On July 28, 2006, President Vladimir Putin signed amendments to the Law on Fighting Extremist Activity. The new legislation, which allows imprisonment of up to three years for journalists, and the suspension or closure of their publications if convicted of extremism, went into effect on October 28, 2006. Amendments to Article 1 of the law broaden the definition of extremist activity to include "public slander directed toward figures fulfilling the state duties of the Russian Federation," as well as "interfering with the legal duties of organs of state authorities."

Such vague language allows public officials to interpret the law as they please and effectively target critics, CPJ sources said. "This measure is reminiscent of the kind of catchall laws that were used in Soviet times to control the media," CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon said. "Those in power can now label any journalist an 'extremist' and effectively stifle critical reporting." Press-release of Committee to Protect Journalists (USA), July 28, 2006 (for more information, go to [ LINK ]).

Legislators are not abandoning their attempts to change the rules by which the media work: The media may be relieved of responsibility for the content of campaign material, but at the same time they want to ban journalists from referring to the ethnicity of criminals and victims. The Public Chamber has conducted an expert analysis of the latest proposal and has sent the results to Boris Gryzlov, speaker of the lower chamber. He has not yet read the epistle but Izvestiya has already studied it.

As it is, the Law on the Media contains quite a few bans and extending the list of them is probably pointless. And, what is more, several deputies want to lift some of the restrictions. For example, Sergey Ivanov, a deputy from the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia faction, has submitted a draft law into the State Duma which would relieve the media of responsibility for the content of election campaign material.

"The media are afraid and refuses to run campaign material if this can become grounds for criminal or administrative charges," the draft law's author told Izvestiya. "As a result, candidates talk about the weather. Who needs these insipid conversations?"

But Ivanov is convinced that if campaign material contains information of an extremist nature, for example, then candidates themselves should take responsibility for it, rather than journalists. "Law enforcement agencies should arrest and call to account those who make extremist and xenophobic calls, but the media have nothing to do with it," Boris Reznik, deputy chairman of the Committee for Information Policy, agreed with Ivanov. (State Duma Does Not Want 'Insipid Discussions' On Eve of Elections: Deputies Are Trying To Amend Law on Media by Natalya Antipova, Izvestia daily, May 21, 2007)

References: According to Article 29 paragraph 5 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation: "Freedom of Mass Media is guaranteed. Censorship is prohibited."

What is the official stand on freedom of media in Russia? The first deputy director of All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company (VGTRK) and the general director of the Rossiya TV channel, Anton Zlatopolskiy, has said that the media of the holding company are not under political pressure as such. (TV chief says there is little if any political pressure on state media in Russia, Interfax news agency, 1 February, 2007)

On March 12, President Vladimir Putin signed a decree to consolidate two federal services: the Federal Service for Telecom Supervision (Rossvyaznadzor) and Federal Mass Media and Cultural Heritage Oversight Service (Rosokhrankultura). So, the government will have a new body - the Federal Service for Supervision of Mass Media, Telecommunication and for Cultural Heritage Protection - to supervise vehicles of data dissemination along with the content.

The purpose to attain is, "to improve efficiency of government's activities for cultural heritage protection" and "to eliminate interdepartmental contradictions and administrative barriers en route of IT advance in Russia and to ease the system of their control," said representatives of the government's news service.

But the informal explanation for closing ranks of the two services was a bit different. The new service will be very influential in media and telecom businesses and in political issues. In response to some technical and content claims, it may suspend activities related to all types of communication, including the printed and e-media and broadcasters. Moreover, the service will keep the personal data register of Russia's citizens. So, the matter at stake is actually creating a media mega-controller. (President creates "media mega-controller", Kommersant daily, 13 March, 2007)

Putin's order gives the new agency three months to determine how it will operate, leaving many questions unanswered. The decree does make clear, however, that the new agency is directly subordinate to the prime minister's government, not to the Ministry of Information Technology and Communications or the Ministry of Culture and Press, where the two agencies were previously housed. This decision clearly is political.

Raf Sahkirov, a former Izvestia editor dismissed for critical coverage of the 2004 Beslan school siege, said "This is an attempt to put everything under control, not only electronic media, but also personal data about people such as bloggers." In an environment where open information is increasingly more difficult to come by, the Internet provides Russians access to unofficial sources of information and a platform for open discussion. It also serves as a useful medium for organizing protest rallies. Participants in such rallies now post information about these activities on the Internet, leveraging this technology to share information with wider audiences. Bloggers, for example, posted pictures from the March 3 pre-election protest rally in St. Petersburg, enabling audiences a clear view of the rally, beyond the reach of filtered Kremlin-controlled media. These days such information almost never makes its way to state-managed news in the traditional broadcast or print media.

