HttpWebRequest request = HttpWebRequest.Create("http://rss.cnn.com/rss/cnn_topstories") as HttpWebRequest; request.Accept = "*/*"; request.Headers.Add("Accept-Encoding", "gzip"); request.Headers.Add("UA-CPU", "x86"); request.UserAgent = "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0; MS-RTC LM 8)"; HttpWebResponse response = request.GetResponse() as HttpWebResponse; GZipStream gzip = new GZipStream(response.GetResponseStream(), CompressionMode.Decompress); XmlTextReader readr = new XmlTextReader(gzip); //this part is optional, the XmlReader above is what your code can run off XmlDocument doc2 = new XmlDocument(); doc2.Load(readr); doc2.Save("feed.xml");