RT (TV network)

The creation of RT was a part of a larger public relations effort by the Russian Government in 2005 that was intended to improve the image of Russia abroad.[31] RT was conceived by former media minister Mikhail Lesin,[32] and Russian president Vladimir Putin's press spokesperson Aleksei Gromov.[33] At the time of RT's founding, RIA Novosti director Svetlana Mironyuk stated: "Unfortunately, at the level of mass consciousness in the West, Russia is associated with three words: communism, snow and poverty," and added "we would like to present a more complete picture of life in our country."[32] It is registered as an autonomous nonprofit organization[3][34] funded by the federal budget of Russia through the Federal Agency on Press and Mass Communications of the Russian Federation.[35]

In 2005, RIA Novosti helped establish ANO TV-Novosti (or "Autonomous Non-profit Organization TV-News") to serve as the parent organization for the planned channel. ANO TV-Novosti was registered on 6 April 2005.[1] ANO TV-Novosti appointed Sergey Frolov as its CEO position;[36]

Former President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev visits RT offices with Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan

The channel was launched as Russia Today on 10 December 2005. At its launch, the channel employed 300 journalists, including approximately 70 from outside Russia.[31] Russia Today appointed Margarita Simonyan as its editor-in-chief, who recruited foreign journalists as presenters and consultants.[32] Simonyan stated that the channel's intent was to have a "professional format" akin to the BBC and Euronews that would "reflect Russia's opinion of the world" and present a "more balanced picture" of Russia.[37]

Simonyan, who was only 25 years old at the time of her hiring by the channel, was a former Kremlin pool reporter and had worked in journalism since she was 18. She told The New York Times that after the fall of the Soviet Union, many new young journalists were hired, resulting in a much younger pool of staffers than other news organizations.[38] Journalist Danny Schechter (who has appeared as a guest on RT)[39] has stated that having been part of the launch staff at CNN, he saw RT as another "channel of young people who are inexperienced, but very enthusiastic about what they are doing."[40] Shortly after the channel was launched, James Painter wrote that RT and similar news channels such as France 24 and TeleSUR saw themselves as "counter-hegemonic", offering a differing vision and news content from that of Western media like CNN and the BBC.[41]

Dmitry Medvedev took part in the launch of RT Documentary

Vladimir Putin during a visit to the new RT broadcasting centre

RT launched several new channels in ensuing years: the Arabic language channel Rusiya Al-Yaum in 2007, the Spanish language channel RT Actualidad in 2009, RT America – which focuses on the United States – in 2010, and the RT Documentary channel in 2011.[7]

In August 2007, Russia Today became the first television channel to report live from the North Pole (with the report lasting five minutes and 41 seconds). An RT crew participated in the Arktika 2007 Russian polar expedition, led by Artur Chilingarov on the Akademik Fyodorov icebreaker.[42][43] On 31 December 2007, RT's broadcasts of New Year's Eve celebrations in Moscow and Saint Petersburg were broadcast in the hours prior to the New Year's Eve event at New York City's Times Square.[43]

RT drew particular attention worldwide for its coverage of the 2008 South Ossetia war.[43][44][45] RT named Georgia as the aggressor[45] against the separatist governments of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which were protected by Russian troops.[46] RT saw this as the incident that showcased its newsgathering abilities to the world.[13] Margarita Simonyan stated, "we were the only ones among the English-language media who were giving the other side of the story – the South Ossetian side of the story."[44]

In 2009, Russia Today rebranded itself to simply the "RT" initials.[47] Simonyan denied that the name change was an attempt to hide its Russian origins, stating the corporate logo was changed to attract more viewers and commenting, "who is interested in watching news from Russia all day long?"[7]

In early 2010, RT unveiled a highly controversial advertising campaign called "Question More", which was created for the channel by Britain-based McCann Erickson.[15] One of the advertisements featured as part of the campaign showed President of the United States Barack Obama "morphing" into Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and asked: "Who poses the greatest nuclear threat?" The ad was banned in American airports. Another showed a Western soldier "merging" into a Taliban fighter and asks: "Is terror only inflicted by terrorists?"[48] One of RT's 2010 billboard advertisements won the British Awards for National Newspaper Advertising "Ad of the Month".[49]

RT is one of several international channels to challenge the United States media's global news coverage.[50] In 2010, Walter Isaacson, Chairman of the U.S. Government's Broadcasting Board of Governors (which runs Voice of America, Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Asia), called for more money to invest into the programs because, "We can't allow ourselves to be out-communicated by our enemies," mentioning specifically Russia Today, Iran's Press TV and China's China Central Television (CCTV) in the next sentence. He later explained he actually was referring to "enemies" in Afghanistan, not the nations he mentioned.[51] In 2011, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated that the United States was "losing the information war" abroad to foreign channels like RT, Al Jazeera and China Central Television[52] and that they are supplanting the Voice of America.[53][54]

In early 2012, shortly after his appointment as the United States Ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul challenged Margarita Simonyan[55] on Twitter, regarding allegations from RT[56] that he sent Alexei Navalny to study at Yale University.[55][56] According to RT, McFaul was referring to a comment in an article by political scientist Igor Panarin, which RT had specified were the views of the author.[57][58] McFaul then accepted an interview by Sophie Shevardnadze on RT on this and other issues and reasserted that the Obama administration wanted a "reset" in relations with Russia.[59][60]

