Reporters Without Borders (RSF) released an overview of Russian federal television content.
Federal TV networks are popular amongst most of Russians. According to Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VCIOM) – 52% of Russians considered TV as their main source of information in 2017, and seven out of ten of respondents named federal TV as a trusted source of information.
Russia is ranked 148th out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2017 World Press Freedom Index.
RSF brought up to the light a growing cover-up bad news on Russian federal TV. The organization has returned to Russian media topic after a recent tragedy in Kemerovo, happened a couple of weeks ago – on March 25, 2018. Several dozens of people were killed by the a fire in a shopping mall in Kemerovo. Main TV channels kept silence about the tragedy for about a half a day.
The main conclusion on the RSF’s overview – Russian TV avoids bad news. RSF notes that “the major TV channels did not report it [Kemerovo tragedy] until their evening news programmes and then only gave it brief mention after long reports about the results of the previous week’s presidential election”. The overview says – this is not an accidental coincidence and the consequence of state control established over editorial policy of the media.
The overview is available on Reporters Without Borders website.