Even before the March 12 decree, the Russian authorities had begun exerting pressure on the Internet. In 2006, they issued a warning to Gazeta.ru, a leading independent news site financed by Leonid Nevzlin of Yukos, for publishing the Danish cartoons with caricatures of the prophet Mohammed. A second such warning would result in the publication's closing. Of particular concern is that the new agency will have access to personal data of Internet users. This resource could make it even easier for the authorities to crack down on individuals who make remarks critical of the authorities on heavily trafficked Web sites. ('Super agency' threatens Russian freedom by Robert Orttung and Christopher Walker, International Herald Tribune, March 23, 2007)

Pavel Gusev, chairman of the Public Chambers Communications, Information Polices and Freedom of Speech in Media Commission, says the government is trying to exert control over mass media, the Interfax new agency reported Thursday. This was the first official acknowledgment of what rights activists and journalists have been publicly concerned about in recent years. Independent mass media is under attack now, he said. Press is becoming increasingly state-controlled. Major state-oriented business is buying up mass media, which ultimately cuts the circulation of the media, according to Mr. Gusev. (Public Chamber Acknowledges Crackdown on Independent Media, Kommersant daily, March 29, 2007)

On Russian media in general, please see Russian Regional Report #9, November 7, 2006. See also Russia: Journalists Union Head Laments State Of Russian Media, an interview with the general secretary of the Russian Union of Journalists Igor Yakovenko." He speaks with RFE/RL correspondent Chloe Arnold. May 23, 2007 (RFE/RL) May 23, 2007 (RFE/RL) [ LINK ]. See also [ LINK ].

The government used its controlling ownership interest in all national television and radio stations, as well as the majority of influential regional ones, to restrict access to information about issues deemed sensitive. It severely restricted coverage by all media of events in Chechnya. There were indications that government pressure frequently led reporters to engage in self censorship.

Nonetheless, on most subjects, the public continued to have access to a broad spectrum of viewpoints in the print media and, for those with access, on the Internet. While the government generally respected citizens' rights to freedom of expression, it sometimes restricted this right with regard to issues such as the conduct of federal forces in Chechnya, discussions of religion, or controversial reforms in the social sector. Some regional and local authorities took advantage of the judicial system's procedural weaknesses to arrest persons for expressing views critical of the government. With some exceptions, judges appeared unwilling to challenge powerful federal and local officials who sought to prosecute journalists. These proceedings often resulted in stiff fines. However, new legislation gives the state an opportunity to label criticism of state officials "extremism".

On July 28, 2006, President Vladimir Putin signed amendments to the Law on Fighting Extremist Activity. The new legislation allows imprisonment of up to three years for journalists. Same measures apply to a person speaking at a rally. The law went into effect on October 28, 2006. Amendments to Article 1 of the law broaden the definition of extremist activity to include "public slander directed toward figures fulfilling the state duties of the Russian Federation," as well as "interfering with the legal duties of organs of state authorities." Such vague language allows public officials to interpret the law as they please and effectively target critics, CPJ sources said. "This measure is reminiscent of the kind of catchall laws that were used in Soviet times to control the media," CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon said. "Those in power can now label any journalist an 'extremist' and effectively stifle critical reporting."

Russian Constitution Article 29 says: "Everyone has the freedom of thought and speech". There are different tupes of freedom, namely freedom of speech and freedom of press. Freedom of speech is the citizen's right to be involved in the discussion of anything that matters to him/her. One of the citizen's ways to be heard is via the media. Freedom of press means the prohibition of the influence and pressure (censorship) from the state authotities on the media.

In November 2006, Public Chamber of Russia discussed regional lack of freedom of speech. Nikolay Svanidze, member of the RF Public Chamber, named specific regions in which the freedom-of-speech situation is really bad. These include Mariy El, Bashkortostan, and Saratov. The speech of Mikhail Fedotov, secretary of the Union of Journalists of Russia, was quite strong. The fact that the federal Media Act is not working is disturbing also. For example, few journalists avail themselves of their right to remove their signature from material that has been mutilated by an editor, few editors respect a journalist's right to refuse an editorial assignment, and so forth. ("Three Colors of Our Times: the Public Chamber Has Discussed the Regional News Media Situation" by Olga Kondreva, Rossiyskaya Gazeta daily, November 21, 2006)

References: Constitution of RF, 1993, Ch. 2; U.S. State Department's 2006 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, Released by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, March 8, 2007, Section on Russia: [ LINK ];

Press-release of Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), July 28, 2006' for more information: [ LINK ].

