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RT, also known as Russia Today, is a global multilingual television news network based in Russia. With a single channel launched in December 2005, the RT network now consists of three global news channels broadcasting in English, Spanish and Arabic, RT America broadcasting from RT’s Washington studio and a documentary Channel RTDoc. With a global reach of over 430 million people, or 22% of all cable subscribers worldwide. In 2012 RT had 2.5 million viewers in the United Kingdom, making it the second most popular English-speaking foreign channel after Al Jazeera. RT America is available to 50 million people in the United States and is the second most-watched foreign news channel after BBC World News. It is the number one foreign station in five U.S. urban areas. Its news channel is the highest rated on YouTube,where the number of views has already exceeded half a billion, making RT the first TV news channel to break this record in YouTube’s history.

Now RT has 21 bureaus in 16 states, with a presence in Washington, New York, London, Paris, Delhi, Cairo, Baghdad, Kiev and other cities and employs over 2,000 media professionals around the globe.

RT presents round-the-clock news bulletins, documentaries, talk shows, and debates, as well as sports news and cultural programs on Russia aimed at the overseas news market. These programs have earned RT awards, but also drawn criticisms and controversies. According to RT: RT news covers the major issues of our time for viewers wishing to question more.

RT is Federal-funded. Many in western media have accused RT, which was founded by the government's news agency RIA Novosti , of being "state-run" and controlled by the Kremlin, but RT has responded its "mission of news with a Russian perspective" is similar to other government funded media outlets like the British Broadcasting Corporation ("BBC"), France 24, Germany's Deutsche Welle and the United States' Corporation for Public Broadcasting. RIA Novosti asserts RT is an "autonomous non-profit organization" which retains "complete legal, editorial and operational independence."

History

After polls showed that non-Russians had a "gloomier and uniformly darker" image of Russia than the reality, the Kremlin decided to launch a public relations campaign to improve its image. One such effort was creation of Russia Today. RT started broadcasting as "Russia Today" on 10 December 2005, initially with 300 journalists, including approximately 70 from outside Russia. Russia Today’s editor-in-chief position was filled by Margarita Simonyan who said that said the channel’s intent was to have a "professional format" like the BBC, CNN and Euronews that would "reflect Russia's opinion of the world" and present a "more balanced picture" of Russia.

Simonyan was only 25 but had been working 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, thus the youth of most of the staffers. Journalist Danny Schechter has stated that having been part of the start-up team for CNN, he saw RT as another “channel of young people who are inexperienced, but very enthusiastic about what they are doing." Shortly after the channel was launched, James Painter wrote that Russia Today and similar stations like 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.

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. By 2010 RT had grown to a staff of 2000.

In August 2007, RT had television's first ever live report from the North Pole, which lasted 5 minutes, 41 seconds. An RT crew participated in the Arktika 2007 Russian polar expedition, led by Artur Chilingarov on the Akademik Fyodorov icebreaker.

In 2009 Russia Today rebranded itself to the more neutral "RT." Margarita Simonyan denied it was an attempt to hide its Russian origin, saying the corporate logo was changed to attract more viewers and commenting "Who is interested in watching news from Russia all day long?”

The early 2010 “Question More” advertising campaign created for RT in Britain by McCann Erickson was highly controversial. One advertisement showed American President Barack Obama “morphing” into Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and asked: "Who poses the greatest nuclear threat?" The ad was banned in American airports. One of RT’s 2010 billboard advertisements won the British Awards for National Newspaper Advertising “Ad of the Month.”

In June of 2011 RT videos had been viewed 450 million times on YouTube, at an average of 850,000 views per day. RT had earned $500,000 in profit from airing its videos, landing it in the Top 100 Most Viewed All Time YouTube channels. Six months later profits had doubled to one million dollars. In 2012 Pew Research found it to be the most popular news channel on Youtube, with Fox News coming in second.

On April 17, 2012 RT began to broadcast the World Tomorrow, a news interview program hosted by Julian Assange. The first guest was Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. WikiLeaks described the show as "a series of in-depth conversations with key political players, thinkers and revolutionaries from around the world."

In August of 2012 RT suffered a denial of service attack by a group calling itself “Antileaks” which was protesting the jailing of members of the Pussy Riot group. A few weeks later the site was down intermittently for two days for unspecified reasons.

In 2012 RT was nominated for an International Emmy Award for its coverage of the international Occupy Wall Street movement. In 2010 it had been nominated for one in news broadcasting for its coverage of president Barack Obama's trip to Russia.

