Remarkably, unlike American media that typically turn to 24/7 coverage of major breaking events, Russian television news is continuing with its usual Saturday morning programming. While channels are covering events, such as Putin's speech, Russia 24's coverage gives a glimpse of the "business as usual" coverage of Russian television, with Russia 24 covering the rebellion in one half-hour, but then in the next half-hour wraps up its coverage and moves on to regularly scheduled programming about the invasion of Ukraine. On Russia 1, coverage of the insurrection gives way to a regularly scheduled game show. In fact, across Channel One, NTV, Russia 1 and Russia 24, one would be hard-pressed to know anything was happening, with breaking updates of the civil war buried within routine updates on the Ukraine invasion and scheduled programming. Russian media has not yet moved to 24/7 breaking coverage, raising questions about why the government is not utilizing its media control in an attempt to turn the population against Wagner or rally the security state to its rescue.
Launch Visual Explorer With Just Belarusian, Russian & Ukrainian Channels.
This analysis is part of an ongoing collaboration between the Internet Archive and its TV News Archive, the multi-party Media-Data Research Consortium and GDELT.