U.S. elections dominate Russian television news broadcasts

Between Tuesday night and Wednesday morning in Moscow, Russia’s state news networks devoted roughly 90 percent of their airtime to covering the U.S. elections, according to monitoring by journalists at Agentstvo Media. From midnight until 9 a.m., viewers got only about an hour of news from Russia and other parts of the world.

One network even aired a segment about U.S. weather patterns, analyzing how conditions could influence voter turnout.

Rossiya 24’s coverage was virtually nonstop once election officials started reporting preliminary results. Anchors and correspondents also spent time on air discussing Donald Trump supporters’ reactions posted on social media and the likely economic implications of Trump’s second presidency.

News programming on Channel One and Rossiya 1 also focused heavily, though not quite as exclusively, on the U.S. elections. In its morning news broadcast, Channel One spent a third of its time (about five minutes) on America’s voting, while Rossiya 1 devoted half of its morning news show (almost seven minutes) to the U.S. elections. The remaining time was given to the war in Ukraine, protests in Israel, and domestic Russian news.