RT

Type	State media,[1] news channel, propaganda[2]
Country	Russia
Broadcast area	Worldwide
Headquarters	Moscow
Programming
Language(s)	News channel: English, French, Arabic & Spanish Documentary channel: English, French, Russian Online platforms: German[3]
Picture format	1080i (HDTV) (downscaled to 16:9 480i/576i for the SDTV feed)
Ownership
Owner	ANO "TV-Novosti"[4]
Sister channels	RT America (2010–2022) RT France (2017–2023) RT UK (2014–2022) RT DE (2014–2022) RT en Español RT Arabic RT Documentary Ruptly[5] (including Redfish and Maffick)[6][7]
History
Launched	10 December 2005; 18 years ago (2005-12-10) (registered on 6 April 2005)[8]
Former names	Russia Today (2005–2009)
Links
Website	www.rt.com

RT (formerly Russia Today or Rossiya Segodnya; Russian: Россия Сегодня)^[9] is a Russian state-controlled^[1] international news television network funded by the Russian government.^[16][17] 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.^[8][18] 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.^[19][20][21] 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),^[22][23] RT UK (2014–2022) and other regional channels also produce local content. RT is the parent company of the Ruptly video agency,^[5] which owns the Redfish video channel and the Maffick digital media company.^[6][7]

RT has regularly been described as a major propaganda outlet for the Russian government and its foreign policy.^[2] Academics, fact-checkers, and news reporters (including some current and former RT reporters) have identified RT as a purveyor of disinformation^[58] and conspiracy theories.^[65] 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.^[72]

In 2012, RT's editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan compared the channel to the Russian Ministry of Defence.^[73] Referring to the Russo-Georgian War, she stated that it was "waging an information war, and with the entire Western world".^[17][74] 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.^[75]

RT was banned in Ukraine in 2014 after Russia's annexation of Crimea;^[76] Latvia and Lithuania implemented similar bans in 2020.^[77][78] Germany banned RT DE in February 2022.^[79] 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.^[80][81][82] Social media websites followed by blocking external links to RT's website and restricting access to RT's content.^[83][84] Microsoft removed RT from their app store and de-ranked their search results on Bing,^[85][86] while Apple removed the RT app from all countries except for Russia.^[87] However, RT content continues to be laundered through third-party sites.^[88]

History

Foundation

RT's formation was part of a public relations effort by the Russian Government in 2005 to improve Russia's image abroad.^[89] RT was conceived by former media minister Mikhail Lesin^[90] and Aleksei Gromov.^[91] 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".^[90] RT is funded by the Federal Agency for Press and Mass Media, part of the government of Russia.^[92][93]

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,^[8] and Sergey Frolov (Сергей Фролов) was appointed its CEO.^[94]

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.^[89] Russia Today appointed Margarita Simonyan as its editor-in-chief; she recruited foreign journalists as presenters and consultants.^[90]

Simonyan, aged 25 years old when she was appointed, was a former Kremlin pool reporter who 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.^[95] Journalist Danny Schechter (who has appeared as a guest on RT)^[96] 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".^[97] 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.^[98]

Development and expansion

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.^[22]

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.^[99][100] 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.^[100]

Russia Today drew particular attention worldwide for its coverage of the 2008 South Ossetia war.^{[100][101][102]} RT named Georgia as the aggressor^[102] against the separatist governments of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which were protected by Russian troops.^[103] RT saw this as the incident that showcased its newsgathering abilities to the world.^[43] 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".^[101]

In 2009, Russia Today was rebranded to "RT", which George Washington University academics Jack Nassetta and Kimberly Gross described as an " to shed state affiliation".^[15] Simonyan said the company had not changed names but the company's corporate logo was changed to attract more viewers: "who is interested in watching news from Russia all day long?"^[22] Julia Ioffe also describes 2009, when the Barack Obama administration came to office "promising a different approach toward Russia", as a time when RT became "more international and less anti-American", and "built a state-of-the-art studio and newsroom" in the U.S. capital^[43]

In early 2010, RT unveiled an advertising campaign to promote its new "Question More" slogan.^[104] The campaign was created by Ketchum, GPlus, and London's Portland PR.^[45] 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?"^[105] One of RT's 2010 billboard advertisements won the British Awards for National Newspaper Advertising "Ad of the Month".^[106]

