Maffick Media is a media content production company created and financed by the Russian government. The outlet started as part of a renewed communication strategy implemented by the Russian government in the past five years or so consisting of content crafted to influence western audiences. Of these outlets, Maffick Media was positioned to reach young audiences through viral content.
The decision of the Russian government to invest in new forms and formats of media content was primarily prompted by the problems that RT and other Russian government funded outlets have increasingly faced in recent years in the West, such as the regulatory backlash (with media regulation authorities increasingly scrutinizing the content aired by RT; i.e. threats by the regulator in the UK) and a phenomenon of growing rejection of Russian government-funded media by experts and journalists (i.e. in Germany, RT has had in recent years problems to find people to interview).
Maffick Media is part of a large and growing anti-western narrative supported by a circle of journalists and influencers based in western countries, many of whom had connections (usually employment) with Russian government-funded media outlets (they include Abby Martin, formerly a host of a program on RT America, who later launched her own documentary platform financed by the Venezuelan government; Kevin Gosztola of the Shadowproof blog; Dan Cohen, a journalist working for RT America; and many others).
Media assets
News portals: In the NOW, Waste-Ed, Soap Box
State Media Matrix Typology: Captured Private (CaPr)
Ownership and governance
Maffick Media is a content production outlet that was majority-owned by Ruptly, a subsidiary of the Kremlin-funded RT, according to corporate data collected by the Media and Journalism Research Center in the past five years and media reports. Ruptly owned 51% of Maffick, with the remainder owned by Naouai.
In 2019, however, Anissa Naouai, a former anchor at the Kremlin-funded RT, registered Maffick LLC as her own, fully owned entity, in the Delaware state. The registration was made on 29 July 2019 by VCORP SERVICES, LLC. There is a second entity with the same name (Maffick LLC) registered in Delaware in 2006.
According to journalists who write about the Russian government, the Delaware registration was prompted by growing criticism of Maffick’s relation with the Russian state. Journalists from media outlets covering Russia say that by registering in the U.S., Maffick is trying to simply hide its ownership in a black box. One of the journalists also pointed to the fact that Maffick also re-registered its URL in June 2020, another indication of its attempts to hide ownership structures.
There are obvious links between RT and Maffick Media’s outlets. The company operated at the same address as Ruptly on Lennestrasse 1 Berlin and registered its website, InTheNow.media, using RT’s domain registration address. Now, Naouai claims, the German entity does not operate anymore.
According to documents submitted by Maffick Media in its registration under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) in the U.S., the outlet mentions that it has a contract with TV-Novosti, the operator of RT.
Almost a week after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Maffick’s CEO, Anissa Naouai, said that she “terminated Maffick’s service agreement” with RT and “severed all contact.” A journalist at RT in London said on 2 March 2022 that Maffick in the past few years didn’t have any ownership links with the Russian government. The outlet had a “consultancy contract” with TV-Novosti to provide “news content through online portals run by Maffick Media,” information that could not be verified from more sources.
Source of funding and budget
Maffick has never publicly disclosed its sources of funding. However, its representatives admitted in the past that Maffick received funding from the Russian government, via Ruptly, a media provider owned by RT. Since 2022, however, Maffick Media has been trying to distance itself from the Russian government, playing down the financial role that the Russian government has in the company.
The owner of Maffick, Anissa Naouai claimed in the past that Maffick Media was funded mostly through commercial sources, namely sale of media content and advertising.
Although the commercial revenues generated by Maffick Media have most likely grown in recent years thanks to the large audience that its outlets have attracted, it’s doubtful that Maffick Media stopped receiving financing from the Russian government, according to journalists from an exiled, Russia-focused investigative outlet. These financial links, however, are extremely difficult to unearth because, in many cases, the Russian government uses informal methods to pay its media abroad.
Since October 2019, Maffick received payments totalling US$ 5.6m from TV-Novosti, the Russian state-owned media company that operates RT, according to data from the U.S. Department of Justice.
Editorial independence
Maffick’s representatives say that the company is editorially independent of RT or any Russian government bodies. Maffick’s COO J. Ray Sparks, for example, insisted that Maffick was editorially independent of RT, giving examples of stories that were critical of Russia. Sparks left Maffick in 2020 to launch his own internet company. Sparks also added that there was no editorial structure or set of editorial rules imposed from further up in the corporate structure. According to him, the editorial control was entirely in Naouai’s hands.
However, disinformation and fact-checking websites have regularly identified the Russian-owned Germany-registered media (including Maffick) as disinformation tools, used to spread Russian propaganda. Existing content analysis indicates that In The Now is a mixture of highly political stories and “absolutely apolitical entertainment and emotional clickbait” designed as “camouflage” for Russian propaganda.
Concerns about the editorial independence of Maffick’s outlets were repeatedly raised during the past three years. The outlet is known for adopting Russia’s stance on foreign policy issues. In Germany, the outlets were referred to as “tools of the Russian government.”
Although Maffick’s Naouai said a week after the war broke out in Ukraine that she terminated her contract with RT (and immediately started posting content against the Russian president Vladimir Putin), the outlet has a long history of support for the Russian government.
According to Media and Journalism Research Center, Maffick Media has no internal statute that establishes its editorial independence and no mechanisms that would ensure the implementation of such a statute.
Journalists from a Russia-focused news outlet in exile, with insights into how Russian state media operate, say that such mechanisms would not be functional simply because the people working for these outlets openly accept their roles in supporting the viewpoints and policies of the Russian state.
October 2023