WOULD YOU TAKE MONEY FROM RUSSIA TO BROADCAST PROPAGANDA? • WAMU WEEKLY LISTENERS OFF 7% FROM NOVEMBER 2016

John Garziglia

Radio Sputnik’s relationship with DC-area communications attorney John Garziglia is raising legal and ethical questions. In some ways it is hard to fault Garziglia for taking Russian money. 

His company, Reston Translator, LLC, barely made ends meet during a decade of leasing FM translator 105.5 FM to WAMU and Bluegrass Country.

According to a source at WAMU who asked not to be named, WAMU was paying Garziglia around $1,000 per month for re-transmission of their HD-2 channel on 105.5. Garziglia’s monthly expenses were around the same amount.

Garziglia filed a required a Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) disclosure statement. It revealed that Rossiya Segodnya, the Russian Company that owns Sputnik, is paying Garziglia $30,000 cash each month.

I have asked several people I know in biz in the last few days whether they would take of turn down the Russian money. Most said (myself included) they would take the cash.

Meanwhile, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) apparently is taking a closer look at both broadcasters in the Washington, DC that are leasing air time on their stations to Radio Sputnik. DOJ required Garziglia to file a Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) disclosure statement. Garziglia did as requested and also filed an objection including his clarification of arrangement.

President Putin recently visited Rossiya Segodnya

DOJ is also expected to require a FARA disclosure statement from Arthur Liu, owner of Multicultural Radio Broadcasting and licensee of WZHF AM 1390 located in suburban Maryland.  WZHF began leasing its airtime to Radio Sputnik in mid November. 105.5 FM then repeats Sputnik on WZHF.

In addition to the scrutiny from DOJ, in September members of the House of Representatives asked the FCC to investigate Radio Sputnik which a spokesperson called “a 24-hour propaganda outlet in the heart of the U.S. capitol.”

It is unknown what, if any, action will be taken by DOJ, the FCC or any other regulator against the two broadcasters. Plus, the legality of rebroadcasting Russian propaganda is also in dispute.

Sputnik Editor Margarita Simonyan meets with Putin 

In addition to free speech claims, Garziglia argues in his letter responding to the FARA request that his 105.5 FM translator does not meet DOJ’s definition of a “foreign agent” because he and his translator are not ...acting as an agent, representative, employee or servant of Rossiya Segodnya, or that is acting at the order, request, or under the direction or control, of a foreign principal.

Garziglia says his translator is a “carrier,” not a content originator, and he is a “vendor” when he leases time. This defense is similar to what Facebook and Twitter have said about fake news items posted on their platforms in their attempts to influence the 2016 election.

However, there are a basic difference between Twitter and Garziglia’s translator and Lu’s station WZHF: The stations require a federal license to broadcast. FCC rules require when a broadcaster accepts money in exchange for airtime, the transaction is disclosed on-air and the broadcaster accepts liability for the programming.

This requirement is based on the principle that members of the public should know who is trying to persuade them with the programming being aired. The license holder is ultimately responsible for the content that appears on his/her station.

There are key questions still need to be answered:

• 105.5 FM is making the required on-air disclosures saying Rossiya Segodnya is paying for programming. But where does Rossiya Segodnya get its money? 

• Are time brokerage deals like these attempts to get around laws forbidding foreign ownership of US broadcast stations?

• What is the legal definition of “propaganda”?

NOVEMBER NIELSEN AUDIO PPM TRENDS

As we reported yesterday, the dates when Nielsen Audio conducted the November 2017 survey were October 12 - November 8. In 2016 the November numbers were gathered between October 6  and November 2. So, these two survey periods are an apples-to-apples comparison of listening just prior to the 2016 election and on3\e year later.

How are NPR News/Talk stations doing in November 2017 compared with November 2016? So far it is a mixed bag.

In Washington, DC, WAMU, the de facto flagship station for NPR News, is down 7% in estimated weekly listeners. When you add the estimates from Baltimore, WAMU’s total PPM weekly listener total is 912,200, also slightly off-pace from November 2016.

In the New York City metro results, WNYC-FM was up slightly. Adding the estimated weekly listeners in the Long Island and Northern New Jersey metros give WNYC-FM an estimated 1,082,000 weekly listeners, also up a bit.

Classical WQXR was up substantially from November 2016. Triple A WFUV was about the same. Adding WFUV’s estimated weekly listeners in the Long Island metro, the station had 433,800 weekly listeners.

KQED remains the noncommercial station with the largest number of measured weekly listeners. In November 2017 KQED had an estimated 1,211,600 weekly listeners, adding numbers from San Jose and repeater KQEI in Sacramento.

In Chicago, WBEZ continues to increase its estimated number of weekly listeners, up 12 % from November 2016. WDCB’s tasty blend of jazz and blues also had a nice one year boost.