my wife grew up in the Soviet Union and when we tried to watch .@BBCNews for a while, we had to give up because it reminded her too much of Soviet newscasts: the cheesy clothes, postures, obvious propaganda...
she says she prefers RT because while it's obviously propaganda, they never tell people what to say. They just choose people likely to say things they agree with & let them loose. BBC, CNN, etc, are actually much more directly controlled.
this actually does correspond with my experience, no one at RT ever asks me what I'm going to say before I go on air, but BBC & similar "mainstream" media invariably have a pre-interview where they go over your positions very carefully
