Ruptly

Ruptly joined the German Commercial Register as a Berlin-based GmbH in July 2012,[4] before officially launching operations on April 4, 2013.[5] It operates as a German commercial entity with ANO TV Novosti as its principal shareholder. ANO TV Novosti is primarily funded by the Russian government, and also the owner of the RT news network.[6]

In February 2014, Ruptly was one of the first agencies to use drones to capture news footage when it used them in its coverage of the civil unrest in Ukraine.[7]

In 2017, Ruptly introduced 360-degree video content, and provided the first panoramic view of Earth from the International Space Station.[7]

When it launched, Ruptly provided video news content, live video-streaming and operational support to broadcasters of varying size around the world. It serves over 1,400 clients globally, including large media groups, broadcast networks, video bloggers and online publishers; clients include Al Jazeera, CBS, NHK, and online publishers such as LADbible.[8] It now also caters to smaller organizations with lower budgets such as Ruptly PASS.[9] In 2018, it announced a merger with RT Digital.[10]

In October 2017, a Ruptly-produced viral video about an American restaurant creating a special burger to celebrate Vladimir Putin's birthday turned out to be fabricated.[11] Ruptly removed the video from its YouTube channel and stated that its employees and not the restaurant were involved in the creation of the video, "which, unfortunately, compromised the reliability of the video. We are grateful to our audience for drawing attention to the discrepancy in our story".[12][13]

On 27 November 2018, Polygraph.info alleged that Ruptly published a misleadingly edited video of an altercation between Ukrainian and Russian ships during the Kerch Strait incident in which a Ukrainian tugboat was rammed by a Russian Coast Guard vessel. Polygraph later updated the story to advise that Ruptly had contacted it to say Ruptly "acquired and published without editing" a short version of the ramming video which it had received on 25 November 2018 and that it published the full version, "as soon as" it was able to obtain it. Polygraph confirmed that Ruptly did publish the full version of the video on 26 November but that the full version was published by other Russian media on 25 November. In its update, Polygraph stated that it had "no means to independently confirm that Ruptly.tv did not edit the first, shorter version, of the video".[14]

In April 2019, Ruptly provided exclusive video coverage of Julian Assange being forcibly removed from the Embassy of Ecuador, London. Ruptly obtained the footage by videoing the embassy using a crew of five working in shifts 24 hours per day for the week leading up to Assange’s arrest. Ruptly’s twitter video of the arrest achieved 1.7 million views within a day.[2][15]

During 2018 and 2019, Ruptly provided live coverage from France of the yellow vest protests. Its coverage of the protests was streamed on multiple social media platforms simultaneously and achieved over 10 million views across the YouTube and Facebook pages of Ruptly and its clients.[16][17][18][19][20]

In August 2020, The New York Times reported that a Ruptly video of Black Lives Matters protesters apparently burning a bible in Portland, Oregon, edited in a misleading way, "went viral" after it being shared with an inaccurate caption on social media by a far-right personality and then conservative politicians. The Times said the clip "appear[ed] to be one of the first viral Russian disinformation hits of the 2020 presidential campaign”.[21][22][23][24] An NBC report in the wake of this incident found that Ruptly edited user-generated protest videos to highlight violence over peaceful protest.[24] Despite the criticism, Ruptly became the most-watched news agency on YouTube in 2020 topping Yonhap, Associated Press, Reuters, Xinhua, and AFP. The content is curated for the global community.[25]

Ruptly consists of an international team headquartered in Berlin, with additional offices located in Moscow and Beijing. The agency also engages a global network of freelance video journalists, or stringers, to capture on-demand content at the scene of events.[26] These are located throughout the world in locations including Cairo, Damascus, Gaza, London, Madrid, and Washington.[27] Ruptly also accepts user-generated content (UGC) via social media and its Ruptly Stringer app.[26]

During the economic crisis in December 2008, the Russian government included ANO "TV-Novosti" on its list of core organizations of strategic importance of Russia.[28][29][30] Ruptly has stated it was founded by ANO "TV-Novosti" "to act as an independent, commercially-funded organisation under German law", that its editorial and operational decisions are "completely independent" and the claim it is run by the Russian government is "factually false".[3]

Ruptly's organization also includes the Berlin-based subsidiary Redfish.[31][32] According to the Alliance For Securing Democracy and UK journalist Paul Mason, Redfish is aimed at the political left and African-Americans.[33][34]

Also based in Berlin - and sharing an address, according to the Alliance for Securing Democracy, with both Ruptly and Redfish[35] - is German-registered Maffick media, founded by former RT journalist Anissa Naouai, of which Ruptly is a majority shareholder.[36] In February 2019, Maffick's Facebook page began to indicate its connection with RT and Ruptly.[37] Maffick stated it is not connected to Ruptly and in July 2020 filed a lawsuit against Facebook after the website labelled its pages as "Russia state-controlled media", which Maffick claim is a "false notice".[38][39][39]

A Ruptly satellite reporting set up at the protests in Donetsk

Ruptly operates as a B2B news agency with three core areas: video news content, live video streaming, and operational support.

It has four dedicated platforms serving audiences in their native languages: Arabic, English, Russian, and Spanish.[40][41]

The Ruptly agency broadcasts live via a platform that supports simultaneous streaming of up to five events, and allows TV stations and online media to receive and broadcast in real time.[42] It also has a video-on-demand service.[43] The service also sells footage to others on its website.

In 2018, Ruptly launched an in-house verification unit, which is used to check the accuracy of content acquired from independent contributors.[10]

In late 2020, it had 114,000 followers on Twitter and 1.48 million subscribers on YouTube where its videos reached up to 3 million views.[24]

Ruptly is one of several Russian media organizations that has been accused by the US government and others of attempting to influence elections through social media.[44] These sources say that Ruptly targets a younger left-leaning demographic through its video promotion on social media.[24] NBC describes it as platforming

sophisticated English-language video and text content for years that experts say is edited and curated in a way designed to exacerbate American political tensions. A lot of it is aimed at younger viewers and the political left, designed to peel them off from the Democratic party, experts say. Some is tailored to gin up outrage on the right.[24]

Other sources, such as The New York Times and Paul Mason, have accused Ruptly of pandering to far-right extremists.[45][34] Ruptly denies both of these claims, and its Verification Unit[10] aims to make the process behind its news production operations transparent. The Ruptly Verification Unit has revealed inaccuracies in multiple news stories, including a report containing inaccurate comments attributed to a senior Iranian military official.[46]

According to a 2014 opinion article by four staff editors of the German news company Spiegel Online, "With the help of news services like RT and Ruptly, the Kremlin is seeking to reshape the way the world thinks about Russia. And it has been highly successful: Vladimir Putin has won the propaganda war over Ukraine and the West is divided." The writers stated that only the BBC had more clips viewed on YouTube.[47]

In 2015, StopFake published an article in which it said British blogger Graham Phillips, who had worked for Ruptly, produced Pro-Kremlin propaganda and may have links to Russian intelligence.[48]

In 2019, Ruptly was criticised by browser extension NewsGuard for publishing videos featuring "false or misleading statements from Russian government officials". Ruptly responded that "As a video news agency providing content to journalists, our role is to present raw footage that our clients ensure their journalists edit and use responsibly." Ruptly said the claim it was run by the Russian government was "factually false", and that videos on its platform contain criticism of the Kremlin including an anti-Putin demonstration and a protest outside the Russian embassy in Berlin.[3]

• CCTV+
• List of news agencies

• Official website
• Ruptly's channel on YouTube