The article is devoted to the analysis of the Russian press reaction to the events connected with an attempt on G. Ye. Rasputin’s life on 29 June, 1914. The conclusion is made about the priority of the political orientation of the news materials over their reliability. Unreliable details of the newspaper publications are revealed, in particular those included in historiography. The author shows that the greatest deviations from the canons of good-quality journalism were observed in the work of the newspapers oriented to the social “elites”, who were critical of Rasputin and the supreme power, while the cheap yellow as well as socialist press showed a great deal of professional correctness in the coverage of this theme.