Budget

RT cost $30 million to establish in 2005 and $30 million for its first year of operation. About half of the network's budget came from the state and the other half from banks and companies friendly to the government. Its budget in dollars was approximately $80 million in 2007, $120 million in 2008, $380 million in 2011 and $300 million in 2012.

Marcin Maczka wrote in the New Eastern Europe Journal that the growth in funding was explained by Russia’s desire to improve its image as well as the “impressive development of the channel itself”, i.e. its growing number of outlets and viewers worldwide. Financing also has allowed RT to attract experienced journalists and use the latest technology.

Network

RT broadcast through 22 satellite and 230 cable operators to 430 million people in over 100 countries, 22 percent of all cable subscribers worldwide. In addition to its English-language broadcast, RT also runs Rusiya Al-Yaum, an Arabic language channel, and Actualidad RT, a Spanish-language channel, as well as a documentary channel, RTDoc. RT has 21 bureaus in 16 countries, including Washington, D.C., New York, London, Paris, Delhi, Cairo, Baghdad, Kiev. It employs over 2,000 media professionals worldwide.

RT consists of its main RT International English-language channel, RT America, RT Arabic, Actualidad RT in Spanish, and RT Documentary.

The RT website offers a live stream available online to computer or mobile devices. It provides many of its news casts and featured shows via YouTube. RT is transmitted on 22 satellites, covering much of Europe, Asia, the Americas, Africa and Australia on a variety of carriers listed at its website. In September 2012 RT signed a contract with the Israeli company RRSat to distribute high definition channels to the United States, Latin America and Asia.

RT cooperates with a number of media sources in Russia and abroad, including private media like Izvestia, Kommersant, Trud, Nezavisimaya Gazeta, Vedomosti, Argumenty i Fakty and the non-Russian Association for International Broadcasting, Huffington Post, News.com.au and WhatReallyHappened.com.

Programming and presenters

RT International English-language channel and RT America have similar programming with the latter covering more news from the United States. RT Arabic and Actualidad RT in Spanish feature their own news presenters, as well as translated versions of RT's English programming. RT’s current listing of “On Air Talent” includes:

News anchors: Bill Dod, Marina Dzhashi, Andrew Farmer, Kristine Frazao (Washington, DC), Cary Johnston , Abby Martin (Washington DC), Dmitry Medvedenko (Business), Anissa Naouai , Eunan O'Neill (Sports), Kevin Owen, Kate Partridge (Sports), Yulia Shapovalova, Rory Suchet, Sean Thomas, Matt Trezza, Liz Wahl (Washington DC)

Correspondents: Tesa Arcilla, Tom Barton, Denis Bolotsky, Oksana Boyko, Anastasia Churkina, Gayane Chichakyan, Anya Fedorova, Maria Finoshina, Sara Firth, Lindsay France, Ramon Galindo (Los Angeles), Irina Galushko, Jacob Greaves (Primetime Russia), Lori Harfenist (New York), Meghan Lopez, Thabang Motsei, Natalia Novikova, Pete Oliver, Darya Pushkova, Egor Piskunov, Marina Portnaya (New York), Paula Slier (Middle East), Laura Smith (London), Priya Sridhar (South Asia), Natalia Shanetskaya

Business presenters: Marina Kosareva, Madina Kochenova

Documentary presenters: Martyn Andrews (entertainment, cookery and travel, formerly of Wayfarer/Moscow Out/Venice of the North), James Brown (travel through Russia, formerly of Close-Up Russia)

Sport presenters: Andrew Farmer, Michael Kravchenko, Roman Kosarev, Richard Van Poortvliet, Robert Vardanian

Current feature programs:Abby Martin (Breaking the set); Lauren Lyster (Capital Account); Peter Lavelle (CrossTalk); Sophie Shevardnadze (Interview with Sophie); Max Keiser (Keiser Report); On the Money; Prime Time Russia News; Al Gurnov (Spotlight); Brandon Rice (Technology Update); Thom Hartmann (The Big Picture); Why You Should Care

Notable past presenters:Adam Kokesh (Adam vs. the Man), Neave Barker, Jason de la Pêna, Alyona Minkovski (The Alyona Show), Maryam Nemazee, Karen Roberts, Dmitry Glukhovsky

Controversies, criticisms and response

Allegations of pro-Kremlin and pro-state bias

After the announcement that the station would be launched, the U.S. government-operated VOA interviewed Anton Nosik, chief editor of MosNews.com, said the creation of Russia Today "smacks of Soviet-style propaganda campaigns" and that "that the channel was not created as a response to any existing demand." Similarly a representative of Reporters Without Borders called the newly announced network “another step of the state to control information.”