The following story shows how it happens.

Ren TV, the last television channel with national reach whose news service was critical of the Kremlin was bought in summer 2005 by RTL, the pan-European broadcaster, and Severstal, the Russian steel group. RTL bought a 30 percent stake from Ren TV's founders, Irena and Dmitry Lesnevsky, while Severstal bought the remaining 70 percent from Unified Energy System (UES), the Russian electricity monopoly that decided to get rid of "noncore assets". Severstal, led by the 40-year-old billionaire Aleksei Mordashov, in turn sold 35 percent of REN-TV to Surgutneftegaz, a large Russian oil company headed by Vladimir Bogdanov, a Siberian billionaire. Some journalists and analysts say that UES sold a part of its stake in REN-TV under Kremlin pressure. They also speculate that Severstal bought it at the Kremlin's request to clear the airwaves of critical coverage of President Putin and the government before the parliamentary and presidential elections in 2007 and 2008. Moscow News, the outspoken weekly newspaper, was sold by Leonid Nevzlin, its owner, to a Ukrainian media group. Mr Nevzlin, resident in Israel and wanted on criminal charges in Russia, was a business partner of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the jailed Russian oligarch. Moscow News gradually reduced its zeal and became a milder critic of the regime.

Some general information on Russian media. Russias federal press agency has said that at the beginning of last year Russia had 66,931 registered mass media, including 52,641 printed periodicals.

The press agencys chief, Mikhail Seslavinsky, has remarked that approximately 45 percent of them spring to life only during election campaigns or are published from time to time. The regional press currently accounts for two-thirds of the readership, he said, and the regional versions of federal periodicals increase the likely audience to 80 percent. (Russian journalists celebrate professional holiday, Itar-Tass news agency, January 13, 2007)

References: In his annual report, the Russian Ombudsman for Human Rights stated in February 2006: The main mass media, and first of all the leading electronic media, accounting for 90 percent of the information segment of the country and forming public opinion, are under the very strict control of state organs.

Ombudsman for Human Rights: Doklad deyatel nosti upolnomochennogo po pravam cheloveka v Rossiiskoi Federatsii v 2005 g., Moscow 2006.

Peer Review Comments: It seems to me that the comment made by the lead social scientist fits exactly with the description for a score of 50. State ownership of existing media is not a barrier to forming a new print media entity.

According to the Governmental Decree #301, 17 June 2004, the Federal Service on Supervision of Observance of the Legislation in the Field of Mass Communications and Protection of Cultural Heritage deal with the licenses for the broadcasting organizations in Russia. The Federal Agency of Press and Mass Communications of the Russian Federation has the authority to register print mass media which is necessary to start their activity. Thus there is a licensing mechanism for broadcasting and another registration system for the printed press.

The appeals mechanism is hardly used. The appeals mechanism is directed at the observance of the licensing mechanism and registration system in the event a citizens' or organizations' rights to get the license or registration were violated.

References: Art. 61 of the Law on Mass Media.

References: [ LINK ]

References: Telekon consulting agency (Moscow); For detailed information on official dues: [ LINK ]; [ LINK ].

As part of the broader pattern, the state is paying more attention to international media, especially international broadcasting. The authorities have focused on the broadcasts of the U.S. government-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, whose radio programming provides an alternative news voice to listeners across the country. The Kremlin has undertaken an intimidation campaign against RFE/RL's partners -- Russian radio stations that rebroadcast Radio Liberty programs -- subjecting them to debilitating harassment.

In August, Bolshoye Radio, a Moscow radio station, announced that it would no longer carry the BBC's Russian-language broadcasts. Although technical violations were cited as the official reason for the station's decision to pull the BBC off the air, many condemned the act as censorship. (Democracy's Façade by Christopher Walker and Robert Orttung, The Moscow Times daily, October 5, 2007, available at [ LINK ])

See also [ LINK ].

References: Telekon consulting agency (Moscow); For detailed information on official dues: [ LINK ]; [ LINK ].

References: There is some information on how regional TV and radio media are dealing with this issue. See [ LINK ]; [ LINK ]; [ LINK ]; [ LINK ]. See also [ LINK ].

References: Not So Great Expectations by Alexei Pankin, the editor of Mediaprofi, a monthly magazine for regional media professionals, Moscow Times daily, March 20, 2007.

References: See here: [ LINK ] and [ LINK ].

