VERSAILLE, May 29. /TASS/. French President Emmanuel Macron lashed out at the work of the Russian news agency Sputnik and RT international news TV channel during the election campaign in France.
"I have always had exemplar relations with foreign journalists but as a politician I should expressly say that when media bodies disseminate a shameless lie, these are not journalists, this is the work of the bodies for exerting influence. Precisely Sputnik and RT were such bodies of influence during the presidential campaign and they disseminated a lie both about me personally and about the campaign I was holding," Macron said at a press conference after talks with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.
"This is why, I made a decision to bar their representatives from my election headquarters. All the other journalists, including really professional Russian journalists, had access to my election headquarters," Macron said.
As the French president stressed, "I want to state that both Sputnik and RT behaved not as the bodies of the press and as journalists but as the bodies of exerting influence and as the bodies of propaganda, moreover, the bodies of false propaganda."