In 2007 Der Spiegel criticized Russia Today for running an advertising campaign "peddling the softer side" of former Soviet Dictator Joseph Stalin. In 2009 Luke Harding in The Guardian described Russia Today's advertising campaign in the United Kingdom as an "ambitious attempt to create a new post-Soviet global propaganda empire," and wrote that the network promoted an "unashamedly pro-Vladimir Putin view of the world." Harding has described RT as "the Kremlin’s English-language propaganda channel, whose mission is to accuse the west of hypocrisy while staying mute about Russia’s own failings." And James Kirchick in The New Republic criticized the network as presenting " often virulent anti-Americanism, worshipful portrayal of Russian leaders, and comical production values," writing it can be "relied upon to repeat Kremlin talking points." In 2010 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". Similarly, Andrew Osborn in the London Daily Telegraph described RT as "the Kremlin's slavishly loyal English-language propaganda channel".

Some have described RT's reporting of Russia as tendentious: Marcin Mączka, a PhD student at the university of Jagiellonian University, writes where stories of Russia appear at all, "it is usually related to the progress of Russia’s “modernisation”, economic achievements and the growth of foreign investment" and, "embarrassing information about Russia is usually omitted and RT never broadcasts programmes showing Russia’s social problems, condemning corruption or administrative incompetence." Similarly, a 2008 the New York Times article wrote that in RT’s Russia, “corruption is not quite a scourge but a symptom of a developing economy. And concerns about street thugs, poverty and Ukraine’s aspirations for European Union membership trump fears over Vladimir V. Putin’s grip on power.”

In addition to Western commentators, some notable Russians have also been critical of RT: a 2011 article by Accuracy in Media quoted former KGB officer Konstantin Preobrazhensky criticized RT as "a part of the Russian industry of misinformation and manipulation" while Andrey Illarionov, former advisor to Vladimir Putin, has labelled the channel as “the best Russian propaganda machine targeted at the outside world.” Alexei Navalny, an anti-corruption blogger who has exposed crooked schemes in companies close to the Kremlin, was reported in an article in The Independent as having "come in for particular disdain from the state-funded broadcaster."

Coverage of conspiracy theories and interviews with extremists

The Economist magazine, which classified RT's reporting as "weirdly constructed propaganda," has suggested that the channel has provided a platform to conspiracy theorists. The Russian-born American writer Julia Ioffe has said that Russia Today, in attempting to feature "an alternate point of view, it is forced to talk to marginal, offensive, and often irrelevant figures who can take positions bordering on the absurd" including someone who asserts "that the CIA is testing dangerous drugs on unwitting civilians" and also "the 'Truther' claim that 9/11 was an inside job makes a frequent appearance on the channel". The American Southern Poverty Law Center civil rights organisation in 2010 pointed to the channel giving extensive coverage to the 'birther' and the New World Order conspiracy theories. Sonia Scherr, the author of the SPLC article, asserted that the Patriot militia organizer Jim Stachowiak was a regular interviewee and wrote that the opinions of "white nationalist" Jared Taylor had been underplayed and had gone unchallenged by any of his opponents when he appeared on the channel.

Ben Smith criticized an interview between Alex Jones and Russia Today discussing Osama bin Laden death conspiracy theories and called Russia Today a "raw propaganda channel".

Criticisms of coverage of specific news incidents

2008 South Ossetia War

During the 2008 South Ossetia War Russia Today correspondent William Dunbar resigned saying "the real news, the real facts of the matter, didn't conform to what they were trying to report, and therefore, they wouldn't let me report it." Human Rights Watch said that the claim of 2,000 South Ossetian casualties, announced by Russia Today, was "exaggerated." The Moscow correspondent for The Independent said that Russia Today's coverage of the war was "obscene", claiming that the channel was "extraordinarily biased" and had "instructed reporters not to report from Georgian villages within South Ossetia that had been ethnically cleansed." Julia Ioffe has detailed examples of RT journalists who were "reprimanded" for deviating from the Moscow line when it deviated from what they saw while reporting from the region.

Criticisms and controversies of RT staff members

• Adam Kokesh - On August 2011, a show entitled Adam vs. The Man that was hosted by Adam Kokesh and broadcasted on RT was cancelled after an FEC complaint was filed charging that Kokesh’s on-air fundraising for Ron Paul broke rules against foreign campaign contributions. In his complaint to the FEC, Cliff Kincaid, president of America’s Survival and a frequent critic of Russia Today, argued that Kokesh's public endorsement amounted to “a political contribution consisting of valuable air time, provided by a foreign corporation, and airing in the U.S.”

