- Title: UKRAINE-CRISIS/RUSSIA-MEDIA Independent media battle goes on in Putin's Russia
- Date: 31st July 2015
- Summary: MOSCOW, RUSSIA (RECENT) (REUTERS) KREMLIN TOWER, PEOPLE WALKING ALONG ON RED SQUARE KREMLIN TOWER ST. BASIL'S CATHEDRAL SEEN THROUGH ARCH DOUBLE HEADED EAGLE NEWSPAPER STACKS INSIDE OFFICES OF MOSCOW-BASED POLITICAL WEEKLY - THE NEW TIMES NEWSPAPERS CLOSE OF AN EDITION OF THE NEW TIMES EDITOR OF POLITICAL WEEKLY THE NEW TIMES, YEVGENIA ALBATS, SPEAKING TO JOURNALIST IN HER
- Embargoed: 15th August 2015 13:00
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- Topics: General
- Reuters ID: LVA894MSEN39X5UAII6AJJZVSQLX
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: PLEASE NOTE: THIS EDIT CONTAINS MATERIAL THAT WAS ORIGINALLY 4:3
The Kremlin's role in the ongoing crisis in Ukraine's east and Western accusations that it is supporting militants have propelled Russia to the forefront of international news in the last year.
Political tensions and a falling currency have heightened focus on the region.
But the shift in Russia's position in international politics and how it is reported has also effected a significant change in media and reporting inside the country. Independent media, such as Dozhd, Novaya Gazeta and The New Times, are facing an uphill struggle, with some fighting for existence - and fearing the noose around them is tightening.
In a series of interviews, editors of these outlets said they rarely feel direct pressure to toe the line but the Kremlin has financial, legislative and judicial levers at its disposal.
They also spoke of intimidation and bullying from advertisers.
Kremlin critics accuse Russian President Vladimir Putin of intensifying a campaign to stifle dissent, clamping down on civil society and using the media as a political weapon to maintain his grip on power and influence public opinion - charges the Kremlin denies.
The existence of a few media organisations which criticise the authorities helps Putin deflect criticism at home and abroad that Russia does not allow media freedoms, and gives the opposition a way to let off steam.
Coverage even by independent media is restrained by Western standards, with direct criticism of Putin rare though Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev's government is considered fair game.
One of Putin's initial acts after rising to power in 2000 was to restore Kremlin control over the media, which was much more outspoken under President Boris Yeltsin in the free-wheeling decade after the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991.
Most Russian media outlets are now owned by the state or by private individuals and companies loyal to Putin.
Such outlets have been on little less than a war footing since Ukraine's pro-Moscow president, Viktor Yanukovich, was ousted in February 2014 and Russia responded by annexing the Crimean peninsula and giving political support - and military backing, says Kiev and the West - to a separatist uprising in east Ukraine.
Yevgenia Albats, editor in chief of the New Times magazine, says the crisis in Ukraine heralded a shift for Russian media.
"I guess since the beginning of the Ukrainian conflict, you know the annexation of Crimea and then the war in eastern Ukraine, the situation is getting much harder for us here. It is harder to get information, it is harder to get to the decision makers, people are afraid to give you interviews, people are afraid to be mentioned in the magazine," she said during a recent interview at the offices of the weekly political magazine.
"I cannot even start telling you how many people in politics and in business kept telling me 'Yevgenia, you know I am happy to talk on the record, just don't please mention my name in your magazine. I am going to get into trouble.' I don't believe that they are going to get into trouble but you know perception is reality."
Announcing the seizure of Crimea on March 18 last year, Putin warned against "action by a fifth column, this disparate bunch of 'national traitors'" - a phrase that has widely been seen as including any media speaking out against the annexation.
Putin has little less than a media army at his disposal.
As in Soviet days, some news outlets have a direct phone line to the Kremlin, media sources say, and top editors take part in regular meetings with Kremlin officials to discuss content.
Albats says most Russian media have simply become "propaganda machines".
"There is no question for us that state media in this country is nothing more but a propaganda machine. I don't consider them to be my colleagues. I am in the business of journalism and they are in the business of propaganda. (George) Orwell's 1984 can be seen on Russian TV on a daily basis."
The Kremlin has many ways to squeeze outlets that criticise it. A lack of advertising is just one of the issues independent media face.
The New Times gets by - just - on sponsorship, sales and subscriptions.
"The peculiarity of the Russian media business is that ads are distributed here with respect to loyalty to Kremlin. If you are loyal you get ads. If you are not loyal, you don't get ads."
Albats says The New Times was raided by police three years ago, she once found a listening device in her home and added during the interview in her office that she had no doubt "we have a couple of other people in on this conversation".
The magazine's recent stories include an investigation into how Russia reached the decision to annex Crimea from Ukraine last year and concluded the plan was drawn up by four people.
It also wrote about problems suffered by gays at a time when the topic is widely seen as taboo for Russian media.
Albats says despite the uneven playing field, there are still many who are willing to put up a fight for independent media in Russia.
