RT, the state-funded English-language satellite channel also known as Russia Today, has been nominated for an International Emmy award in the news category for its extended reporting on U.S. President Barack Obama’s visit to Moscow in July 2009.

RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan said Thursday she was “happy and proud” and thanked the U.S.-based International Academy of Television Arts & Science, which bestows the International Emmys, for “its objective approach.”

“Five years ago, when RT was being set up, we wouldn’t have believed that we would be able to compete as equals against the best in world television in such a short space of time,” she said in an e-mailed statement.

Other nominees in the news category are Al-Jazeera English (Qatar), Brazil’s TV Globo and British Sky News.

The awards will be presented in New York on Sept. 27.