On 17 April 2012, RT debuted World Tomorrow, a news interview programme hosted by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. The first guest on the program was Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.[61][62][63] The interview made global headlines as Nasrallah rarely gives interviews to Western media.[64] Commentators described this as a "coup"[65][66] or a "scoop".[67] WikiLeaks described the show as "a series of in-depth conversations with key political players, thinkers and revolutionaries from around the world."[68] It stated that the show is "independently produced and Assange has control"; WikiLeaks offers a "Broadcasters license, only".[47]

Assange said that RT would allow his guests to discuss things that they "could not say on a mainstream TV network."[69] Assange said that if Wikileaks had published Russian data, his relationship with RT might not have been so comfortable.[64] In August of that year, RT suffered a denial of service attack for several days by a group calling itself "Antileaks". It was speculated that the group was protesting Assange and/or Russia's jailing of members of the activist music group Pussy riot.[70]

On 23 October 2012, RT, along with Al Jazeera and C-SPAN, broadcast the Free and Equal Elections Foundation third-party debate among four third-party candidates for President of the United States.[71][72] On 5 November, RT broadcast the two candidates that were voted winners of that debate, Libertarian Party candidate Governor Gary Johnson and the Green Party of the United States candidate Jill Stein from RT's Washington, D.C. studio.[73][74][75]

In November 2012, Israeli Defense Force bombs severely damaged RT's offices in Gaza City, wounding four journalists, during Operation Pillar of Defense. The office was right next to that of the Israeli target, Al-Aqsa TV, a television station that was affiliated with the Palestinian militant group Hamas.

In May 2013, RT announced that former CNN host Larry King would host a new talk show on RT. King said in an advertisement on RT: "I would rather ask questions to people in positions of power, instead of speaking on their behalf."[76][77] As part of the deal, King would also bring his Hulu series Larry King Now to RT. On 13 June 2013, RT aired a preview telecast of King's new Thursday evening program Politicking, with the episode discussing Edward Snowden's leaking of the PRISM surveillance program.[78]

Vladimir Putin visited the new RT broadcasting centre in June 2013 and stated "When we designed this project back in 2005 we intended introducing another strong player on the international scene, a player that wouldn't just provide an unbiased coverage of the events in Russia but also try, let me stress, I mean – try to break the Anglo-Saxon monopoly on the global information streams. ... We wanted to bring an absolutely independent news channel to the news arena. Certainly the channel is funded by the government, so it cannot help but reflect the Russian government's official position on the events in our country and in the rest of the world one way or another. But I’d like to underline again that we never intended this channel, RT, as any kind of apologetics for the Russian political line, whether domestic or foreign."[79][6]

In early October 2014, RT announced the launch of a dedicated news channel, RT UK, aimed at British audiences. The new channel began operating on 30 October 2014.[80]

In 2018, some of the RT staff started a new media project Redfish.media that positions itself as "grassroots journalism".[81] The website has been criticized by an activist Musa Okwonga for deceptively taking an interview from him and then distributing it across RT channels while hiding its real affiliation.[82] Another similar project is In the NOW started in 2018.[83] On 15 February 2019 Facebook temporarily blocked the In the NOW page. Facebook said that even though it does not require pages to disclose who funds them, it had suspended the channel so viewers would not "be misled about who’s behind them". Anissa Naouai, the CEO of Maffick Media, which publishes the page, described the blocking as "unprecedented discrimination," and noted that Facebook didn't ask other channels to declare their parent company and financial affiliations. Facebook unblocked the page on 25 February 2019. Naouai said Facebook had agreed to unblock the page once it was updated to feature information related to In the NOW 's funding and management. She said this requirement has been applied to no other Facebook page. In the NOW also has an active channel on YouTube and regularly posts videos from Soapbox. [84][85][86]

When it was established in 2005, ANO TV-Novosti invested $30 million in start-up costs to establish RT,[12] with a budget of $30 million for its first year of operation. Half of the network's budget came from the Russian government; the other half came from pro-Kremlin commercial banks at the government's request.[41] Its annual budget increased from approximately $80 million in 2007 to $380 million in 2011, but was reduced to $300 million in 2012.[98][99] Russian President Vladimir Putin prohibited the reduction of funding for RT on 30 October 2012.[100]

About 80 percent of RT's costs are incurred outside Russia, paying partner networks around $260 million for the distribution of its channels in 2014.[101][102] In 2014, RT received 11.87 billion rubles ($310 million) in government funding that year and was expected to receive 15.38 billion rubles ($400 million) in 2015.[103] (For comparison the bigger BBC World Service Group had a $376 million budget in 2014–15.[104]) However at the start in 2015, as the ruble's value plummeted and a ten percent reduction in media subsidies was imposed, it was thought that RT's budget for the year would fall to about $236 million.[101][102] During the year, government funding was increased to 20.8 billion roubles (around $300 million in September).[105] In 2015, RT was expected to receive 19 billion rubles ($307 million) from the Russian government in 2016.[106]

According to RT, the network's feed is carried by 22 satellites and over 230 operators, which provides a distribution reach to about 700 million households in more than 100 countries,[107] and that RT America is available to 85 million households throughout the United States.[108]

In addition to its main English language channel RT International, RT UK and RT America, RT also runs Arabic language channel Rusiya Al-Yaum, Spanish-language channel Actualidad RT, as well as the documentary channel RTDoc. RT maintains 21 bureaus in 16 countries, including those in Washington, D.C., New York City, London, England; Paris, France; Delhi, India; Cairo, Egypt; Baghdad, Iraq; and Kiev, Ukraine. It employs over 2,000 media professionals worldwide.[4]

The sharp decline in the ruble at the end of 2014, forced it to postpone channels in German and French.[104]

