Pro-government bias Critics charge that Channel One's news and information programs are frequently used for propaganda purposes. As Konstantin Ernst stated in his interview to
The New Yorker, "it would be strange if a channel that belonged to the state were to express an anti-government point of view". The critics contend that Channel One airs a disproportionate number of stories focusing on positive aspects of official government policy, while largely neglecting certain controversial topics such as war in
Chechnya or social problems. In addition, some have argued that the station's news reports often blur the line between factual reporting and editorial commentary, especially when broadcasting stories concerning
Russian government policies or goals. As of 2006,
Vladimir Pozner,
Ekaterina Andreeva,
Pyotr Tolstoy and
Mikhail Leontiev are among the most known political journalists of the channel. On Sunday, 28 January 2006, the Channel One news and analytical program
Sunday Time (
Voskresnoye Vremya) hosted by Petr Tolstoy distorted the content of a speech by Belarusian President
Alexander Lukashenko related to the
Russia-Belarus energy dispute to the contrary by editing it and deleting some crucial words. Moreover, various media reported that the channel presented biased coverage of other events that were closely connected to Russia's foreign policy, including the Ukrainian elections to the
Verkhovna Rada in 2007, the
Euromaidan of 2013–2014, and the following
annexation of Crimea. The channel was also criticized for ignoring
Alexei Navalny's political activities, namely his participation in the
Moscow mayoral election of 2013. Vladimir Pozner, one of the channel's most popular TV hosts, once admitted in an interview to
The New Yorker that there is a list of people who are not allowed to participate in his show. Channel One news reports on 16 January 2016 about a 13-year-old girl with German and Russian citizenship in Berlin who was allegedly raped by immigrants was denounced by the
German police as fake. On 26 February 2018, Channel One used footage from
multinational military simulation organization Echelon International, attempting to pass it off as authentic
Syrian War footage. On 14 March 2022,
Marina Ovsyannikova, an editor for Channel One, interrupted a live broadcast of
Vremya to protest against the
Russian invasion of Ukraine, carrying a poster stating in a mix of Russian and English: "Stop the war, don't believe the propaganda, here you are being lied to."
Original programming on historical themes Some of the television period dramas produced by Channel One were series criticized for low level of historical accuracy, for instance –
Brezhnev,
The Saboteur,
Yesenin and
Trotsky.
Cruelty to animals On the morning of 12 January 2008, during the current affairs program
Health () hosted by
Yelena Malysheva covering
Guillain–Barré syndrome, a
rat was
violently killed in one of the segments. Some viewers stated that this was intolerable for a program whose audience includes children, and that it violated the
Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. In particular, some claim that viewing such violent and cruel scenes poorly affected the health of some children and people. ==Visual identity==