C-SPAN Airs Russia Today
The Most Bizarre Thing Happened on C-SPAN and the Internet Is Full of Conspiracy Theories
Capping off a tense week (OK, month) for American-Russian relations, C-SPAN's live feed of Congress was interrupted by a broadcast of Russia Today, a government-funded news network.
Here's the moment Russia Today took over the C-SPAN1 feed. Unclear what happened. RT aired for about ten minutes before C-SPAN1 came back. pic.twitter.com/mhWVgCoFxF
— Timothy Burke (@bubbaprog) January 12, 2017
Despite the internet's swift conclusion that the RT broadcast was a deliberate attack, C-SPAN said it was investigating the switch in feeds and that it was likely due to an "internal routing issue" because they "regularly monitor" the Russian network.
— CSPAN (@cspan) January 12, 2017
Minutes after C-SPAN's feed switched, RT's own live broadcast went down (and remains down at the time of publishing) for "scheduled maintenance."
Interesting! After @RT_com was cut into a CSPAN broadcast earlier today, they are now down for "maintenance"
Cyberwar much? pic.twitter.com/pLMJPIJLTb
— Gissur Simonarson (@GissiSim) January 12, 2017
Either this is a case of supremely ironic timing or something sketchier.