As well as the news agency Ruptly, RT also operates the following websites: RT на русском (in Russian),[114] RT en français (French),[115] RT Deutsch (German).[116]

In 2015, RT's YouTube news channels were: RT (the main channel), RT America, RT Arabic, RT en Español, RT Deutsch, RT French, RT UK, RT на русском and the newly launched RT Chinese.[101]

In September 2012, RT signed a contract with Israeli-based RRSat to distribute high definition feeds of the channel in the United States, Latin America and Asia.[117] In October 2012, RT's Rusiya Al-Yaum and RT joined the high definition network Al Yah Satellite Communications ("YahLive").[118] On 12 July 2014, during his visit to Argentina, Putin announced that Actualidad RT will broadcast on free-to-air in the South American country, making it the first foreign television channel to be broadcast free-to-air there.[119][120] However, according to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Argentina's State Media Authorities decided to suspend RT on 11 June 2016, along with the Venezuelan television channel TeleSur that had been authorized by the previous left-leaning government of Cristina Kirchner. Officially, Argentina wants to devote RT's frequency spot to domestic broadcasts.[121] RT was made available on the dominant Australian subscription television platform Foxtel on 17 February 2015.[122]

Reliable figures for RT's worldwide audience are not available.[105] In the United States, RT typically pays cable and satellite services to carry its channel in subscriber packages.[123] In 2011, RT was the second most-watched foreign news channel in the United States (after BBC World News),[124] and the number one foreign network in five major U.S. urban areas in 2012.[125] It also rates well among younger Americans under 35 and among inner city areas.[125]

In the UK the Broadcasters' Audience Research Board (BARB) has included RT in the viewer data it publishes since 2012.[105] According to their data approximately 2.5 million Britons watched RT during the third quarter of 2012, making it the third most-watched rolling news channel in Britain, behind BBC News and Sky News (not including Sky Sports News).[92][126][127] However RT was soon overtaken by Al Jazeera English,[128] and viewing figures had dropped to about 2.1 million by the end of 2013.[129] For comparison it has marginally fewer viewers than S4C, the state-funded Welsh language broadcaster,[130] or minor channels such as Zing, Viva and Rishtey.[131] According to internal documents submitted for Kremlin review, RT's viewership amounts to less than 0.1 percent of Europe's television audience, except in Britain, where 2013 viewership was estimated at approximately 120,000 persons per day.[123] According to the leaked documents, RT was ranked 175th out of 278 channels in Great Britain in May 2013, or in fifth place out of eight cable news channels.[123] In August 2015, RT's average weekly viewing figure had fallen to around 450,000 (0.8 percent of the total UK audience), 100,000 fewer than in June 2012 and less than half that of Al Jazeera English.[105][132] In March 2016 the monthly viewing was figure 0.04%.[133]

Latin America is the second most significant area of influence for internet RT (rt.com). In 2013, RT ascended to the ranks of the 100 most watched websites in seven Latin American countries.[134]

A Pew Research survey of the most popular news videos on YouTube in 2011–12, found RT to be the top source with 8.5 percent of posts. However of these, 68 percent consisted of first-person video accounts of dramatic worldwide events, likely acquired by the network rather than created by it.[135][136] In 2013, RT became the first television news channel to reach 1 billion views on YouTube.[14] In 2014, its main (English) channel was reported have 1.4 million subscribers.[137]

In 2015, The Daily Beast reported that RT hugely exaggerated its global viewership and that its most-watched segments were on apolitical subjects.[138] Between 2013 and 2015, more than 80% of RT's viewership was for videos of accidents, crime, disasters, and natural phenomena, such as the 2013 Chelyabinsk meteor event, with less than 1% of viewership for political videos.[123] In late 2015, all of the 20 most watched videos on its main channel, totaling 300 million views were described as "disaster/novelty". Of the top 100, only small number could be categorized as political with only one covering Ukraine.[105] The most popular video of Russian president Putin shows him singing "Blueberry Hill" at a 2010 St. Petersburg charity event.[123] In 2017, The Washington Post analysed RT's popularity and concluded that "it’s not very good at its job" as "Moscow’s propaganda arm" due to its relative unpopularity.[139] RT has disputed both The Daily Beast 's and The Washington Post 's assessments and has said that their analyses used outdated viewership data.[140] [141]

A study involving Professor Robert Orttung at George Washington University states that RT uses human interest stories without ideological content to attract viewers to its channels. Also between January and May 2015, the Russian-language channel actually had the most viewers, with approximately double the number of the main channel, despite only having around one third the number of subscribers.[101]

The Alyona Show, hosted by Alyona Minkovski, ran from 2009 to 2012 (when Minkovski left RT to join The Huffington Post). Daily Beast writer Tracy Quan described The Alyona Show as "one of RT's most popular vehicles".[145] The New Republic columnist Jesse Zwick wrote that one journalist told him that Minkovski is "probably the best interviewer on cable news."[146] Benjamin R. Freed wrote in the avant-garde culture magazine SOMA that "The Alyona Show does political talk with razor-sharp wit."[147] David Weigel called the show "an in-house attempt at a newsy cult hit" and noted that "her meatiest segments were about government spying, and the Federal Reserve, and America's undeclared wars".[45] Minkovski had complained about being characterized as if she was "Putin's girl in Washington" or as being "anti-American".[147] After Minkovski argued that Glenn Beck was "not on the side of America. And the fact that my channel is more honest with the American people is something you should be ashamed of.", Columbia Journalism Review writer Julia Ioffe asked "since when does Russia Today defend the policies of any American president? Or the informational needs of the American public, for that matter?"[13]