ROMIR Monitoring public opinion research center says 7% of adult Russians use the Internet daily, 17 percent do so weekly and another 22 percent, monthly. The official data is significantly larger - Russian Information Technologies and Communication Minister Leonid Reiman said on December 18, 2006 Russia accounted for 25 million Internet users in 2006. The population of Russia is approx. 145 million people. Most likely, this number includes all users - at home, at work, at schools and universities, at Internet cafes - when one person can be counted at least twice, using Internet both at home and at work. It is confirmed by the fact that there are only 23 million personal computers in the country.

According to the Public Opinion Foundation (FOM), a Moscow-based research organization, around a quarter of the adult population -- 28 million people -- is regular Internet users. This data supports Reiman's statement but contradicts what other researchers claim. We can consider 15% as a realistic figure). The largest proportions of people who use the Internet frequently as a source of information live in Moscow and St. Petersburg -- 26 percent. In large and medium-sized cities the figure drops to 16 percent-18 percent, and in small cities and towns to 7 percent-10 percent. Of them 5 percent use the resources of the Worldwide Web daily, another 8 percent do so a few times a week, 6 percent a few times a month, and 4 percent occasionally. A majority of the Internet users -- 77 percent -- need it to solve problems related to work or school, while 44 percent of those surveyed go on the Internet to read the news and use electronic mail. One out of five turns to the Internet to socialize, watch movies, and listen to music. Eleven percent of Russian Internet users access online games.

The most active "Internetchik's" are well-off Russian citizens (with per capita income of more than 5,000 ruples or almost US$200 a month). They use electronic mail and news sites more often than others do, and also socialize and look for friends through the Internet. People of modest means use the Internet for downloading music and movies more often than others.

Considering the Internet as one of the channels for getting information, 44 percent of Russian citizens agree with the point of view that this is primarily a powerful resource for getting prompt and reliable information. At the same time, 27 percent of those surveyed take a more guarded attitude toward it, noting the actual absence of controls in the space of the Worldwide Web.

Internet in general should be considered an influential media especially because it is providing a forum for free discussion that has become a rarity on the main national television and radio networks.

Masha Lipman, a political expert at the Moscow Carnegie Center, says that web forums like Live Journal provide an arena for free debate that is no longer available in much of the conventional media.

"There is indeed a lot of free exchange on the Internet," Lipman says. "The question in Russia is not that there are no outlets where free expression is possible. The question is that the Kremlin has radically marginalized all outlets that pursue even reasonably independent editorial lines." Russians are the second-largest group of users of Live Journal, a popular U.S. blogger site. In Russia, the site currently has more than 1.1 million users and 67,500 interest groups. On September 5, 2007 alone, 1,600 new users joined Live Journal in Russia and almost 500,000 new comments were posted.

"Actually, I think the Internet is one of the reasons Russia is still not an authoritarian regime, because you cannot really shut down the Internet without very serious measures," says Yulia Latynina, a political commentator whose columns are frequently posted on Live Journal. Most Russians get their news and current affairs from three main television channels, all of which are controlled by the government or state-owned enterprises. A handful of independently owned television and radio stations and some of the national newspapers provide some alternative to the Kremlin's view of events.

Lipman says the way the government approaches sites like Live Journal is more sophisticated: "The Kremlin has lots of sites under its control, financed by businesses associated with the Kremlin or otherwise, which create an environment in which those more independent ones are easily dissolved," she says. "This dissolution, I think, is one thing that the Kremlin is using to counter or neutralize the potentially stirring effect."

And those Kremlin-backed websites, she says, are often difficult to spot. "It's not that they are necessarily loyal or produce bland propaganda, similar to what you see on television," Lipman says. "They may be critical themselves, but this will be criticism that the Kremlin itself sort of oversees."

So many independent thinkers escape to a virtual space free of vested interests where anonymity goes hand in hand with a worldwide reach -- personal online journals or blogs. Today's bloggers follow the tradition of the Soviet dissidents who found an outlet for their opinions in samizdat, the clandestine printing of anti-government material. Alongside debate on government policies, LJ blogs by Masha Gaidar and Ilya Yashin, both well-known leaders of youth liberal political movements, often advertise protests or debates. Unlike more intimate U.S. blogs, Russian cyber-journals often involve thousands of bloggers and focus on issues like politics or literature.

Statistics also indicates that the sites of political parties get from 20,000 to 50,000 visits every day. Political discussions in nowadays Russia unfold in Runet and especially in LJ. Many politicians have opened their web diaries there, since communications on the web stand in a marked contrast to boring official political speeches.

"The internet is getting more and more influential, although it still represents far from all sections of /Russian/ society but, rather, its more advanced part," Novye Izvestia writes quoting political scientist Dmitry Oreshkin.

