'Honouring the dead with hours of lies'

ONE Russian journalist commenting on the TV coverage said that in the first two days Russians, who relied on television for their news, might have not even have known that hundreds of hostages were being held in Beslan.

Russian television went live with the dramatic conclusion to siege.

One of the main channels, NTV, was the first to go into rolling coverage at about the same time as other broadcasters like the BBC and CNN did. Two of the other most popular Russian channels, state-owned RTV and the half state-owned Channel One, did not go live for another half-hour.