From April to August 2011, RT ran a half-hour primetime show Adam vs. the Man,[148][149][150] hosted by former Iraq War Marine veteran and high-profile anti-war activist Adam Kokesh. David Weigel writes that Kokesh defended RT's "propaganda" function, saying "We're putting out the truth that no one else wants to say. I mean, if you want to put it in the worst possible abstract, it's the Russian government, which is a competing protection racket against the other governments of the world, going against the United States and calling them on their bullshit."[45] The conservative media watchdog Accuracy in Media criticized Kokesh's appearance on RT, writing RT uses Americans like Kokesh to make propaganda points.[151]

Reviewing Julian Assange's show World Tomorrow, The Independent noted that Assange, who was under house arrest, was "largely deferential" in asking some questions of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who himself was in hiding. However, he also asked tough questions such as why Nasrallah had not supported Arab revolts against Syrian leaders, when he had supported them in Tunisia, Yemen, Egypt, and other countries.[64] The New York Times journalist Allesandra Stanley wrote that "practically speaking, Mr. Assange is in bed with the Kremlin, but on Tuesday's show he didn't put out" and that he "behaved surprisingly like a standard network interviewer."[61] Douglas Lucas in Salon wrote that the RT deal "may just be a profitable way for him to get a gigantic retweet."[47] Glenn Greenwald, who has been a guest on RT,[152] wrote that RT presenting the Julian Assange show led to "a predictable wave of snide, smug attacks from American media figures".[153] Mark Adomanis rebuts some of the "fevered denunciations" against RT and Julian Assange in an article in Forbes.[67] A Moscow Times writer noted that RT has received "considerable" criticism in general.[43]

"Breaking the Set" (2012–2015) presenter and correspondent Abby Martin

The English language RT International, RT America and RT UK channels carry similar programming, with the latter channels focusing more on news from the United States and the United Kingdom. RT Arabic and Actualidad RT in Spanish feature their own news presenters, as well as translated versions of RT's English programming.

Marcin Maczka writes that RT's ample financing has allowed RT to attract experienced journalists and use the latest technology.[98] RT anchors and correspondents tend to concentrate on controversial world issues such as the financial and banking scandals, corporate impact on the global economy, and western demonstrations. It has also aired views by various conspiracy theorists, including neo-Nazis, White Supremacists, and Holocaust deniers (presented as "human rights activists").[154] News from Russia is of secondary importance and such reports emphasize Russian modernisation and economic achievements, as well as Russian culture and natural landscapes, while downplaying Russia's social problems or corruption.[38][98]

Russian Telegraph logo

In 2017, RT ran a mock live tweeting program under the hashtag "#1917LIVE" to mark the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution.[155]

The #1917Live project had multimedia social plug-ins, such as Periscope live streaming, as well as virtual reality panoramic videos.[156]

RT's current feature programs include (with presenters parenthesised):[157]

RT's current on-air staff includes 25 people from RT News, 25 from RT America, and 8 from RT UK.[185]

Current News Presenters Kevin Owen Colin Bray Rory Suchet Andrew Farmer Eunan O'Neill Neil Harvey Sean Thomas News presenter – Correspondents Nikki Aaron Daniel Hawkins Egor Piskunov Nadira Tudor Correspondents Paula Slier – Middle East bureau Other presenters George Galloway – RT UK bureau Business presenters Stacy Herbert Max Keiser Edward Harrison Documentary presenters Martyn Andrews – entertainment, cookery and travel (formerly of Wayfarer/Moscow Out/Venice of the North) James Brown – Discovering Russia (formerly news presenter and host of Close-Up Russia)

Former Julian Assange – host of World Tomorrow Neave Barker Jason de la Peña Dmitry Glukhovsky Adam Kokesh – host of Adam vs. the Man Abby Martin Alyona Minkovski – host of The Alyona Show Karen Roberts Ed Schultz – RT America Liz Wahl – Washington, D.C. bureau Ahron Young Erin Ade – Former host of Boom Bust Thabang Motsei Margaret Howell

Vladimir Putin with journalists

Pascal Bonnamour, the head of the European department of Reporters Without Borders, called the newly announced network "another step of the state to control information."[218]

Cliff Kincaid, the director of Accuracy in Media's Center for Investigative Journalism, called RT "the well-known disinformation outlet for Russian propaganda".[219]

For much of 2015, graduate students at Columbia School of Journalism took part in the RT Watch project, monitoring RT's (US) output. Casey Michel, who worked on the project, wrote "RT ignores the inherent traits of journalism—checking sources, relaying facts, attempting honest reportage" and "you’ll find 'experts' lacking in expertise, conspiracy theories without backing, and, from time to time, outright fabrication for the sake of pushing a pro-Kremlin line".[220][221] The results were compiled in a Tumblr blog.[222]

According to Adam Johnson in The Nation magazine, "While Russia Today toes the Kremlin’s line on foreign policy, it also provides an outlet to marginalized issues and voices stateside. RT, for example, has covered the recent prison strikes—the largest in American history—twice. So far CNN, MSNBC, NPR, and Rutenberg’s employer, The New York Times, haven’t covered them at all. RT aggressively covered Occupy Wall Street early on while the rest of corporate US media were marginalizing from afar (for this effort RT was nominated for an Emmy)."[223]

In a 2005 interview with U.S. government-owned external broadcaster Voice of America, the Russian-Israeli blogger Anton Nosik said the creation of RT "smacks of Soviet-style propaganda campaigns."[224]

