Combing Russia's television news networks. Image: Kevin Rothrock. This article is part of a larger guidebook by RuNet Echo to help people learn how to conduct open-source research on the Russian Internet. Explore the complete guidebook at the special project page. According to survey research by the Levada Center, the vast majority of Russians (85 percent) say they watch television to learn about the country's news. While less than half (41 percent) say they also trust the news they learn from TV, it still inspires twice at least as much confidence than any of its competitors. When conducting online open-source research in Russian, finding and evaluating television reports is often just as important as combing social media and online news sources. This guide explains how to evaluate TV news sources and navigate television networks’ online video archives, in order to compare coverage of specific events. Contents This is the most-watched channel in Russia, airing a variety of news, entertainment, and sports programs. The channel is state-owned and has a generally pro-government bias. For open-source research, the most relevant programming is the popular “Vremya” (Время) nightly news program, which has a weekly segment by the infamous pundit Dmitry Kiselyov. A livestream of the channel can be viewed here. The fastest way to locate particular pieces of Channel One's news coverage is by searching through its easy-to-use video archive, sorted by date (if you cannot read the months, check a reference guide here from MasterRussian.com). The archive goes back to 1999, providing a wealth of easily accessible information. Additionally, you can search through Channel One’s YouTube channel here. This is the second-most-watched channel in Russia, airing news, entertainment, sports, documentaries, and other programming. Like Channel One, the channel is state-owned and the news coverage is rarely, if ever, critical of the Kremlin. Each news segment's title contains the word “Vesti” (Вести), including “Vesti,” “Vesti on Saturday” (Вести в субботу), “Vesti at 8:00 p.m.” (Вести в 20:00), and so on. A livestream of the channel can be viewed here. The website makes it very easy to search for news segments, categorizing them by date and by specific program. After clicking on a Vesti segment, you can search by a calendar (календарь) to find a news broadcast on a specific date, going back to 2012. Additionally, Russia 1 has numerous regional channels. For their video broadcasts, search for Россия 1 with the region or city name—for example, enter “Россия 1 Ярославль” to find the station's Yaroslavl branch. Googling this phrase will bring the official television station’s website and the YouTube channel for the station, giving us an archive of nearly all of their local news broadcasts. This is a 24-hour news channel and the sister channel to Russia 1. The channel was named “Vesti” (Вести) until 2010, and still retains the same URL of Vesti.ru. A livestream of the channel can be viewed here. As with Russia 1, there are vast video archives for the news broadcasts for this channel, accessible by category and show here. You can filter the results by date after searching a term (click the magnifying glass in top-right corner), then selecting a date range. Additionally, Russia 24’s vast news broadcast archives are accessible (going back a few years) on its YouTube channel. The programs are filtered on the YouTube channel by theme (such as the more-than-1,000 videos on the “Situation in Ukraine” channel) or by program. Since its takeover in March 2000 (following Putin's first presidential election win), NTV has been under the control of Media-Most and, after 2001, Gazprom Media. NTV is nominally independent, but the state has a majority stake in Gazprom, effectively putting the Kremlin in control of the network's major editorial policies. NTV airs a number of news programs, along with shows, movies, and emotional investigations that often focus on crime. Its news is slanted towards the government line, and it's often more sensationalist than Russia 1 or Channel One. A livestream of the channel can be viewed here. The easiest way to navigate NTV’s broadcast archive is by filtering its news page. From the “news” (новости) page, scroll down to find a small segment on the right-hand part of the page showing the date. After selecting the desired date, any news segments that aired on that day will appear. When searching by key word, there is no way to search within a date range, but the results are ordered chronologically by default. You can also search through the daily news programs of NTV (“Сегодня” and “Итоги дня”) using NTV's YouTube channel. This is the Russian Defense Ministry's television network.