The government will spend 211 billion rubles to the financing of Russia Today

The data on financial injections into state channels in the draft amendments to the state program "Information Society" were found by the journalists of the It's my City publication.

As noted by The Insider, initially the state planned to spend an amount less than the current one and a half times to finance television and electronic media. In the current version of the program to support RT and Russia Today, which includes RIA Novosti, radio Sputnik and some other projects, 34.02 billion were allocated for 2021, 34.08 billion for 2022, and 35 for 2023. 05 billion, in 2024 - 35.43 billion.

“According to the amendments, in 2021, 52.3 billion rubles are allocated for these tasks, in 2022 - 52.9 billion, in 2023 - 53.4 billion and the same amount in 2024. Thus, in four years the government intended to spend 138 billion rubles for these purposes, and will spend more than 211 billion”, - the message says.

Previously, government spending on this program amounted to 177.1 billion rubles over 4 years.

Through multibillion-dollar financial injections, the authorities intend to increase the planned audience coverage of the RT channel from 800 million to 900 million viewers per year. At the same time, the volume of broadcasting of "Russia Today" to a foreign audience should grow from 110 to 114 hours a day, and the citation rate of "Russia Today" should increase from 2.8 million to 3 million units.

In addition, the state program envisages an increase in the coverage of the audience of Rossiyskaya Gazeta, established by the government of the Russian Federation, from 118.2 million to 120.5 million readers. Along with these plans, the program assumes an increase in the volume of television and radio broadcasting of the VGTRK channels. The authorities expect an increase in the share of their own content from the Public Television of Russia TV channel. At the same time, the document does not indicate how exactly the billions allocated by the government will be distributed among specific media outlets.

Earlier it was reported that the government allocated about 103 billion rubles to support the media in 2021, almost a third of this total - 27.3 billion - was the share of RT. Financing of the TV channel last year amounted to 27.4 billion rubles.

Earlier, Rossiya Segodnya was criticized for the fact that the publication, which is funded by the state, placed a video with Hitler on its facade.

The Insider published an investigation by "Putin's 13 Friends". It talked about how much the most famous propagandists of Russian TV earn. According to the author of the investigation, Sergei Yezhov, in 2021, budget expenditures for media support will increase by 40% immediately compared to those planned last fall: Channel One, RT, NTV, TV Center, VGTRK (All-Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company) will share almost 103 billion rubles among themselves and other media close to the state. So that the propagandists' incomes do not look too abstract, the journalists of the publication decided to present them in comparable units, comparing them with the size of the average Russian pension, which is about 14 thousand rubles.

According to the newspaper, the richest propagandist on Russian TV turned out to be the host of Channel One Artem Sheinin. He earned 100 million rubles in a year. With this money, 100 Russian pensioners could live at once. The second and third places are shared by RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan and her husband, host Tigran Keosayan. For two, they earned 156 million rubles - like 928 pensioners. According to the calculations of the team of investigators Alexey Navalny, over the past three years, the couple earned 720 million rubles, that is, 120 million a year per person. According to the publication, TV presenters Vladimir Soloviev (with an annual income of 52.6 million rubles), Olga Skabeeva and Yevgeny Popov (25.7 million rubles a year for two) also took high places in the ranking of the richest propagandists.

“The official salary of Simonyan at the Rossiya Segodnya MIA is 20.4 million rubles, and at ANO TV-Novosti (legal entity RT) - 16 million a year. In total, her salary (excluding schemes with the production of the International Sawmill) is 36.4 million rubles”, - the investigators learned.