yellow. All of the emails cited in this story are being presented as they were written, including any spelling and grammar mistakes.
According to the emails on Feinberg’s thumb drive, he also had to get approval for every question he asked White House officials including the press secretary at the daily briefing.
“We do it in this way to ensure we are on the same page regarding the question we ask on the record. It should never be a surprise,” Martinichev wrote in a March 13 missive.
In her email to Yahoo News, Hunt, the Sputnik spokeswoman, defended this pre-approval process as a standard procedure.
“Most editors in any news agency need to know questions for a briefing. It’s a regular practice,” Hunt said.
At Yahoo News and most U.S. media companies, editors may suggest and discuss questions with their White House correspondents, but there is no formal approval process. The emails suggest an extraordinary level of micromanagement.
While Feinberg’s immediate supervisors worked in Washington, the emails show Sputnik staff in Moscow were regularly involved in the publication of stories. Sputnik stories followed rigid style guidelines. In a Feb. 21 message to Feinberg, Hughes described how the American editors learned the ropes.
“When I first started they sent a couple ‘enforcers’ from Moscow that reviewed ALL of our stories in the beginning,” Hughes wrote, adding, “It beat the main guidelines into our brains – a little tough love, so to speak. I called it style indoctrination.”
Hunt provided Yahoo News with a statement from Hughes where he said this comment was “obviously a joke.”
“We ‘indoctrinate’ the very same way all news agencies ‘indoctrinate’ their newswire writers,” said Hughes.
On Feb. 9, Feinberg complained to Hughes that Sputnik staff in Moscow added an entire paragraph to a story he wrote without informing him.
“I didn’t write it, it’s slanted at best, and my name is on it,” Feinberg wrote.
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“US-Russian relations soured following disagreements over the crisis in Ukraine. The United States imposed sanctions against Russia after Crimea held a referendum in 2014 in which a vast majority of its residents decided to reunify with Russia. Russian officials have denied meddling in Ukraine’s internal affairs and have called allegations of interfering in US elections absurd and an attempt to distract from domestic issues,” it said.
Hughes informed Feinberg that the disclaimers about Ukraine and alleged election intervention were required at Sputnik.
“We must write that paragraph- that’s the Russian position not to mention the truth,” Hughes wrote, adding, “Editors get in trouble for leaving it out. So, the option would be to take your name off the article if you have a problem with the last paragraph.”
“I suppose I’ll just have to get used to it and wrap my head around it. My name can stay on for now,” Feinberg replied.
“I had same experience!” said Hughes.
Hunt, Sputnik’s spokeswoman, defended the mandatory paragraph that was added to Feinberg’s story.
“Background with the second side position is required in stories for balance and a usual practice in many newswire services,” she said.
Hughes further argued the paragraph contained “simple facts.”
“Russian government officials have repeatedly denied involvement in U.S. elections. And we restated the Russian government’s position on the Ukraine crisis. No slant involved,” Hughes said.
The documents provided by Fionda and Feinberg could fuel growing demands by members of Congress that Sputnik and RT register with the Justice Department under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), which was passed by Congress in 1938 to combat Nazi propaganda. The law requires foreign agencies engaged in lobbying or efforts influence American public opinion to file detailed reports on their funding and operations. There is an exemption in the law for state-funded media organizations engaged in legitimate news gathering.
Fionda’s information packet included a letter to the Justice Department urging the government to investigate whether Sputnik is violating FARA. Fionda said he worked at the company from Sept. 5 to Oct. 19, 2015, and felt Sputnik engaged in “possible FARA violations” and was acting as a direct agent of the Russian government.
Sputnik has said both Fionda and Feinberg were fired due to performance-related issues. Indeed, the emails Feinberg provided to the Justice Department show multiple instances where his editors expressed unhappiness with his work, including his trouble mastering the company’s rigid story format and falling behind Sputnik’s fast-paced schedule. Sputnik’s spokeswoman, Hunt, reiterated these complaints about Feinberg’s work, and said he “continually failed to meet the most fundamental newswire language and requirements.”
The thousands of documents Feinberg provided to the Justice Department do not show any discussion of Rich. They do include multiple instances of Feinberg being told to ask officials about the possibility Assad might not have been responsible for the chemical attacks in Syria.
On April 19, Martinichev wrote to Feinberg and pressed him to ask the White House “if they are reviewing all these recent controversial data” indicating other militants may have used chemical weapons in Syria “after their statement that only Assad had this capability.” Feinberg followed up by emailing multiple senior officials and asking an assistant to former press secretary Sean Spicer if he could ask a question about “chemical weapons capability” in Syria during that day’s televised White House briefing.
“It would make my editors’ day if Sean could be so kind as to call on me by name, if he can remember and its not a problem,” Feinberg wrote.
Sputnik has an office in the heart of downtown Washington about three blocks from the White House. The company was launched in 2014 after Putin dissolved the country’s main state news agency and replaced it with Rossiya Segodnya. Putin decreed that this new company should be focused on promoting Moscow’s agenda beyond its borders, and he tapped Dmitry Kiselyov — a conservative television host and staunch supporter of the Russian government — to head the new company.
“Welcome to the treasury of all things Russia did… not do,” the blog’s introduction begins. “Take a considered view of all the allegations usually accepted as incontrovertible fact by the mainstream media.”
Sputnik’s expansion in Washington and the larger changes to Russia’s state media apparatus came after Moscow’s military leadership began emphasizing propaganda as a weapon in the country’s arsenal. In February 2013, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, the operational head of the Russian armed forces, published a treatise advocating for expanding the country’s strategy to include “informational … and other non-military measures.” Gerasimov called for using “informational actions” along with “special-operations forces and internal opposition to create a permanently operating front through the entire territory of the enemy state.”
“Long-distance, contactless actions against the enemy are becoming the main means of achieving combat and operational goals,” Gerasimov wrote.
“Countering hybrid threats is a priority for NATO, as they blur the line between war and peace — combining military aggression with political, diplomatic, economic, cyber and disinformation measures,” the press release said.
The intelligence report noted the Russian state media outlets cast President Trump as “as the target of unfair coverage from traditional US media outlets that they claimed were subservient to a corrupt political establishment” and hailed his “victory as a vindication of Putin’s advocacy of global populist movements.” According to the report, the Kremlin-owned media organizations also attacked Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton, with allegations of corruption, rumors of health problems and damaging emails hacked from her campaign and published by WikiLeaks.
The packet of information Fionda provided to the Justice Department focused on two Sputnik employees: Cassandra Fairbanks and Lee Stranahan.
@DonKnock @SJUGrad13 @88m3 @Menelik II @wire28 @smitty22 @Reality @fact @Hood Critic @ExodusNirvana @Blessed Is the Man @THE MACHINE @OneManGang @dtownreppin214 @JKFrazier @tmonster @blotter @BigMoneyGrip @Soymuscle Mike @Grano-Grano @.r.
doesn't surprise me one bit.. I'm surprised no reporter inquired about the conversation they had 