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.^[107] 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^[108] and that they were supplanting the Voice of America.^[109][110]

2012–2021

In early 2012, shortly after his appointment as U.S. Ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul challenged Margarita Simonyan^[111] on Twitter about allegations from RT^[112] that he had sent Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny to study at Yale University.^[111][112] 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.^[113][114] 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.^[115][116]

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.^{[117][118][119]} The interview made global headlines as Nasrallah rarely gives interviews to Western media.^[120] Commentators described this as a "coup".^[121][122] WikiLeaks described the show as "a series of in-depth conversations with key political players, thinkers and revolutionaries from around the world".^[123] It stated that the show is "independently produced and Assange has control"; WikiLeaks offers a "Broadcasters license, only".^[124]

Assange said that RT allowed his guests to discuss things that they "could not say on a mainstream TV network".^[125] 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.^[120] In August of that year, RT suffered a denial of service attack. Some people linked the attack to RT's connection with Assange, and others to an impending court verdict related to Pussy Riot.^[126]

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.^[127][128] 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.^{[129][130][131]}

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."^[132][133] 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.^[134]

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."^[135][16]

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.^[136]

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!"^[137] 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".^[138]

In 2018, some of the RT staff started a new media project, Redfish.media, that positioned itself as "grassroots journalism".^[139][6] The website was criticized by activist Musa Okwonga for deceptively interviewing him and then distributing it across RT channels while hiding its real affiliation.^[140] Another similar RT project is In the NOW, started in 2018.^[141] 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 NOW's 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.^{[142][143][7][144]}

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.^[145] 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.^[145]

In December 2021 RT launched a TV channel in Germany, RT DE TV using a license for cable and satellite broadcasting issued in Serbia. A week after the launch, on 22 December the channel was removed from broadcasting via European satellites by the European satellite operator at the request of the German media regulator.^[146]

2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine

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.^[147] 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.^[148][149] 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).^[150] This move was praised by Canada's Minister of Canadian Heritage Pablo Rodriguez who called the network the "propaganda arm" of Vladimir Putin.^[151] On 28 February, Ofcom announced they had opened 15 expedited investigations into RT.^[152] 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.^[153] On 2 March, the regulation was published which meant the ban was in force.^[154]

Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok made RT's and Sputnik's social media content unavailable to users in the European Union on 28 February.^[155][156] Microsoft removed RT and Sputnik from MSN, the Microsoft Store, and the Microsoft Advertising network on the same day.^[157] YouTube, on 1 March, banned access to all RT and Sputnik channels on its platform in Europe (including Britain).^[a][83][158] Apple followed by removing RT and Sputnik from its App Store in all countries except Russia.^[159] Roku dropped the RT app from its channel store,^[160] while DirecTV pulled RT America from its channel lineup.^[161] On 1 March, the National Administration of Telecommunications of Uruguay announced the removal of RT from the Antel TV streaming platform.^[162] New Zealand satellite television provider Sky also removed RT, citing complaints from customers and consultation with the Broadcasting Standards Authority.^[163] Reddit blocked new outgoing links to RT and Sputnik on 3 March.^[164] On 11 March, YouTube blocked RT and Sputnik worldwide.^[165] From 16 March, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission officially banned RT and RT France from the list of non-Canadian programming services authorized for distribution.^[80]

On 8 March 2022, RT France challenged the EU ban of its activities in the General Court of the Court of Justice of the European Union.^[166] After refusing to "urgently" consider the case on 30 March,^[167] the General Court dismissed the case on 27 July 2022, ruling that the ban against RT was justified.^[168]

Between 22 and 26 February 2022, a couple of days before and after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, "posts on Facebook from RT and Sputnik got more than 5 million likes, shares and comments". On YouTube, videos of "false stories, claiming that Ukrainians had attacked Russians or describing a 'genocide' against Russian-speaking Ukrainians in the separatist Donbas region," were watched "73 million times."^[169] During the invasion, hacktivist collective Anonymous launched a distributed denial of service attack that temporarily disabled the websites of RT and other Russian government-controlled organizations.^[170][171] In March 2022, RT America closed and most of its staff ceased to work for the outlet.^[23] RT began selling merchandise emblazoned with the "Z" military symbol – a pro-Kremlin and pro-war emblem – a few days after the start of the invasion.^[172]

