‘We had a technical glitch’

‘Channel One’ talk show backtracks after accusing Navalny’s team of doctored video

During an episode of the Channel One talk show “Vremya Pokazhet” (Time Will Tell) aired on September 17, host Artyom Sheinin showed the video of Alexey Navalny’s team searching his room at the Xander Hotel in Tomsk — and accused them of blurring out the dial on an alarm clock in the video. The show quickly came under criticism when it turned out that Sheinin’s team was responsible for the blur. Forced to explain themselves, they chalked it up to a “technical glitch.”

The video that was shown live on air was originally published on Navalny’s personal Instagram account by his associates from the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK). Navalny stayed at the Xander Hotel while filming an investigation on United Russia politicians in Tomsk back in August. In the video, the FBK employees demonstrate that the water bottle, which apparently retained traces of the Novichok-type poison used on Navalny, was found in his hotel room in Tomsk.

During the broadcast of Time Will Tell, Sheinin drew attention to the fact that in the version of the FBK video being shown on Channel One, the face of the hotel room’s alarm clock was blurred out. Therefore, he claimed, the exact time that the video was recorded can’t be confirmed.

“Check out [what] my editors just discovered. There’s a clock there, an [alarm clock], which we didn’t blur out. The time on the alarm clock would have been very clearly visible. But it wasn’t us who blurred out this alarm clock, they did [Navalny’s team], in their own video,” Sheinin stressed.

In the original video on Navalny’s Instagram, the face of the clock isn’t covered by a circular blur. This was pointed out to Sheinin immediately. During the next broadcast of Time Will Tell later that day, the host tried to justify his previous statement:

“Since, unlike these kids, we’re responsible for our words and deeds, we made a technical mistake this afternoon, for example. Having analyzed their bogus video, we showed that the clock was blurred, although in fact […] we had a technical glitch. This blur came from us, the clock happened to be blurred. We, checking what we say and do three times over, found it. We had a whole dressing down. As a result, it emerged that the clock wasn’t blurred. But the fact [they were there] at quarter to twelve doesn’t answer any questions [...] In fact, it provokes even more questions.”