More and more people are turning to blogs and Internet forums when seeking reliable information. According to Technorati, a site that tracks blog traffic, 2 million Russian blogs already exist online, and this year 260 new blogs are being added every hour - 6,000 every day - compared to 100 per hour in the autumn of 2006.

Former chess champion Garry Kasparov, one of the leaders of opposition coalition The Other Russia, says Putins high approval rating among the public is based on the level of ignorance that most Russians have about the way their country is governed, and that media censorship plays a key role in protecting the authorities.

"The fast-expanding Internet is dangerous for the authorities as it effectively spreads the word about the level of corruption in Russia, especially in the provinces", Kasparov told a news conference in April 2007.

Media professionals often describe democracy in modern Russia as "electronic" and "hypothetical," with the free exchange of opinion now restricted to the Internet, the last remaining censorship-free refuge in the country.

In spring 2007, with parliamentary December 2007 and Presidential March 2008 elections in mind, the government took some measures to regulate the Internet. On March 12, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree to combine two state bodies that control and license media sources in the country. The Federal Service for Telecom Supervision and the Federal Mass Media and Cultural Oversight Service have been merged to create a new agency responsible for licensing and censoring both mass media and electronic media.

Russian journalists immediately denounced this step as the authorities attempt to take control of the Internet in Russia. The new agency can give the Kremlin a right to lay its hands on one of the last strongholds of freedom of speech in the country, the Internet. This can eliminate the future generation of the Russian journalists, says Alexei Venediktov, head of Echo Moskvy radio. The main aim of the new structure is to monitor all media sources, including websites, and decide whether to grant licenses or not. The new agency will be able to revoke licenses and block access to any information source on the Internet.

The Russian authorities have been trying to find ways to control the Internet since 2000, when the first informational websites started to appear in the country. However, it is more challenging that shutting down a TV channel or a newspaper.

Vladimir Tarachev, a State Duma deputy and a member of the pro-Kremlin United Russia party, introduced a draft Law on the Internet in 2001. The draft sought to strengthen control of the federal organs of state power over the Russian part of the world-wide web." Ludmilla Narusova, head of the Federation Council Committee on Information Policy, supported the draft since, as she put it, Journalists and Internet providers that post their texts on different websites should be responsible for them (dni.ru, April 16, 2004).

However, they soon realized that it is difficult to effectively censor the Internet. Tarachaev's draft has been revised. In 2004 Mikhail Lesin, a former Russian media minister and a current Russian presidential media adviser, tried to push the draft to make it an official law, but his efforts failed due to public resistance.

In 2005, the authorities again declared that the Internet should be under government control. Leonid Reiman, minister of information technologies and communications, explained that Russia needs control over the Internet to protect users from violence, pornography, or destructive computer viruses, while Andrei Romanchenko, deputy media minister, announced that the government should protect society from harmful online content (vip.lenta.ru, July 4, 2005). Last fall, the Ministry of Interior Affairs as well as the Prosecutor-General's Office appealed to the Russian legislature to adopt a law that would allow officials to punish owners of websites in Russia for information they post. As new parliamentary and presidential elections are coming, there are more and more proposals to limit freedom of speech in the Internet," concluded Novye Izvestiya daily on October 26, 2006.

At the same time, the Duma started to work on a law that would give Internet publications the same status as the mass media. Putins decree to create a combined body to control both types of communications licenses and content parallels the Dumas efforts.

The main reason the Kremlin wants to control the Internet is not to eliminate pornography, but a fear of the popularity of the Internet among anti-Putin youth organizations. The Putin opposition uses the Internet for propaganda purposes, which makes the Kremlin quite nervous. With enough legal justifications to close websites still lacking, the authorities instead use hackers to crash the systems at opportune moments. In early March 2007, on the eve of the March of the Discontents in St. Petersburg, a street protest organized by the united anti-Putin front, hackers hired by the Federal Security Service spammed opposition sites with the information about the upcoming event.

Surely, those acts violate not only Russian laws, but international laws as well. That is why the Kremlin needs to legitimize its struggle against remnants of freedom of speech in the country. The authorities hope that the new law that Duma is preparing to adopt as well as the new combined agency to control mass media will help them to keep the opposition gagged and avoid mass street protests before the presidential election.

Boris Boyarskov was named head of the new agency on March 26. Boyarskov told RFE/RL's Russian Service on March 19 that Putin's decree was "the result of the work of the broadcasting commission headed by [First Deputy Prime Minister and presidential hopeful] Dmitry Medvedev." That intergovernmental commission was set up last year.

The merger has been interpreted largely as an attempt to control the Internet, the only sphere of media and communications that is currently free of regulation. But despite intense speculation that the authorities want to establish control over the Internet, the Ministry of Information Technology and Communications has maintained a hands-off policy to date.

