What it was like to be an American working for Russia's RT America

The New York Times

The Russian government-owned network, which laid off most of its staff in wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine before shuttering, was seen internally as a normal American cable news network with headquarters in Washington D.C. and bureaus in New York, Los Angeles and Miami helping produce a full state of news, comedy and political commentary. "Yes, it was funded by President Vladimir V. Putin’s Russia," explains The New York Times' Cecilia Kang. "Yes, the Department of Justice described RT America and the company that finances it as 'alter egos of the Kremlin.' But the former employees said that despite instances when they were forbidden to refer to Russia’s 2014 attack on Ukraine as an “invasion,” they had a pretty free hand." Lee Camp, a comedian who hosted a political commentary show on RT America for eight  years, says: "I had complete free rein over whatever I wanted to say and was never censored. People want to make out RT America to be this crazy propaganda network where we have a hotline to Vladimir Putin and he rings my Bat Phone regularly."