In March 2022, Vice News reported that RT had established a channel on Gab's video sharing platform Gab TV, which describes itself as a "free speech broadcasting platform." Vice News observed that Gab CEO Andrew Torba had given his support for Russia's invasion of Ukraine and Torba publicly supported RT, claiming that they are being subject to the same censorship as American conservatives "by Big Tech and the globalist regime". Torba also falsely claimed that Gab is "the one place on the internet where you can find RT News" when RT also has a presence on video sharing platform Rumble.^[173] Not all branches of RT have suffered declines since the war started. Interactions with the Arabic-language Facebook page "RT Online" grew 161.2% from 28 February to mid-March, "RT Play in Español" went up a 22.5%.^[169]

In October 2022, RT presenter Anton Krasovsky said on air that Ukrainian children who had in the past criticised the Soviet Union as occupiers of Ukraine should have been drowned or burned; he additionally laughed at reporting that Russian soldiers raped elderly Ukrainian women during the 2022 invasion.^[174] He was subsequently suspended by Simonyan, and criminal case investigation was opened.^[175]

In September and October 2022, RT launched RT Hindi^[176] and RT Balkan,^[177][178] to expand its audience.

Organization

State-owned RIA Novosti news agency, which founded RT in 2005, is one of the largest in Russia. Its former chairperson was Svetlana Mironyuk, who modernised the agency after being appointed in 2003.^{[179][180][181]}

In 2007, RT established offices in the same building as RIA Novosti, after the Russian Union of Journalists was forced to vacate them.^[182] In 2012, Anna Kachkayeva, Dean of Media Communications at Moscow's Higher School of Economics, stated that the two organizations "share the same roof" because they are located in the same building, but in "funding, editorial policy, management and staff, they are two independent organisations whose daily operations are not interconnected in any way".^[183] In 2008, Simonyan noted that more than 50 young RT journalists had gone on to take positions in large Western media outlets.^[100] By 2010, RT's staff had grown to 2,000.^[22]

In December 2012, RT moved its production studios and headquarters to a new facility in Moscow. The move coincided with RT's upgrade of all of its English-language news programming to high-definition.^{[184][185][186]}

In 2013, a presidential decree issued by Vladimir Putin dissolved RIA Novosti, replacing it with a new information agency called Rossiya Segodnya (directly translated as Russia Today).^[187] On 31 December 2013, Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of the RT news channel, was also appointed editor-in-chief of the new news agency while maintaining her duties for the television network.^[188]

From 18 August 2020 to 18 August 2021, ANO TV Novosti was owned by the federal state unitary enterprise RAMI RIA Novosti (Russian: ФГУП "РАМИ "РИА Новости") and the Association for the Development of International Journalism (ADIJ; Russian: Ассоциация развития международной журналистики (АРМЖ)), which was founded by Margarita Simonyan and few other RT associates. On 18 August 2021, RAMI RIA Novosti was liquidated and the ownership of ANO TV Novosti was transferred to ADIJ.^{[189][190][191]}

Budget

When it was established in 2005, ANO TV-Novosti invested $30 million in start-up costs to establish RT,^[192] 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.^[98] Its annual budget increased from approximately $80 million in 2007 to $380 million in 2011, but was reduced to $300 million in 2012.^[193][194] President Putin prohibited the reduction of funding for RT on 30 October 2012.^[195]

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.^[40][196] In 2014, RT received 11.87 billion rubles ($310 million) in government funding and was expected to receive 15.38 billion rubles ($400 million) in 2015.^[197] (For comparison, the bigger BBC World Service Group had a $376 million budget in 2014–15.)^[198] At the start of 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.^[40][196] Instead, government funding was increased to 20.8 billion rubles (around $300 million) in September.^[199] In 2015, RT was expected to receive 19 billion rubles ($307 million) from the Russian government the following year.^[200] As of 2022, RT is the leader in terms of state funding among all Russian media. Between 2022 and 2024, RT will receive 82 billion rubles.^[201][202]

Network

According to RT as of March 2022, the network's feed is carried by 22 satellites and over 230 operators, providing a distribution reach to about 700 million households in more than 100 countries.^[203] RT also stated that RT America was available to 85 million households throughout the United States, as of 2012.^[204]