Most observers have leapt to the conclusion that the Internet is the main target of the merger, as legislators have repeatedly called for more stringent control. However, Boyarskov's words seem to corroborate the opinion of a smaller number of experts, who consider that the primary issue Russian officials are currently concerned with is the transition from analogue to digital broadcasting, which has huge political and economic implications. Those experts consider the anticipated consequences of the merger for the Internet, and for Internet service providers (ISP) specifically, as essentially a side effect. As far as Internet regulation is concerned, it is expected that new rules may be introduced, increasing the responsibility of ISPs for content and making compulsory the registration of Internet media. The existing System for Operational-Investigative Activities (SORM2) currently requires security authorities to obtain a warrant prior to checking users' electronic traffic.

Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said Russia isn't restricting media freedom and that the new agency isn't aimed at policing the Web.

``If you watch TV, even federal TV channels, you'll hear lots of criticism of the government,' Peskov said in an interview. ``This new agency will be in charge of licensing. It's not about controlling the Internet.'

If one takes a closer look at the situation, however, the growing calls for restricting the freedom of speech in cyber space become immediately noticeable, writes the Novye Izvestia daily. In practical terms, this means possible closures of internet forums, as their hosts can be punished for statements of the participants, should their thoughts be described as extremist.

At the same time, the State Duma, the lower house of parliament is drafting a bill that will put internet material on a par with publications in the mass media. Once the bill is endorsed and signed into law, Runet will fall into the realm of provisions of the Criminal and Administrative Codes, and any critical remark against the authorities may be interpreted as an insult or libel then.

High-ranking public officials are for regulating the Internet. Internet sites in Russia should be censored to combat extremist material, a senior legal official says, the daily Kommersant reported on June 22, 2007.

"Changes need to be made to the current laws. As experience shows there is often room on the Internet for the spread of material of an extremist nature," Deputy Prosecutor General Ivan Sydoruk was quoted as saying by Kommersant.

"Therefore it is necessary to draft an effective control system so that material published there corresponds to legal requirements," he said at a law-enforcement meeting in the southern Russian city of Rostov on June 21, 2007, Kommersant said.

The federal prosecutor's office said Sydoruk was expressing his personal opinion and that no censorship law is being prepared, the daily said.

This is far from the first statement of the kind coming from a high-rank official of an organization supervising enforcement of law and order. Last October, Deputy Interior Minister Alexander Chekalin used struggle with extremism as a pretext for recommending the upper house of Russian parliament to make the owners of resources in the Russian segment of the Internet responsible for the contents of materials they publish.

Apart from that, the Interior Ministry submitted to the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, a number of proposals aimed at censorship in the Internet. Konstantin Machabeli, the director of the ministry's department for specialized technologies told Itar-Tass in October 2007 the ministry possesses a set of technological capabilities for blocking the websites that propagate extremist or terrorist information.

Last but not least, the director of Russia's Federal Security Service /FSB/, Nikolai Patrushev said at a meeting of the National Antiterrorist Committee June 5, 2007, that control over the Internet is essential.

"The level of radicalism and extremism in Russia is growing," he said. "At this moment, extremist organizations and groupings use actively about 5,000 Web sites."

As he took the floor in the upper house of parliament Friday, June 22, Patrushev proposed to discuss the issue at the international level. "It's impossible to liquidate criminal information in a separately taken country," he said, adding that the problem can be solved on the international plane only. "There should be a common approach so that no one would speak afterwards about overreacting or encroachments on the norms of democracy."

Patrushev indicated that an international conference will be held in the Far-Eastern city of Khabarovsk in September 2007 where officials and experts from 55 countries will discuss the problem.

The only attempt to bridle extremists in the Russian segment of the worldwide web was made last year when MP Pavel Krasheninnikov, the chairman of State Duma's committee for legislation proposed to make extremist calls in the Internet punishable by jail terms of up to five years, but the Duma refused to make relevant amendments to the Criminal Code. Novye Izvestia daily said in February 2007 that the National Antiterrorist Committee was drafting amendments to legislation to raise individual responsibility of Internet companies for proliferating terrorist and extremist materials.

All of this stands in a certain contrast to what President Vladimir Putin said in July 2006. He opposed the idea of restrictions on the freedom of speech in the Internet then. "I' m aware of opinions of some of our compatriots who believe a kind of order should be introduced there, but as for me, I think the fewer the restrictions, the better, in spite of all the negative moments. Society itself must decide on these things in the course of an open discussion," Putin said.