In 2009, Luke Harding (then Moscow correspondent for The Guardian) described RT's advertising campaign in the United Kingdom as an "ambitious attempt to create a new post-Soviet global propaganda empire."[15]

Konstantin Preobrazhensky, a former KGB officer, criticized RT as "a part of the Russian industry of misinformation and manipulation".[22] RT presents itself as a liberal alternative in the United States, but in Europe it appears to have become the flagship of resurgent nationalist parties.[225]

In Russia, Andrey Illarionov, former advisor to Vladimir Putin, has called the channel "the best Russian propaganda machine targeted at the outside world".[38][98] Media analyst Vasily Gatov wrote in a 2014 Moscow Times article that sharp ethical and reporting skills are not required for Russian media employees, including RT.[226]

 Lithuania – Linas Antanas Linkevičius, Lithuania's Minister of Foreign Affairs, posted on Twitter on 9 March 2014 amid the Crimean crisis, "Russia Today propaganda machine is no less destructive than military marching in Crimea".[227]

 Ukraine – RT has been banned in Ukraine since August 2014.[228]

 United States – The US Department of Justice compelled RT to file paperwork under the Foreign Agents Registration Act in the United States in September 2017.[229] Previously, the United States Secretary of State John Kerry had referred to RT as a state-sponsored "propaganda bullhorn" and he continued by saying, "Russia Today [sic] network has deployed to promote president Putin's fantasy about what is playing out on the ground. They almost spend full-time devoted to this effort, to propagandize, and to distort what is happening or not happening in Ukraine."[230] RT responded that they wanted "an official response from the U.S. Department of State substantiating Mr. Kerry's claims."[231] Richard Stengel from the U.S. Department of State responded.[19] Stengel stated in his response, "RT is a distortion machine, not a news organization," concluding that "the network and its editors should not pretend that RT is anything other than another player in Russia's global disinformation campaign against the people of Ukraine and their supporters". However, Stengel supports RT's right to broadcast in the United States.[232]

In April 2017, during his successful run for President of France, Emmanuel Macron's campaign team banned both RT and the Sputnik news agency from campaign events. A Macron spokesperson said the two outlets showed a "systematic desire to issue fake news and false information".[233] Macron later said during a press conference that RT and Sputnik were "agencies of influence and propaganda, lying propaganda—no more, no less".[234] RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan characterized Macron's remarks on RT as an attack on freedom of speech.[235]

In October 2017, Twitter banned both RT and Sputnik from advertising on their social networking service amid accusations of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections, sparking an angry response from the Russian foreign ministry.[236]

In November 2017, Alphabet chairman Eric Schmidt announced that Google will be "deranking" stories from RT and Sputnik in response to allegations about election meddling by President Putin's government, provoking an accusation of censorship from both outlets.[237]

In March 2018, John McDonnell, the Shadow Chancellor of the British Labour Party, advised fellow Labour MPs to boycott RT and said he would no longer appear on the channel. He said: "We tried to be fair with them and as long as they abide by journalistic standards that are objective that's fine but it looks as if they have gone beyond that line". However, a party representative said: "We are keeping the issue under review".[238]

In July 2019, the UK Foreign Office banned both RT and Sputnik from attending the Global Conference for Media Freedom in London for "their active role in spreading disinformation". The Russian Embassy called the decision "direct politically motivated discrimination", while RT responded in a statement: "It takes a particular brand of hypocrisy to advocate for freedom of press while banning inconvenient voices and slandering alternative media."[239]

A 2007 article in The Christian Science Monitor stated that RT reported on the good job Putin was doing in the world and next to nothing on things like the conflict in Chechnya or the murder of government critics.[240] According to a 2010 report by The Independent, RT journalists have said that coverage of sensitive issues in Russia is allowed, but direct criticism of Vladimir Putin or President Dmitry Medvedev was not.[40] Masha Karp wrote in Standpoint magazine that contemporary Russian issues "such as the suppression of free speech and peaceful demonstrations, or the economic inefficiency and corrupt judiciary, are either ignored or their significance played down".[241] In 2008, Stephen Heyman wrote in The New York Times that in RT's Russia, "corruption is not quite a scourge but a symptom of a developing economy."[38] Speaking after the launch of RT America, Garry Kasparov said "Russia Today is an extension of the methods and approach of the state-controlled media inside Russia, applied in a bid to influence the American cable audience".[16]

RT reporter covering the George Floyd protests in Iran in June 2020

The New Republic writer James Kirchick accused the network of "often virulent anti-Americanism, worshipful portrayal of Russian leaders."[242] Edward Lucas wrote in The Economist (quoted in Al Jazeera English) that the core of RT was "anti-Westernism."[212] Julia Ioffe wrote "Often, it seemed that Russia Today was just a way to stick it to the U.S. from behind the façade of legitimate newsgathering."[13] Shaun Walker wrote in The Independent that RT "has made a name for itself as a strident critic of US policy."[243] Allesandra Stanley wrote in The New York Times that RT is "like the Voice of America, only with more money and a zesty anti-American slant."[61] David Weigel writes that RT goes further than merely creating distrust of the United States government, to saying, in effect: "You can trust the Russians more than you can trust those bastards."[45]

Russian studies professor Stephen F. Cohen stated in 2012 that RT does a lot of stories that "reflect badly" on the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and much of Western Europe and that they are "particularly aggrieved by American sermonizing abroad." Citing that RT compares stories about Russia allowing mass protests of the 2011–2012 Russian election protests with those of U.S. authorities nationwide arresting members of the Occupy movement. Cohen states that despite the pro-Kremlin slant, "any intelligent viewer can sort this out. I doubt that many idiots find their way to RT."[146] RT also have proliferated stories such as the police brutality in the US, the crack cocaine usage of Toronto mayor Rob Ford, and the poverty among people of Arab descent in Western Europe.

