Anyone willing to post a cite from "Russia Today" should read this...

[Ghost Dog]

58. Well, without breaking a sweat,

<g> I would suggest that

a). The Daily Beast article is a simplistic and self-contradictory hit-piece for those who don't bother to read, never mind 'between the lines'. And only refers to 'viewing', as opposed to reading. The sub-heading, for example, asserts that "RT hugely exaggerates its global viewership", while lower down in the article we are informed that "RT has never divulged a single, absolute figure confirmed by measurements of its audience. All the press releases put out by the channel about its viewing abroad are based on playing with relative numbers: the audience doubled, the coverage is 60% greater than its competitors, and so on. The only absolute figure on the RT site is that the television audience consists of 630 million people in 100 countries of the world. In reality, this number is only the potential geographical scope of the audience." It appears that RT's numbers according to the article, which I haven't looked into, refer to 'reach', ie. potential audience, while the article's author(s) present attempts to ascertain actual audience figures, from which we might come away with the impression that only some Arabs, and some in the UK, pay any attention to RT. Anyway, such 'playing with numbers' doesn't seem to have much to do with the kind of 'lies' i thought were under discussion.

b). The Newsweek piece appears to be just noise, interesting though. Give me more time to analyse it. Here's an example:

... On September 11 last year, hundreds of Twitter accounts began “reporting” news of a major chemical explosion in St. Mary Parish, Louisiana. Nothing of the kind had occurred, but the abundance of “eyewitness” reports gave the accident a War of the Worlds-like credibility. As the Times reported

“A powerful explosion heard from miles away happened at a chemical plant in Centerville, Louisiana #ColumbianChemicals,” a man named Jon Merritt tweeted. The #ColumbianChemicals hashtag was full of eyewitness accounts of the horror in Centerville. @AnnRussela shared an image of flames engulfing the plant. @Ksarah12 posted a video of surveillance footage from a local gas station, capturing the flash of the explosion. Others shared a video in which thick black smoke rose in the distance.

This was not an elaborate prank. It was a carefully planned exercise involving cloned websites, spurious text messages, a faked YouTube video, doctored screen shots and hundreds of social media accounts run by the Kremlin’s “trolls.” Other hoaxes, involving an Ebola outbreak and a police shooting, followed in subsequent weeks.

Of course these were one-off stunts, but they prove that the Kremlin is building its capabilities in this sphere, practicing for bigger tasks.

I'm sorry? Where is the proof of 'Kremlin' (note the buzzword, like also the use of 'regime') involvement in such nonsense?

c). Alex Jones? Home-grown Russian? Gimme a break. Sure, RT should be more discerning as regards its junk opinion shows (looking for an audience in that demographic?). But please refer to sender.

d). StopFake? Oh sure. Ukrainian coup Kiev "National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy (NaUKMA)" with a US veneer... Fulbright Scholar, the boss...http://en.j-school.kiev.ua/%E2%80%8E . Cough.

e). "Man is trivial compared to nature and cannot change climate - astrophysicist". This, finally, is an actual RT 'news' article. Similar can be found in eg. the UK's Daily Telegraph and much US MSM. It appears to accurately report the opinions of this person. As an environmental sciences graduate from the 1970's I am sometimes moved to check out such people's opinions and find them to be mistaken.

Errors of judgement, bad taste, obfuscation, perhaps (what's new in the 'news' media). Lies? Unproven.