• Lizzie Phelan - on September 10th 2012, UK broadcast regulator Ofcom found that two Libyan dispatches broadcast by Phelan on the Russia Today channel in August 2011 were in breach of its code on accuracy and impartiality.

• Margarita Simonyan - RT's current editor-in-chief who has been described by some Western sources as a Kremlin loyalist who is close to the Putin regime. According to Professor Andrei Richter, Simonyan was appointed to that position because she was well-connected with the editor; she acknowledged that she once received flowers on her birthday from Mr. Putin. Similarly, an article in The Moscow Times reports that Simonyan was chosen by the Kremlin to be the channel's editor in chief, though the article also stated that such appointments weren't unsurprising in Russia. Moreover, in an interview with the Washington Times, Simonyan acknowledged that she was too young (25) to be given the reins of Russia Today, although she ascribed the premature appointment to that the fact of oversupply of opportunities for young journalists after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Shortly after his appointment as the United States Ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul challenged Margarita Simonyan over the Twitter in regards to allegations from RT that he sent Alexei Navalny to study at Yale, tweeting, ""@M_Simonyan when we met at White House you asked me tell you when RT ran something untrue. On RT today, @McFaul sent @Navalny to Yale. Lie." Though A few hours later Margarita Simonyan twitted back. "The Ambassador McFaul made us work overtime today! I made my guys sit down and watch all our programs on five channels. Nothing like this has been found. I think now the State Department owes our guys a bonus for working overnight." Simonyan also explained that "the only material in which McFaul was referred to Navalny was a comment (!) of a political scientist Igor Panarin about the meetings on February 4, released not even on a TV channel, but published on the site of RT and accompanied by the obligatory in that case footnote: "The statements, views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT"."

Response to allegations

RT's staff have responded variously to criticisms of their news channel: Margarita Simonyan, the channel's editor-in-chief, rejected the allegation that RT broadcasts "Kremlin propaganda". She has said that the news station "provides an alternative to mainstream media." though she acknowledged that it strives for a "Russian viewpoint". Simonyan said it was good that countries like Russia are spending money to make their voices heard "after so many years in which the international media scene was reduced to the points of view of Anglo-Saxon countries. For five years, I have been watching BBC and CNN news every day — they have almost exactly the same topics, the same wording, the same order. And for so many years they were the only international TV news sources. … It’s great that there is a channel with a different view, different experts and a different order.” Other RT staff have said that, "its coverage of Russia will be fair and balanced, not simply propaganda." During 2011, Lauren Lyster, studio anchor and correspondent in RT’s Washington, DC bureau dedicated three segments "firing back" at Ameican Mainstream media allegations: "War on RT?" about the legitimacy of RT and their guests, "RT vs Mainstream Media" about RT's journalistic practices , and "War on RT rages on" about the criticism that RT is "anti-American". In regards to RT's coverage of the to 2008 South Ossetia War, one senior journalist at the channel said that, “The Russian coverage I have seen has been much better than much of the Western coverage...my view is that Russia Today is not particularly biased at all. When you look at the Western media, there is a lot of genuflection towards the powers that be. Russian news coverage is largely pro-Russia, but that is to be expected.” In regards to Western media criticism of RT's "Coverage of conspiracy theories" Margarita Simonyan, the channel's editor-in-chief argued that the channel’s policy was merely to provide a platform for marginalized points of view that otherwise got little coverage, like the Sept. 11 conspiracy theorists. "I personally do not believe them. But I believe that if there are people out there who think so but do not get into mainstream media, they deserve an audience — and we should give them a forum,”. Simonyan noted that viewer resonance and audience numbers confirmed that the policy is right. She also added that giving airtime to “truthers” was morally comparable to Western media coverage of the 1999 apartment bombings in Moscow and two other cities that killed 293 people. "What about Western media reports saying that Vladimir Putin was behind the bombings?".

In 2010 British conservative journalist, academic John Laughland who is a frequent commentator on Russia Today, said the channel "fulfills an important role in the world media by airing views that otherwise might be ignored.” He also pointed out that by offering shows like “CrossTalk,” "whose very purpose is to encourage strong debate," the station was making a leap from its image as a propaganda tool.

In 2012 Russian studies professor Stephen F. Cohen stated that RT does a lot of stories that “reflect badly” on the United States and that they are “particularly aggrieved by American sermonizing abroad.” Thus compare 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.