According to Lithuania's STRATCOM Colonel, "RT rarely takes a single, anti-Western media line on any given story. That would be too obvious. Instead, RT journalists present gaggles of competing and contradicting narratives which together create the impression that the truth is indecipherable".[244]

John Feffer, co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus says he appears on RT as well as the U.S.-funded Voice of America and Radio Free Asia, commented "I’ve been given the opportunity to talk about military expenditures in a way I haven’t been given in U.S. outlets". On the fairness issue, he said: "You're going to find blind spots in the coverage for any news organization".[146]

RT America has described journalists as "Russiagate conspiracy theorists" for covering Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report on Russian interference in the 2016 election.[245]

A 2013 article in Der Spiegel said that RT "uses a chaotic mixture of conspiracy theories and crude propaganda", pointing to a program that "mutated" the Boston Marathon bombing into a U.S. government conspiracy.[14]

The launch of RT UK was the subject of much comment in the British press. In The Observer, Nick Cohen accused the channel of spreading conspiracy theories and being a "prostitution of journalism" and in The Times, Oliver Kamm called on broadcast regulator Ofcom to act against this "den of deceivers".[246]

In 2015, Peter Pomerantsev in The Guardian accused RT of disinformation and of spreading conspiracy theories.[247]

Journalists at The Daily Beast and The Washington Post have noted that RT employs Tony Gosling, an exponent of long-discredited theories concerning the alleged control of the world by Illuminati and the Czarist antisemitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.[248][249]

Russia Today has broadcast stories about microchips being implanted into office workers in EU to make them more "submissive"; about "majority" of Europeans supporting Russian annexation of Crimea; EU preparing "a form of genocide" against Russians; in Germany it falsely reported about a kidnapping of a Russian girl; that "NATO planned to store nuclear weapons in Eastern Europe"; that Hillary Clinton fell ill; it has also on many occasions misrepresented or invented statements from European leaders.[250][251][252][253]

A report by RAND called the RT strategy "a firehose of falsehood", where fake stories are distributed in "high-volume and multichanneel, rapid, continuous, and repetitive" with no regard to consistency, where the high volume makes them difficult to counter.[254]

In response to accusations of spreading fake news RT started its own FakeCheck project. The Poynter Institute conducted a content analysis of FakeCheck and concluded it "mixes some legitimate debunks with other scantily sourced or dubiously framed 'fact checks.'"[255]

RT, particularly the RT presenter Abby Martin, has been accused of being anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian by Jewish and Israeli sources, describing its reporting as being unbalanced.[256][257] Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman made a complaint to Putin at their official meeting in 2012.[258]

During the 2008 South Ossetia War, RT correspondent William Dunbar resigned after the network refused to let him report on Russian airstrikes of civilian targets, stating, "any issue where there is a Kremlin line, RT is sure to toe it."[259] According to Variety, sources at RT confirmed that Dunbar had resigned, but rejected that it was over bias. One senior RT journalist told the magazine, "the Russian coverage I have seen has been much better than much of the Western coverage... Russian news coverage is largely pro-Russia, but that is to be expected."[260]

Shaun Walker, the Moscow correspondent for The Independent, said that RT had "instructed reporters not to report from Georgian villages within South Ossetia that had been ethnically cleansed."[48] Julia Ioffe wrote that an RT journalist whose reporting deviated from "the Kremlin line that Georgians were slaughtering unarmed Ossetians" was reprimanded.[13] Human Rights Watch said that RT's claim of 2,000 South Ossetian casualties was exaggerated.[261][262]

RT team covering protests in Bolotnaya Square in Moscow on 10 December 2011

In 2012, Jesse Zwick of The New Republic criticized RT, stating it held that "civilian casualties in Syria are minimal, foreign intervention would be disastrous, and any humanitarian appeals from Western nations are a thin veil for a NATO-backed move to isolate Iran, China, and Russia." He wrote that RT wants to "make the United States look out of line for lecturing Russia."[146] Zwick also wrote that RT provided a "disproportionate amount of time" to covering libertarian Republican Ron Paul during his 2012 presidential campaign. Writing after her 2014 on-air resignation, Liz Wahl suggested the reason for this "wasn't his message of freedom and liberty but his non-interventionist stance and consistent criticism of U.S. foreign policy. His message fit RT's narrative that the United States is a huge bully."[263] In a June 2011 broadcast of Adam vs. the Man, host Adam Kokesh had endorsed fundraising for Paul, leading to a complaint to the Federal Election Commission charging a political contribution had been made by a foreign corporation. Kokesh denied his cancellation in August was related to the complaint, but said it did involve Paul's aide Jesse Benton.[150]

In September 2012, UK broadcast regulator Ofcom found that two Libyan dispatches broadcast by RT's Lizzie Phelan in a year earlier were in breach of its code on accuracy and impartiality. The following November, RT was again found in breach of impartiality rules in relation to its coverage of the Syrian conflict.[264] An August 2013 story concerning unverified reports of the killing of 450 Kurdish civilians near the Turkey-Syria border was also found to have breached Ofcom's rules.[265] That December, Ofcom found RT in breach of its standards in relation to the impartiality of a documentary entitled "Syrian Diary" broadcast the previous March.[266] Speaking in 2014 former RT reporter Sara Firth said that there had previously been examples of senior editorial interference, and that she had been pulled out of Syria after some "very heated discussions" about the channel's coverage.[23]

