Radio Station Cuts Deal to Air 'Russian Propaganda'

Kansas City radio lovers can now hear six hours of Russian state-owned media per day, the Hill reports. That's because a Florida-based company, RM Broadcasting LLC, has agreed with Radio Sputnik to broadcast its Russian media through the Alpine Broadcasting Corp, which airs on three frequencies around Kansas City and in Washington, DC. The Kremlin mouthpiece can be heard from 6am-9am and 6pm-9pm every day of the week. According to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Sputnik and another Russian state media outlet played a role in influencing the 2016 federal election.

Now Arnold Ferolito, the man behind RM Broadcasting, is chafing under a federal requirement that his company register as a foreign agent. "Ninety percent of the programming is generated right here in the United States," Ferolito tells the Kansas City Star, which broke the story. "I just sell airtime that's all I do. The government put a gun to my head and forced me to sign." When registering in 2019, RM Broadcasting said it made $1.43 million in the deal, though Ferolito insists he's not turning a profit. "The American dream is dead in a lot of ways," he says. "There's people hell bent on Russia, Russia, Russia. One of these days it's going to be China." (More Russia stories.)