Here’s what RT removal from YouTube Premium package means

MOSCOW (Sputnik) – The removal of the RT broadcaster from Google’s top YouTube content packages for advertisers is a sign of political pressure aimed at forcing it out of the US market, RT Deputy Editor-in-Chief Kirill Karnovich-Valua said Thursday.

On Tuesday, the Bloomberg news agency reported that Google, which owns YouTube, dropped RT from its packages of most popular channels aimed at ad buyers.

“It is absolutely unacceptable that, while there were no notifications of any policy changes sent to RT, such internal info appears to have been leaked to the US media by Google. This speaks to the unprecedented political pressure increasingly applied to all RT partners and relationships in a concerted effort to push our channel out of the US market entirely, and by any means possible,”

Karnovich-Valua said, as quoted on the RT website.

The deputy editor-in-chief added that RT had a Google premium partner status since 2010 and was officially recognized as the most watched news channel on YouTube, so the changes would not affect the broadcaster’s monetization on the platform.

On Sunday, the broadcaster’s Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan said that the RT might cease its activities in the United States due to increasing pressure from the country’s authorities.

In September, the US Department of Justice asked a contractor of RT in the United States to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), while in June US congressmen introduced the Foreign Agents Registration Modernization and Enforcement Act bill, which would broaden the scope of FARA to include RT, by expanding DoJ authority to investigate attempts to “unlawfully influence the political process.”