On 4 March 2014, Breaking The Set host Abby Martin, speaking directly to her viewing audience during the show's closing statement, said that even though she works for RT, she is against Russia's intervention in Ukraine. She said that "what Russia did is wrong", as she is against intervention by any nation into other countries' affairs.[267] Later, Martin asserted that RT still supports her despite her differences of opinion with the Russian government.[268] RTs press office suggested that Martin would be sent to Crimea and responded to accusations of propaganda, stating "the charges of propaganda tend to pop up every time a news outlet, particularly RT, dares to show the side of events that does not fit the mainstream narrative, regardless of the realities on the ground. This happened in Georgia, this is happening in Ukraine".[269] Glenn Greenwald said that American media elites love to mock Russian media, especially RT, as being a source of shameless pro-Putin propaganda, where free expression is strictly barred. Agreeing the "network has a strong pro-Russian bias", he suggested that Martin's action "remarkably demonstrated what 'journalistic independence' means".[270]

On 5 March 2014, RT Washington, D.C. bureau anchor Liz Wahl resigned on air, blaming RT for propaganda. Wahl stated that what "broke" her was that RT censored a question from her interview with Ron Paul about "Russia's intervention in Ukraine". In response, RT released a statement: "When a journalist disagrees with the editorial position of his or her organization, the usual course of action is to address those grievances with the editor, and, if they cannot be resolved, to quit like a professional. But when someone makes a big public show of a personal decision, it is nothing more than a self-promotional stunt. We wish Liz the best of luck on her chosen path".[271] In a March 2014 Politico article, Wahl stated "For about two and a half years. I’d looked the other way as the network smeared America for the sake of making the Kremlin look better by comparison, while it sugarcoated atrocities by one brutal dictator after another."[263]

RT America broadcast with former anchor Liz Wahl

When asked about a clip of her interviewing a guest on RT by Brian Stelter, host of CNN's Reliable Sources, Wahl responded,

They get these extreme voices on that have this kind of hostile toward the West viewpoints towards the world, very extremist. These are the people that they have on. And when I was on the anchor desk, they would instruct you to egg on these guests and try to get them, you know, rallied up, to really fire off their anti-American talking points. Listen, I'm all about exposing government corruption. I'm all about being critical of the government. But this is different. This is promoting the foreign policy of somebody that has just invaded a country, has invaded the country and is then lying about it, is using the media as a tool to fulfill his foreign policy interests. And RT is part of Putin's propaganda network and it's very, very troubling in the wake of what is going on in Ukraine today.[24]

The New York Times op-ed columnist Nicholas Kristof commented on CNN's Piers Morgan Live about Wahl's and Martin's initial actions, "admire their outspokenness but, you know, at the end of the day, RT is a Russian propaganda arm, and I don't think it's going to matter very much to the geopolitical consequences here."[272]

Former RT Moscow anchor Stacy Bivens, and other former RT journalists speaking under anonymity according to BuzzFeed, said they regretted working for the network, citing their dislike of the network's use of propaganda. Bivens, for example, was explicitly asked to go to Germany and procure a story proving that "Germany is a failed state". When she rejected, other reporters were sent instead.[25]

Steve Bloomfield, the foreign editor of Monocle wrote that RT's "coverage of Ukraine could not have been kinder to Moscow if Vladimir Putin had chosen the running order himself. While Putin kept up the pretence that there were no Russian troops in Crimea, so too did RT. The storming of government buildings across eastern Ukraine has been portrayed as the understandable actions of peace-loving protesters who fear "chaos" in Kiev".[273]

After the July 2014 crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, RT rushed to blame others for the plane's shoot-down in Ukraine amid accusations by Ukrainian fighters of Russian involvement in the crash.[274] Speaking of RT's coverage, Sarah Oates, professor of journalism at the University of Maryland said "But if you’re going to engage in propaganda, you have to do it well. They have completely embarrassed themselves."[275]

Sara Firth, a London-based correspondent with RT resigned in protest over the network's coverage of the MH17 disaster. Shortly before resigning, she tweeted, "RT style guide Rule 1: It is ALWAYS * Ukraine's fault (* add name as applicable)". She told the Guardian "I walked into the newsroom and there was an eyewitness account making allegations [against Ukraine] and analysis, if you can call it, from our correspondent in the studio. It was just appalling, in a situation like that where there are families waiting to be informed and a devastating loss of life." She also noted that "There is bias against Russia but you don’t counter wrong by doing even more wrong" and stated "I have always said it's better to have RT than to not have that perspective, but actually with a story like this and the way they misreport it, it's quite dangerous, I don’t want to be party to it."[23] In follow-up interview she said "In Ukraine, you’re taking a very small part of a much wider story, totally omitted the context of the story, and so what you wind up with on air is outright misinformation." Calling RT "mass information manipulation" Firth said "they have a very clear idea in their mind of what they’re trying to prove." She also stated that "The worst-kept secret is that RT is blatant propaganda. I’m one in a very long line of people who have left for the same reason."[275]

The following November, RT was again found in breach of Ofcom's impartiality rules. This time in relation to its coverage of the Ukraine crisis, specifically events leading up to the annexation by Russia of Crimea.[276] For repeated breaches of its due impartially rules, Ofcom put RT management "on notice that any future breaches of the due impartiality rules may result in further regulatory action, including consideration of a statutory sanction".[28]

In January 2015, Ofcom found RT (and the BBC) not in breach of rules on generally accepted standards following a complaint about the use of graphic imagery of bodies at the MH17 crash site.[277][278]