Exerts also claim that the efforts to put the Internet under total state control like in China are doomed to failure. In China, the government controls the only channel of access to the international web, while any respectable provider in Russia has several own channels of access. Introduction of control will require an overall change of laws, including the Constitution, and a re-division or, rather, toughening of the market of web services.

``When the Internet becomes more of a mass medium, then governments start getting worried, and they start treating it like the mass media,' said Esther Dyson, who helped establish the Internet's system of domain names and addresses, and has consulted extensively in Russia.

``You can't control the Internet, but you can control people,' she said in an interview. Oleg Panfilov, head of the Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations in Moscow, predicted in an interview that ``pressure on the media is going to worsen' as the presidential succession draws nearer.

References: Rossiyskaya Gazeta daily, October 11, 2006. Report by Yelena Yakovleva: "The Internet and the Person".

"Russians like the Internet, but doubt it will replace traditional mass media - poll", Interfax news agency, Nov 12, 2006.

"Some 25 million Russians use Internet services - Reiman", Itar-Tass news agency, December 18, 2006.

"All of Russia will have Internet and phone access", RIA Novosti economic commentator Mikhail Khmelev, March 24, 2007.

"Russia: Media Clampdown Sees Blogs Flourish", a report by Chloe Arnold, RFE/RL, September 10, 2007.

"Russians do in blogs what few can in media: argue", a report by Olesya Dmitracova, Reuters, December 18, 2006.

"Internet on March", report by Irina Petrakova and Andrey Stenin, Gazeta.ru, November 3, 2006. "KREMLIN TAKES MEASURES TO REGULATE THE INTERNET", report by Andrei Smirnov, Jamestown Foundation Eurasia Daily Monitor, March 22, 2007.

"Russia: Media Decree Targets Internet, Digital TV", report by Floriana Fossato, RFE/RL, March 28, 2007.

"Putin Tightens Internet Controls Before Presidential Election", by Henry Meyer, Bloomberg, April 10, 2007.

"Criminal Case Opened Against User Of Russian Internet Magazine", Itar-Tass news agency, April 13, 2007.

"Russia: Working the Net", report by Galina Stolyarova, a writer for The St. Petersburg Times, an English-language newspaper, for Transitions Online, www.tol.cz, 14 June 2007.

"Russia needs Internet censorship: official ", AFP, June 22, 2007.

"Russian Law Enforcers Advocate Internet Anti-terrorism Censorship", Itar-Tass news agency, June 22, 2007.

"Russia accused of crippling online media", report by Mansur Mirovalev, AP, July 22, 2007.

Peer Review Comments: Here is a good source about political content on the Web:

Robert Orttung, "Russian Blogs: Tool for Opposition and State," in Russian Analytical Digest, No. 28 (Oct. 2, 2007), 2-7 [ LINK ]

A report by the Moscow's Prosecutor's Office states that the check has been organized on the basis of Articles 144 and 145 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (with a view to the presence or absence of elements of a crime). "A legal assessment of statements will be made in the course of the check, and the Prosecutor's Office will adopt a procedural decision based on its results," the Prosecutor's Office report states.

However, the state agencies are not capable of much with regard to silencing extremists. Representatives of the Rosokhrankultura (Federal Service for Monitoring the Observance of Legislation in the Sphere of Mass Communication and Protection of the Cultural Heritage) in turn declared that they are unable to take any measures in respect of sites organizing the Russkiy Marsh. "We apply the measures provided for by law only in respect of those Internet resources that have been registered as mass media. All sites not registered as mass media are a sphere of activity for law enforcement organs and the Prosecutor's Office, which will take the necessary measures," Rosokhrankultura leader Boris Boyarskov told RIA Novosti on November 3, 2006.

Law enforcement agencies were more energetic. Staffers of the Russian Internal Affairs Ministry's K Administration were simultaneously conducting their own check of Internet resources. According to administration spokesperson Yelena Zubareva, the department's staffers are "taking measures to close them down." The police informs the providers that sites are propagandizing extremism and violence and must be closed down.

A whole slew of human rights campaigners voiced the opinion that the law enforcement organs have weighty grounds for checking the sites of the Russkiy Marsh -- an unsanctioned action that national-radicals are planning to hold 4 November in Moscow and other major cities of the Russian Federation. According to Moscow Human Rights Bureau Director Aleksandr Brod, two sites of the organizers of the Russkiy Marsh, for example, have posted information on the conditions for holding it. "These sites contain radical, nationalist materials and overt calls to kill and deport people of other nationalities. It is necessary to think about regulating such phenomena," Brod pointed out. According to him, at the time the first Right-Wing March was held in Moscow human rights campaigners demanded that the Prosecutor's Office institute criminal proceedings against the organizers of the march through the center of the capital. "But the Prosecutor's Office does not like such cases, which need a big intellectual evidential base, nothing was done, and it is a good thing that they have at least tackled an investigation now. Admittedly, this will hardly affect the holding of this latest march," Brod pointed out to Gazeta.ru.