"You get a great gift of being independent. Of exercising the kind of journalism you believe in. So, it is my choice, it is the choice of my reporters, we choose to have a little bit (of) a complicated life. Sometimes it is a dangerous life, sometimes it is a life threatening life."
A hall in the building of investigative newspaper Novaya Gazeta, part-owned by former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, bears the portraits of six Novaya Gazeta journalists killed since 2001.
They include Anna Politkovskaya, who was shot dead on Putin's birthday in 2006.
Outside the modest building is a memorial plaque dedicated to the journalist who was 48 when she was killed.
Politkovskaya was best known for her dogged reporting on human rights violations in the North Caucasus province of Chechnya.
Yelena Milashina, an investigative journalist for the paper, left the southern, mainly Muslim region of Chechnya in May this year after a border guard warned her that her life was in danger.
A local newspaper later published an article widely interpreted as a death threat.
"It has come to it that death has somewhat become a provision in an employment contract for a journalist who works a) for Novaya Gazeta, b) in Russia. Overall, everyone that works here does not fear death," Milashina tells Reuters.
The New York-based Committee to Protect journalists says 17 journalists have been killed in Russia because of the work they were doing since 2001.
Other groups say the toll may be higher.
The International Federation of Journalists said in a 2009 report that 313 Russian journalists had been killed since 1993.
Milashina says her freedom of movement is now more limited than ever before.
"In the current situation I am a persona non grata and I feel that my work in Chechnya presents a greater danger not just for myself and my safety (but more for my sources). But even my safety is less guaranteed now than before when I could work and write articles but was not unaware of any reaction to them as it was not public and they had not tried to stop me for a long time. Now yes, the situation has changed, now my freedom of movement is limited."
TV channel Dozhd, which made its name as an independent cable and Internet outlet during opposition protests in the winter of 2011-12, suffered a big financial blow when cable operators in one fell swoop cancelled their contracts last year.
Dozhd also found it was no longer a desirable tenant for landlords and was forced to move office several times.
For a while it resorted to broadcasting from an employee's flat but has now found a studio in a trendy business and shopping centre.
After a year of almost constant worry, the channel's general director, Natalya Sindeeva, embodies its slogan as the "optimistic channel".
"For me everything now is very good, because we have a home, we are operating. Because there isn't any special pressure or problems that we had all the time previously, so I feel good," she said.
"Speaking about the wider context, then of course it is very difficult, but it is difficult not only politically but difficult economically."
Dozhd hit problems after running a poll last year asking whether Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, should have given up to Nazi German forces during World War Two rather than refuse to surrender.
Hundreds of thousands of people were killed in the siege and Putin's spokesman said the poll had "crossed a line".
Set up in 2010, the network had been vulnerable after giving a voice to Kremlin critics.
Asked if she worried about the asserted notion that media writing against the government was disloyal to the country, Sindeeva said the word patriotism had been hijacked by the state.
"I think it can't be us or them all the time. We are all in one country, and the word "patriot" privatised by some is a word privatised fraudulently. We feel ourselves the same patriots who love our country, who maybe even love our country more and do more to make it better," she said.
Despite a turbulent year for the outlet, Dozhd is managing to survive, thanks to going behind a pay wall and switching to a subscription basis.
Dozhd has about 70,000 subscribers, editor Mikhail Zygar said, paying around 4,800 roubles ($80) a year. It can reach about 12 million people a month on television and the Internet.
Russia is ranked 152nd out 180 countries in the 2015 World Press Freedom index, four places lower then it was last year.
Watchdogs have denounced draconian laws in the country, website blocking, oppression of independent news outlets and persecution of critics in the last year.
Dmitry Kiselyov is the head of international news agency Rossiya Segodnya - a large wheel in the mechanism of Russia's loyal state media.
When Russia is criticised by independent media in the country, or internationally, the establishment is always at the ready to present a counter-attack.
The TV anchor at the helm of Rossiya Segodnya dismisses the criticism that free media being stifled in Russia.
"I believe Russia has the most free mass media in the world, this is first, because we have both state media and private media. The range of opinions accepted in Russia is much wider than in any Western country. Here one can say 'I like gays' or 'I don't like gays' , but it would be a risky thing to do in the West," said Kiselyov at a recent news conference on media communication.
Kiselyov, who is reputed to be one of Putin's favourite journalists, last year told his prime-time audience that Russia could "turn the USA into radioactive ashes", at the same time as polls closed in the Crimean referendum about secession from Ukraine.
Independent media in Russia looks set to have a battle in its hands that does not have an end in sight.
Leading independent media are threatened by a law that will limit foreign ownership of Russian media to 20 percent, introduced to "defend national sovereignty".
Among newspapers under threat is Vedomosti, a business daily with a print run of 75,000 that often criticises the government.
Finnish company Sanoma sold its one-third stake in Vedomosti in May to a Russian businessman, Damian Kudryavtsev.
The Financial Times Group and Wall Street Journal owner News Corp own similar stakes and say they are reviewing the implications of the legislation on foreign ownership. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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