It's a matter of opinion, whether or not RT is conforming to Pravda standards. Given truthers' track record of accepting evidence that goes against their belief, I'm not expecting the following to change much:
Pravda on the Potomac
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For the past four years, Russia has been building its global media and public relations presence. In 2005, the government established Russia Today, a worldwide news channel that broadcasts in English, Arabic, and Spanish. With its often virulent anti-Americanism, worshipful portrayal of Russian leaders, and comical production values, the station, which has over 90 million viewers, can be relied upon to repeat Kremlin talking points. But while the station has pretensions to be a respected news outlet, it often can't help but revive the pettiness that was a distinctive feature of Soviet-era propaganda. A video clip on the station's website, for instance, shows Saakashvili chewing on the end of his tie while on a phone call; it's captioned "The nervous Georgian President revealed an odd little habit." The station also regularly features commentary from Alex Jones, the notorious American conspiracy theorist who in August apologized to Russia Today viewers for the Georgian invasion; an attack, he said, in fact perpetrated by "a private international military industrial complex" that had "taken over" the U.S. government.
http://www.tnr.com/article/pravda-the-potomacThe Kremlin's quest for Pravda 2.0
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Gazprom's sophistication aside, the Kremlin's ability to broadcast its own take on geopolitical events - particularly those involving Russia - is largely non-existent. The launch of Russia Today, a 24-hour English-language news channel, in late 2005, was supposed to bridge that gap; however, the channel is yet to pose a serious threat to CNN International or Al Jazeera. Given its propensity to air conspiracy theories on a daily basis, sometimes it feels more like a TV arm of the LaRouche movement than a serious international news outlet (it's also, perhaps, the only international news channel that actually invites LaRouch himself to air his putrid punditry to the global audience). So far, Russia Today has mostly failed to effectively advance the Kremlin's viewpoint: in times of an international crisis - like the war in South Ossetia - international audiences (at least the sane viewers amongst them) tend to disregard RT's coverage as biased - and they are usually right to do so...
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"TV Novosti", the entity behind the aforementioned "Russia Today" TV channel, is slated to receive 230 million USD (which is twice as much as last year); lion's share of this money would go towards diversifying its international broadcasting and launching new TV channels in English, Arabic, and Spanish. In case you were wondering: TV Novosti's web-site presents it as an "autonomous nonprofit organization" - it must be one of those cases where money does buy autonomy (this is still a huge pile of money: Russia Today's start-up budget was only 30 million USD and it needed another 60 million USD in its first year of operation).
http://neteffect.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/05/09/kremlins_quest_for_pravda_20Conflict Opens Front in the Media
Russian television is flush with footage of misery left by the Georgian assault in the separatist district of South Ossetia, but few, if any, reports mention Russia’s bombing of Georgia.
William Dunbar, a correspondent in Georgia for English-language state channel Russia Today, mentioned the bombing in a report Saturday, and he has not gone on air for the station since.
“I had a series of live, video satellite links scheduled for later that day, and they were canceled by Russia Today,” he said by telephone from Tbilisi on Sunday. “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.
http://mediachannel.org/wordpress/2008/08/11/conflict-opens-front-in-the-media/
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