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C-SPAN Live Stream Of Congressional Session Interrupted By Kremlin-Funded RT News Broadcast Sparks Social Media Speculation About Russian Hacking [Video]

By JohnThomas Didymus
Published on: 23:25 PST, Jan 12, 2017

Social media exploded in a frenzy of excited speculation on Thursday after C-SPAN’s live feed covering proceedings in the House of Representatives was interrupted unexpectedly for about 10 minutes by the live feed of the Kremlin-funded English-language news channel RT (formerly Russia Today).

The U.S. network’s online video stream was disrupted by a broadcast of the news by RT, straight from Moscow, as Representative Maxine Waters (D-California) was speaking about a Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) regulation on the floor of the House.

“I urge my colleagues to join me… in opposing H.R. 78 to ensure that the actions of Trump’s SEC are in the interests of Americans’ economic stability and not in Russia’s or Wall Street’s interest,” Rep. Waters said,

“At this time, with the bill that would basically take our cop on the block, the SEC, and literally obliterate…”

She was not allowed to complete her statement as the stream switched suddenly, at about 2:30 p.m. ET, from its live coverage of the congressional session to an RT broadcast of the news.

Deadspin’s Tim Burke was reportedly the first to tweet about the incident. The C-SPAN feed had reportedly begun freezing intermittently since about 1:25 p.m. before it cut abruptly to the RT news feed, showing the first few minutes of “Worlds Apart” hosted by Oksana Boyko.

The RT feed aired for about 10 minutes before the stream reverted to the regular C-SPAN programming.

The glitch occurred amid growing controversy, debate and scrutiny of allegations of Russian hacking of the U.S. 2016 general election, with multiple U.S. intelligence services, including the CIA, FBI, and NSA, saying that they believed the Russians conducted the hacking to help President Donald Trump win the election. The intelligence reports also accused Russia of using RT during the election to spread misinformation aimed at swinging votes in Trump’s favor.

Representative Maxine Waters: C-SPAN broadcast of her speech on the floor of the House was interrupted by RT news broadcast [Image by Molly Riley/AP Images]

The controversy over Russian hacking of U.S. election intensified this week following the publication of a document that alleged that the Kremlin had been cultivating financial and business relationship with Trump over five years and that Russian intelligence officials have “compromising” information that could be used to blackmail him.

Against the backdrop of intense speculation on social media that the latest incident was yet another case of Russian hacking of U.S. systems, C-SPAN released a statement on Thursday afternoon confirming that its video stream was interrupted by an RT broadcast for several minutes. The organization said that it was investigating the incident but that meanwhile it was operating under the assumption that the interruption was due to an “internal routing error.”

“This afternoon the online feed of C-SPAN was briefly interrupted by RT programming,” the statement said.

“We are currently investigating and troubleshooting this occurrence. As RT is one of the networks we regularly monitor, we are operating under the assumption that it was an internal routing issue.”

In a subsequent statement released later in the evening, the U.S. network said that preliminary investigation appeared to confirm that the interruption was due to an “internal routing error.”

“We don’t believe we were hacked,” the statement said.

“Instead, our initial investigation suggests that this was caused by an internal routing error. We take our network security very seriously and will continue with a deeper investigation, which may take some time.”

“If we learn anything different as a result of this investigation, we will have a further public statement,” the statement concluded.

RT also reported the incident on its website, characterizing the reaction on Twitter as an eruption of “conspiracy theory speculation.” RT noted that many suggested on social media that Russia had once again hacked U.S. systems and was waging cyber warfare against the U.S.

But RT insisted that it “had no way of cutting into the C-SPAN broadcast.”

Despite RT’s denial, many social media users argued that the incident, coming soon after references, during congressional hearings, to Russia’s alleged interference in U.S. internal affairs, was “significant,” “nefarious” and “disturbing.”

Social media users noted, for instance, that the incident occurred soon after retired Marine Corps general James Mattis said during a confirmation hearing that the U.S. government should be very concerned about Russia “on several fronts” and that President Vladimir Putin was “trying to break NATO.”

According to the New York Times, had Rep. Waters’ speech continued uninterrupted viewers would have heard her mention Russia and Donald Trump several times more.

She later told the New York Times that she had not received a satisfactory explanation about “how this happened or why it happened or if it’s happened before.”

“I just think it’s strange,” she said.

“At a time when our intelligence agencies are very confident and basically have confirmed that Russia hacked the D.N.C. and other political interests, and then… while I’m on the floor of the House, talking about Trump and Russia, I get interfered with and interrupted by Russia Today.”

[Featured Image by Cliff Owen/AP images]

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