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 RTDoc documentary channel. RT maintains 21 bureaus in 16 countries, including those in Washington, D.C., New York City; London, England; Paris, France; Delhi, India; Cairo, Egypt and Baghdad, Iraq.^[3]

The sharp decline in the ruble at the end of 2014 forced RT to postpone German- and French-language channels.^[198]

In addition to news agency Ruptly, RT also operates the following websites: RT на русском (in Russian),^[210] RT en français (French),^[211] RT DE (German).^[212]

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.^[40]

The German service (RT DE) was removed from YouTube in September 2021 for breaking the websites rules on COVID misinformation.^[213] As noted by Russian journalists, the Russian edition of RT "aggressively" promoted COVID-19 vaccination in Russia, calling anti-vaccination activists "imbeciles", while foreign RT channels were simultaneously promoting the same anti-vaccination misinformation that it criticized in Russia.^[214][215]

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.^[216] In October 2012, RT's Rusiya Al-Yaum and RT joined the high-definition network Al Yah Satellite Communications ("YahLive").^[217] On 12 July 2014, during his visit to Argentina, Putin announced that Actualidad RT would broadcast free-to-air in the country, the first foreign television channel to do so there.^[218][219] According to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Argentina's State Media Authorities decided to suspend RT on 11 June 2016, along with Venezuelan television channel TeleSur, which had both been authorized by the previous left-leaning government of Cristina Kirchner. Officially, Argentina wanted to devote RT's frequency to domestic broadcasts.^[220] RT was made available on the dominant Australian subscription television platform Foxtel on 17 February 2015.^[221]

Ratings/impact

Audience ratings

The RT website (as of March 2022), maintains that "since June 2012", RT has "consistently and significantly outperforms other foreign channels including Euronews and Fox News. RT's quarterly audience in the UK is 2.5 million viewers".^[222] However, according to The Daily Beast, citing leaked documents from "Vasily Gatov, a former RIA Novosti employee" (as of 2015) RT “hugely exaggerates its viewership,”;^[223] and its most-watched segments were on apolitical subjects.^[224] Between 2013 and 2015, over 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.^[225] 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 a small number could be categorized as political, with only one covering Ukraine.^[199] The most popular video of Russian president Putin shows him singing "Blueberry Hill" at a 2010 St. Petersburg charity event.^[225] 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.^[226] RT has disputed both The Daily Beast and The Washington Post assessments, saying their analyses used outdated viewership data.^[227][228]

A study by Professor Robert Orttung at George Washington University stated that RT uses human interest stories without ideological content to attract viewers to its channels. Between January and May 2015, the Russian-language channel had the most viewers, with approximately double the number of the main channel, despite only having around one-third the number of subscribers.^[40]

According to data compiled by Oxford's Rasmus Kleis Nielsen prior to the invasion of Ukraine, RT's "online reach in the U.K., France, and Germany" was "not great on the web, but surprisingly strong on social media, at least in spots".^[223] For example, in Germany, RT was "the No. 1 news source in terms of engagements on Facebook" December 2021-January 2022, (according to this CrowdTangle data).^[223]

Reliable figures for RT's worldwide audience were not available as of 2015.^[199] In the United States, RT typically pays cable and satellite services to carry its channel in subscriber packages.^[225] In 2011, RT was the second most-watched foreign news channel in the United States (after BBC World News),^[229] and the number one foreign network in five major U.S. urban areas in 2012.^[230] It also rated well among younger Americans under 35 and in inner city areas.^[230]

In the UK, the Broadcasters' Audience Research Board (BARB) has included RT in the viewer data it publishes since 2012.^[199] 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).^{[184][231][232]} RT was soon overtaken by Al Jazeera English,^[233] and viewing figures dropped to about 2.1 million by the end of 2013.^[234] For comparison, it had marginally fewer viewers than S4C, the state-funded Welsh language broadcaster,^[235] or minor channels such as Zing, Viva and Rishtey.^[236] According to internal documents submitted for Kremlin review, RT's viewership amounted to less than 0.1 percent of Europe's television audience, except in Britain, where 2013 viewership was estimated at 120,000 persons per day.^[225] According to the leaked documents, RT was ranked 175th out of 278 channels in Great Britain in May 2013, or fifth out of eight cable news channels.^[225] 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.^[199][237] In March 2016, the monthly viewing was figure 0.04%.^[238]

