RUSSIAN state media tends not to give much or any airtime to critics of the government, and their initial treatment of Alexei Navalny’s reported death continues in this vein.
On state TV channels, the media outlets with the biggest audiences in Russia, there has been minimal coverage of Navalny’s death, and the first reports were largely slow to come and perfunctory.
On two of the most popular channels – Channel One and Rossiya 1 – it took almost 45 minutes and an hour respectively after the announcement, before it was mentioned.
These reports provided no contextual information of who Navalny was, nor why he was in prison.
One didn’t even mention his full name, referring to him only as “Navalny” – despite telling viewers “the most thorough investigation” into his death would take place.
When a liberal politician appearing on another popular state TV channel tried to express his condolences on Navalny’s death he was cut off by the programme’s host, who asked him what this had to do with the topic they were discussing.
On social media, however, it is quite a different picture.
The news has been all over platforms like X (formerly Twitter) – where it was a top trending topic – and Telegram, an increasingly popular source of news.
Posts on Navalny were among the most viewed on Telegram, garnering hundreds of thousands – sometimes over a million – views, in hours.
