RT covers factual news. They just choose to cover news that makes America, et al look bad and choose to not cover news that makes Russia look bad. Opinion pieces are of course opinions, not news, and are also usually pro-Russian policy opinions.

The value of a state run news service is that the bias is fairly obvious.

I know roughly who writes the cheques at thr BBC, RT, NHK, or DW.

With privately owned media, figuring out where they're not going to be impartial is a lot more subtle. Who's buying the ads? What other companies are owned by major shareholders or key staff?

They both speak for a particular segment of the population, but do not represent the country as a whole by any means, in either case.

EDIT: for clarity, I wasn't suggesting the BBC did either.

I read a lot of RT. Many of their articles are just international reports like AP news and stuff. Don’t really see a lot of propaganda.

Yeah, of course they have to drop some real articles to look legit.

The propaganda is what's in between

Eg. Today's home page, first headline "Russia's 'secret weapon' for winning influence in Africa – and it's not what you might think".

Then have a look at the op-ed pieces that are basically hit-pieces disguised as journalism.

Also, there are things that they do not report (or omit) which is what you should be most concerned about.

This is in every kind of newspaper. You have to learn to discern propaganda from news and learn judgement.

Sure, there is some criticism of RT, but I don't think you could ever compare it to the junk filled propaganda machine that is BBC news.