Kiselyov was a "pioneering" television journalist in Russia in the 1990s after the dissolution of the Soviet Union,[REF] and in 1997, the New York Times described him as "Russia's most prominent television journalist" [REF].
In 1999, Itogi broadcast an episode in which Kiselyov broke new ground by lambasting the administration of Boris Yeltsin, describing them as "the family", an "insiders' code phrase" for Yeltsin and his small circle of advisers.