Award winning political journalist Glenn Greenwald criticized an article in The New York Times reviewing the launch of the Julian Assange Talk Show on RT, in his article "Attacks on RT and Assange reveal much about the critics", Greenwald states : "Let’s examine the unstated premises at work here. There is apparently a rule that says it’s perfectly OK for a journalist to work for a media outlet owned and controlled by a weapons manufacturer (GE/NBC/MSNBC), or by the U.S. and British governments (BBC/Stars & Stripes/Voice of America), or by Rupert Murdoch and Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal (Wall St. Journal/Fox News), or by a banking corporation with long-standing ties to right-wing governments (Politico), or by for-profit corporations whose profits depend upon staying in the good graces of the U.S. government (Kaplan/The Washington Post), or by loyalists to one of the two major political parties (National Review/TPM/countless others), but it’s an intrinsic violation of journalistic integrity to work for a media outlet owned by the Russian government. Where did that rule come from?", and regarding to editorial independence in RT Greenwald states : "Assange criticized Nasrallah for failing to support the citizens of Syria fighting against the Assad government. The Russian government has been an ally of the Assad government. So the position Assange took in his very first interview was directly contrary to the policy of the Russian government. I’d say it gives great credence to Assange’s claim of his editorial independence. It makes those claiming otherwise look like deceivers and liars." ,Greenwald also states his opinion of the true motive behind the criticism against RT in the U.S media : "The real cause of American media hostility toward RT is the same as what causes it to hate Assange: the reporting it does reflects poorly on the U.S. Government, the ultimate sin in the eyes of our “adversarial” press corps....In other words, like Assange, they engage in real adversarial journalism with regard to American political power. And they are thus scorned and ridiculed by those who pretend to do that but never actually do."

In response to claims by the Chairman of the U.S. Government's Broadcasting Board of Governors, Walter Isaacson, that his organization needs to fight its "enemies", defined as Iran's Press TV, China's CCTV, and Russia's Russia Today, RTs flagship program CrossTalk host Peter Lavelle said that Isaacson "doesn't have anything to do with journalism". Instead, Lavelle said that he is a promoter of a "media war" designed to push "the US foreign policy agenda" onto a world that is increasingly skeptical about it.".Soon after, Isaacson regretted his statement and stated "I of course did not mean to refer to, nor do I consider, that Russia, China, and the other countries or news services are enemies of the U.S. and the "enemies" he was referring to were in Afghanistan, not the several countries he mentioned and I'm sorry if I gave that impression,"

In June 2011 RT responded to the criticisms and dismissal that it is "state-run" by commenting and listing the official mission statements and funding of other well-known "state-run" television networks like the British Broadcasting Corporation ("BBC"), France 24, Germany's Deutsche Welle and the United States' Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Professional awards

• November 2011 – Martyn Andrews and the weekly "Moscow Out" arts and entertainment show awarded the "ShereMedia Award" for Best Lifestyle Program
• January 2009 – One of 100+ of Silver World Medals issued in 2009, for Best News Documentary “A city of desolate mothers” from the New York Festivals
• November 2008 – Special Jury Award in the Best Creative Feature category for a Russian Glamour feature story at Media Excellence Awards in London
• September 2008 – Russia's most prestigious broadcasting award TEFI to Kevin Owen in Best News Anchor category
• November 2007 – RT's report on the anniversary of the Chernobyl catastrophe received a special prize from the international 2007 AIB Media Excellence Awards in the News Coverage category. Other nominees included major international broadcasters such as BBC, France 24, Deutsche Welle, CBS, Al Arabiya, and others. There was only one story by CBS News which rated higher than RT and it received the Grand Prix
• September 2007 – Eurasian Academy of Television and Radio awarded RT with the Prize for Professional Skillfulness
• June 2007 – The 11th "Save and Preserve" International Environmental Television Festival awarded its Grand Prix to RT's Meeting with Nature series. There were 284 entries competing in 10 categories, including a work by German TV channel Deutsche Welle
• September 2006 – The 10th "Golden Tambourine" International Festival for Television programs and films awarded RT's documentary People of the Bering Strait in the Ethnography and Travel category

See also

• State media
• Freedom of the press in Russia
• Voice of Russia

References

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84. http://rt.com/politics/mcfaul-opposition-rallies-panarin-667/
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105. 2009 Television Programming and Promotion Awards
106. AIB Media Excellence Awards 2007 Association for International Broadcasting, 8 October 2007
107. Eurasian Academy of Television and Radio, Евразийская Академия Телевидения и Радио
108. News of the Okrug 11th "Save and Preserve" International Environmental Television Festival, 9 June 2007
109. "Golden Tambourine" International Festival for Television programs and films Zolotoy Buben

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