President Putin with Margarita Simonyan in front of RT's "Question more" slogan (2015)

Following the March 2015 European Council summit which concluded that action was needed to "challenge Russia's ongoing disinformation campaigns", the European External Action Service was tasked to respond.[279] European Parliament briefing notes on the situation called RT "Russia's main international media weapon".[280] The counter-propaganda strategy subsequently developed by the EastStratCom Task Force, a small group of eight officials, included launching the EU vs Disinformation website with a headline of "don't be deceived, question even more".[279][281][282]

In September 2015, Ofcom found RT in breach of the impartiality rules in its coverage of the events in Ukraine and Syria. It also upheld the complaint by the BBC that allegations made in an episode of The Truthseeker that a BBC Panorama film, Saving Syria's Children, had faked a parts of a report on a chemical weapon attack in Syria were "materially misleading".[27][283][284]

In an episode of The Truthseeker, named Genocide of Eastern Ukraine, they claimed that the Ukrainian government was deliberately bombing civilians, had murdered and tortured journalists, as well as crucifying babies. Ukrainian army forces were accused of "ethnic cleansing" and were compared to the Nazis in World War Two. The only response to the allegations in the broadcast was in the form of a caption saying "Kiev claims it is not committing genocide, denies casualty reports", which appeared on screen for six seconds. According to Ofcom the broadcast had "little or no counterbalance or objectivity".[27]

A spokesperson for the media regulator said: "Ofcom found that RT broadcast content that was either materially misleading or not duly impartial. These are significant failings and we are therefore requiring RT to broadcast two clear statements on our decision which correct these failures."[285]

In October 2015, David J. Kramer, senior director for human rights and democracy at the McCain Institute for International Leadership, suggested that Western countries freeze RT's assets "not because of the odious things it spews" but as part of the Yukos shareholder case.[286]

A report released by the US think-tank the RAND Corporation in 2016 called RT part of "a wider Russian propaganda operation" named the "Firehose of Falsehood". The paper called "Russian faux-news propaganda channels, such as RT" insidious and that "they look like news programs, and the persons appearing on them are represented as journalists and experts, making audience members much more likely to ascribe credibility to the misinformation these sources are disseminating".[287]

In July 2016, Ofcom again found RT in breach of its impartiality rules, this time over coverage of the Turkish government's treatment of Kurdish people. Two episodes of Going Underground originally broadcast in March, included claims of attacks, atrocities and genocide against the Kurds, and that "Turkey supports ISIS" without offering adequate counterbalance. RT's representatives stated the network "finds it especially difficult to obtain pro-Turkey views for its programming" because of "political tensions between Russia and Turkey following the downing of a Russian military aircraft by Turkish warplanes in November 2015".[288][289]

In November 2016, after the US Presidential Election, The Washington Post reported that RT and Sputnik were "state-funded Russian information services that mimic the style and tone of independent news organizations yet sometimes include false and misleading stories in their reports" and also that "RT, Sputnik and other Russian sites used social-media accounts to amplify misleading stories already circulating online".[290] The Post was criticized by The Intercept, Fortune, and Rolling Stone for relying in part on an analysis by PropOrNot, an anonymous organization with no reputation for fact-checking.[291][292][293]

In December 2016, Ofcom found RT in breach of its impartiality rules for the 10th time since the English-language channel launched. A Crosstalk episode broadcast the previous July, contained a debate about the NATO 2016 Warsaw summit in which all members of the panel expressed critical views. RT's representatives again stated that they couldn't find anybody with alternative opinions willing to take part, and that captions with pro-NATO comments should have been added before broadcast, but the wrong text was accidentally used.[294][295]

On 12 January 2017, RT was accidentally broadcast for around 10 minutes on a web stream of U.S. public affairs service C-SPAN. RT stated that while it was testing its systems in preparation for the inauguration of Donald Trump, its signal was "mistakenly routed onto the primary encoder feeding C-SPAN1's signal to the internet, rather than to an unused backup."[296]

On 19 January 2017, RT stated that it had been temporarily restricted from posting media on its Facebook page until 21 January, after the service claimed that RT had infringed on the copyrights of Radio Liberty's Current Now TV when broadcasting a live stream of Barack Obama's final press conference as president of the United States. Current Time TV denied that it had sent any specific complaints to Facebook, and both RT and Current Now TV stated that they had obtained their feed from the Associated Press. The restriction was removed after about 20 hours, but Facebook did not say officially if this was because of a technical error or a policy issue.[297][296]

In September 2017, the U.S. Department of Justice informed RT America that it must register as a foreign agent of the Russian government. Margarita Simonyan, RT's editor-in-chief, condemned the action as an assault on freedom of speech. A spokesperson for the Russian foreign ministry threatened retaliatory measures against American journalists.[298][299]

On 13 November 2017, RT America officially registered as a "foreign agent" in the United States with the Department of Justice under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Under the act, RT will be required to disclose financial information.[300] This move was criticized by the Committee to Protect Journalists: "We're uncomfortable with governments deciding what constitutes journalism or propaganda"[301]

In December 2018, the British media regulator Ofcom ruled that seven programmes broadcast by RT between 17 March and 26 April of that year, in the wake of the Salisbury nerve agent attacks, had breached the UK's impartiality rules; the BBC reported that RT was "extremely disappointed by Ofcom's conclusions".[302][303] RT was fined £200,000 but kept its licence to broadcast in the UK.[304] RT described Ofcom's actions against it as "inappropriate and disproportionate per Ofcom’s own track record."[305]