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.^[239]

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, 68 percent of which consisted of first-person video accounts of dramatic worldwide events, likely acquired by the network rather than created by it.^[240][241] In 2013, RT became the first television news channel to reach 1 billion views on YouTube.^[44] In 2014, its main (English) channel was reported have 1.4 million subscribers.^[242]

Followers

In 2013, RT became "the first news network to surpass 1 billion views on YouTube".^[169] As of shortly after the invasion of Ukraine and blocking of RT by tech companies, RT's "main Facebook channel has more than 7 million followers" (some of which are located in Europe where the channel is blocked). RT's YouTube account had "roughly 4.65 million followers in English and 5.94 million in Spanish".^[169]

Impact

RT has some effect on viewers' political opinions, according to a 2021 study in the journal Security Studies. Viewers exposed to RT became more likely "to support the withdrawal of the United States "from its role as a cooperative global leader" than those who did not watch RT by 10–20%. "This effect is robust across measures, obtains across party lines, and persists even when we disclose that RT is financed by the Russian government." However, exposure to RT had no measurable "effect on Americans' views of domestic politics or the Russian government."^[243]

According to author Peter Pomerantsev, a large audience rating is not RT's principal goal. Their campaigns are "for financial, political and media influence.”^[244] RT (and Sputnik) "create the fodder" used by "thousands of fake news propagators" and provide an outlet for material hacked from targets it wishes to harm in the service of Russian (government) interests. RT also serves to make friends with people "useful" to the Russian state, such as Michael Flynn (retired United States Army lieutenant general and dismissed director of the Defense Intelligence Agency and U.S. National Security Advisor^[245] in the early days of the Trump administration) who was paid "a reported $40,000 to come to RT's anniversary celebration in Moscow and sit near Mr. Putin."^[244]

Programming

In 2008, Heidi Brown wrote in Forbes that "the Kremlin is using charm, good photography and a healthy dose of sex appeal to appeal to a diverse, skeptical audience. The result is entertaining – and ineffably Russian." She added that Russia Today has managed to "get foreigners to at least consider the Russian viewpoint – however eccentric it may be..."^[246] Matt Field in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists described RT as "applying high-quality graphics and production values to its stories", often focusing "on polarizing issues that aren't necessarily top-of-mind for viewers" and sometimes "strikingly at odds with Russian President Vladimir Putin's own views".^[247]

According to Tim Dowling, writing in The Guardian, "Fringe opinion takes center stage" on RT. "Reporting is routinely bolstered by testimony from experts you have never heard of, representing institutions you have never heard of."^[248]

The Alyona Show

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".^[249] The New Republic columnist Jesse Zwick wrote that one journalist told him that Minkovski is "probably the best interviewer on cable news".^[250] Benjamin R. Freed wrote in the avant-garde culture magazine SOMA that "The Alyona Show does political talk with razor-sharp wit."^[251] 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".^[102] Minkovski had complained about being characterized as if she was "Putin's girl in Washington" or as being "anti-American".^[251] 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?"^[43]

Adam vs. the Man

From April to August 2011, RT ran a half-hour primetime show Adam vs. the Man,^{[252][253][254]} 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."^[102]

World Tomorrow

Reviewing the first episode of 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.^[120] 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".^[117] Douglas Lucas in Salon wrote that the RT deal "may just be a profitable way for him to get a gigantic retweet".^[124] Glenn Greenwald, who has been a guest on RT,^[255] wrote that RT presenting the Julian Assange show led to "a predictable wave of snide, smug attacks from American media figures".^[256]

Other shows

Marcin Maczka writes that RT's ample financing has allowed RT to attract experienced journalists and use the latest technology.^[193] 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").^[257] 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.^[95][193]

#1917LIVE

In 2017, RT ran a mock live tweeting program under the hashtag "#1917LIVE" to mark the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution.^[258]

The #1917Live project had multimedia social plug-ins, such as Periscope live streaming, as well as virtual reality panoramic videos.^[259]

Programs

RT's feature programs include (with presenters parenthesised):^[260][261]

Current

Former

RT's former on-air staff included 25 people from RT America.^[263]

On-air staff

RT's current on-air staff includes 25 people from RT News, and eight from RT UK.^[263] Notable members of RT's current and former staff include: