RT (TV network)

Russian state controlled international television network

Documentary channel:English, French, RussianOnline platforms:German
| area = Worldwide
| headquarters = Moscow
| former names = Russia Today (2005–2009)
| sister channels = plainlist|
RT America (2010–2022)
RT France (2017–2023)
RT UK (2014–2022)
RT DE (2014–2022)
RT en Español
RT Arabic
RT Documentary
Ruptly is a Russian state controlledrefn|name=state media| It operates pay television and free to air channels directed to audiences outside of Russia, as well as providing Internet content in Russian, English, Spanish, French, German and Arabic. RT is a brand of TV Novosti self named an "autonomous non profit organization" (ANO) founded by the Russian state owned news agency RIA Novosti in April 2005. During the economic crisis in December 2008, the Russian government, headed by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, included ANO "TV Novosti" on its list of core organizations of strategic importance to Russia. RT operates as a multilingual service with channels in five languages: the original English language channel was launched in 2005, the Arabic language channel in 2007, Spanish in 2009, German in 2014 and French in 2017. RT America (2010–2022), RT UK (2014–2022) and other regional channels also produce local content. RT is the parent company of the Ruptly video agency, which owns the Redfish video channel and the Maffick digital media company. RT has regularly been described as a major propaganda outlet for the Russian government and its foreign policy. Academics, fact checkers, and news reporters (including some current and former RT reporters) have identified RT as a purveyor of disinformation UK media regulator Ofcom has repeatedly found RT to have breached its rules on impartiality, including multiple instances in which RT broadcast "materially misleading" content. In 2012, RT's editor in chief Margarita Simonyan compared the channel to the Russian Ministry of Defence. Referring to the Russo Georgian War, she stated that it was "waging an information war, and with the entire Western world". In September 2017, RT America was ordered to register as a foreign agent with the United States Department of Justice under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. RT was banned in Ukraine in 2014 after Russia's annexation of Crimea; During the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the European Union and Canada formally banned RT and independent service providers in over 10 countries suspended broadcasts of RT. Social media websites followed by blocking external links to RT's website and restricting access to RT's content. Microsoft removed RT from their app store and de ranked their search results on Bing, while Apple removed the RT app from all countries except for Russia.

RT's formation was part of a public relations effort by the Russian Government in 2005 to improve Russia's image abroad. and Aleksei Gromov. 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". In 2005, RIA Novosti founded ANO TV Novosti (or "Autonomous Non profit Organization TV News") to serve as the parent organization for RT. ANO TV Novosti was registered on 6 April 2005,

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. Russia Today appointed Margarita Simonyan as its editor in chief; she recruited foreign journalists as presenters and consultants. Journalist Danny Schechter (who has appeared as a guest on RT) 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". 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.

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. 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. 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. RT named Georgia as the aggressor RT saw this as the incident that showcased its newsgathering abilities to the world. 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". The campaign was created by Ketchum, GPlus, and London's Portland PR. One of the advertisements featured as part of the campaign showed U. S. President 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" with a Taliban fighter and asked: "Is terror only inflicted by terrorists?" One of RT's 2010 billboard advertisements won the British Awards for National Newspaper Advertising "Ad of the Month". 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 in the programs because "We can't allow ourselves to be out communicated by our enemies", specifically mentioning Russia Today, Iran's Press TV and China's China Central Television (CCTV) in the following sentence. He later explained that he actually was referring to "enemies" in Afghanistan, not the countries he mentioned. In 2011, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated that the U. S. was "losing the information war" abroad to foreign channels like RT, Al Jazeera and China Central Television and that they were supplanting the Voice of America.

In early 2012, shortly after his appointment as U. S. Ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul challenged Margarita Simonyan on Twitter about allegations from RT that he had sent Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny to study at Yale University. 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. 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. The interview made global headlines as Nasrallah rarely gives interviews to Western media. Commentators described this as a "coup". WikiLeaks described the show as "a series of in depth conversations with key political players, thinkers and revolutionaries from around the world". It stated that the show is "independently produced and Assange has control"; WikiLeaks offers a "Broadcasters license, only". Assange said that RT allowed his guests to discuss things that they "could not say on a mainstream TV network". Assange's production company made the show and Assange had full editorial control. Assange said that, if WikiLeaks had published large amounts of compromising data on Russia, his relationship with RT might not have been so comfortable. 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. On 5 November, RT broadcast the two candidates that were voted winners of that debate, Libertarian Party candidate Governor Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein, from RT's Washington, D. C. studio. 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." 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. Vladimir Putin visited the new RT broadcasting centre in June 2013 and stated: <blockquote>"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." In October 2016, the NatWest bank stated that they will no longer provide banking services to RT in the UK without providing any reasons. This decision was criticised by Margarita Simonyan, the editor in chief of RT, and the Russia Government. Simonyan sarcastically tweeted that: "Long live freedom of speech!" However, NatWest reversed its decision in January 2017, said it had reached a resolution with RT. Simonyan said the decision showed that "common sense has prevailed". In 2018, some of the RT staff started a new media project, Redfish. media, that positioned itself as "grassroots journalism". Another similar RT project is In the NOW, started in 2018. On 15 February 2019, Facebook temporarily blocked the In the NOW page, saying that even though it does not require pages to disclose who funds them, it had suspended the page so viewers would not "be misled about who's behind them". Anissa Naouai, CEO of Maffick, which published the page, described the blocking as "unprecedented discrimination", and said that Facebook did not ask other channels to declare their parent company and financial affiliations. As of February 2019, a majority of Maffick stock was controlled by Ruptly, an RT subsidiary, with Naouai owning the remaining 49%. Facebook unblocked the page on 25 February 2019; Naouai said the company had agreed to do so once the page was updated to feature information on In the NOWs funding and management. She added that 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, a Maffick owned channel. In February 2021, Matt Field from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists reported that RT had created an account on Gab, a social network known for its far right userbase, right before the start of former U. S. President Donald Trump's second impeachment trial. Field commented that RT had posted several articles on its Gab account, including one criticizing The Lincoln Project, an organization run by anti Trump Republicans.

On 27 February 2022, the president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen announced the European Union would ban RT and Sputnik (plus their subsidiaries) from operating in its 27 member countries. The ban resulted in RT being blocked on downstream television networks located outside EU, such as the United Kingdom and Singapore as they were dependent on EU companies for the signal feed to RT. Canadian telecom companies Shaw, Rogers, Bell and Telus announced they would no longer offer RT in their channel lineups (although Rogers replaced its RT broadcasts with a Ukrainian flag). This move was praised by Canada's Minister of Canadian Heritage Pablo Rodriguez who called the network the "propaganda arm" of Vladimir Putin. On 28 February, Ofcom announced they had opened 15 expedited investigations into RT. These investigations will be focused on the 15 news editions broadcast on 27 February between 05:00 and 19:00 and will check if the coverage broke impartiality requirements in the broadcast code. On 2 March, the regulation was published which meant the ban was in force. Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok made RT's and Sputnik's social media content unavailable to users in the European Union on 28 February. Microsoft removed RT and Sputnik from MSN, the Microsoft Store, and the Microsoft Advertising network on the same day. YouTube, on 1 March, banned access to all RT and Sputnik channels on its platform in Europe (including Britain). The New York Times op ed columnist Nicholas Kristof commented on CNN's Piers Morgan Live about Wahl's and Martin's initial actions, saying that he "admire[s] 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". Former RT Moscow anchor Staci 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 refused, other reporters were sent instead. 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". 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. 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." 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." 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." For repeated breaches of its due impartiality 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".

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. 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. European Parliament briefing notes on the situation called RT "Russia's main international media weapon". 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". 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". In an episode of The Truthseeker, named Genocide of Eastern Ukraine, they stated that the Ukrainian government was deliberately bombing civilians and 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". 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. 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". 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". 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". The Post was criticized by The Intercept and Fortune for relying in part on an analysis by PropOrNot. 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.

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". 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. 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. 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". RT was fined £200,000 but kept its licence to broadcast in the UK. RT described Ofcom's actions against it as "inappropriate and disproportionate per Ofcom's own track record".

German journalist Daniel Lange employed by RT DE left the station in protest against its operation to spy on Alexey Navalny while he was undergoing treatment in a hospital in Germany after being poisoned by FSB. According to Lange, the assignment had nothing to do with journalism as he was instructed in the first place to test the security of the hospital, describe number of internal checkpoints and his RT leadership clearly indicated collected information will not be used for publication. Lange also described reporting bias in the RT where he was instructed by the editor to specifically select footage showing "all the filth of Germany". Russia threatened to ban YouTube in September for deleting the RT channels, RT DE and Der Fehlende Part. The platform had banned the RT channels for breaking its policies on spreading COVID 19 misinformation and for using the second channel to circumvent an initial week long suspension.

In January, the State Department's Global Engagement Center (GEC) published a report titled "Kremlin Funded Media: RT and Sputnik's Role in Russia's Disinformation and Propaganda Ecosystem." Its case studies included one on "false narratives" published by RT concerning the Russian military buildup on the Ukrainian border. Employees and associates of RT and its subsidiary Ruptly in multiple countries, including the UK and Germany, resigned in response to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, with some attributing their departures to the Russian government's prohibition of using the word "invasion" to describe the military offensive. Frédéric Taddeï quit his role as host of the RT France talk show Interdit d'interdire on 23 February when Russia recognized the Donetsk and Luhansk breakaway states immediately preceding the invasion. Former First Minister of Scotland Alex Salmond suspended his RT talk show, The Alex Salmond Show, on 24 February after receiving public criticism following the invasion. A number of British journalists based both in RT's offices in Moscow and at RT UK's now disbanded offices in London resigned from the network in response to its coverage of the invasion; according to The Times, four have "publicly announced their resignation, while others are said to have quietly left RT's London bureau". On 25 February, hacking group Anonymous claimed a distributed denial of service attack on the network's website, in support of Ukraine in its fight against Russia. The following day, Alphabet Inc., the owners of Google, temporarily barred RT from receiving any financial return from their ads on their YouTube platform.

1. Writing in The New York Times, Stephen Heyman estimated that more than $100 million had been spent on the station as of May 2008.