Meanwhile, Web sites that test the boundaries of free speech are already coming under pressure. In December 2006, a court in the Siberian region of Khakassia shut down the Internet news site Novy Fokus for not registering as a media outlet. The site, known for its critical reporting, reopened in late March 2007 after it agreed to register and accept stricter supervision.

Anticompromat.ru, which wrote about Putin's pre-presidential business interests, had to find a U.S. Web server after a Russian service provider pulled the plug March 28, saying it had been warned by officials to stop hosting the site.

In 2006, the authorities shut down a Web site called Kursiv in the city of Ivanovo, northeast of Moscow that lampooned Putin as a ``phallic symbol of Russia' for his drive to boost the birthrate.

Criminal cases opened against Russian users of internet under most variegated pretexts become increasingly frequent. The first such case was opened in early April against a user of internet magazine. Savva Terentyev, a man from the city of Syktyvkar in the northeast of Russia is heading for a prospect of four years in jail after leaving an unflattering remark in about policemen. Interior officials considered his words to be insulting speech and instituted a criminal case. He is charged with "inciting hatred or animosity and humiliating human dignity."

Anton Nossik, an acclaimed figure in the Russian segment of the internet and the head of blog services at SUP company, sizes up the Terentyev story as a new attempt to impose censorship on the web. "Quite understandably, those people don't like the idea of a free uncontrolled expression of one's thoughts," he told Echo of Moscow.

This is Russia's first criminal case instituted for a comment in a cyber digest but far from the first case where an internet user evoked rancor in the police or among government officials, and the ways, in which people are persecuted for what they say on the web differ notably, writes the Moscow-based Kommersant daily.

In February 2006, the user of the Altai news agency Bankfax's website, Igor Shkarpet, loaded into the forum some quotations from the Argentine newspaper Clarin that contained curses against Moslems. The prosecutors opened a case citing punishment for "fanning ethnic, racial or religious strife" and the Russian watchdog agency for protection of cultural values, Rosokhrankultura, made a demand to close the news agency. The court rejected its lawsuit in June, however, and closed the case against Shkarpet "due to the absence of formal elements of a crime." Following a petition by Vladimir region's governor Nikolai Vinogradov, the regional

department of the Interior instituted a case against the news analyst of the Vladimirsky Krai newspaper, Dmitry Tashlykov. The man voiced his suspicions in the kovrov.ru forum that Vinogradov was planning a murder of the Kovrov City mayor, Irina Tabatskaya. His case was taken to court January 30, 2007.

Ruslan Linkov, head of the liberal organization Democratic Russia and also a LiveJournal blogger, said Internet spies on the lookout. Linkov knows that his blog, which he uses to publicize reported cases of abuse of human rights as well as to share personal stories, is being closely monitored by law enforcement.

"The police or security agents call me every now and then to express their indignation at my opinions, or the stories that I tell," he said. "Sometimes they ask me to clarify a fact or detail about the cases of human rights abuses I am describing.

"My colleagues who work on websites representing the liberal opposition have also noticed the massive presence of spies and provocateurs in their blogs," he said. "And during telephone conversations the police and security agents make no secret of their interest. At the same time, nationalist websites flourish and do not seem to get in trouble."

Executives of Moscow-based Internet provider companies told Kommersant that the FSB may inquire about the sites visited by one or another person suspected of extremist activity. Prosecutors often invoke Article 282 of Russia Criminal Code on 'fanning ethnic strife' against the authors of extremist utterances at blogs and in Internet forums.

In Novosibirsk, Internet providers obeyed the demands of the regional Prosecutor's Office and blocked the users' access to websites run by Chechen separatists.

Opposition organizations claim the authorities are waging a combat against their Internet resources with the aid of hackers. For instance, Marina Litvinovich, an assistant to former world chess champion Garri Kasparov, who leads the United Civil Front now, said the largest Russian providers impede the users' access to websites informing on the schedules of the Marches of Dissenters in Moscow and St Petersburg. However, the providers vehemently denied the information.

Taiga.info news portal said a district prosecutor's office in Novosibirsk told the Academ.org provider in June 2007 to restrict access to a number of sites that were classified as extremist ones. The provider operates the Internet in the famous Siberian Academy Town. Executives of the company discerned a political underpinning in the motion and linked it to the upcoming presidential and parliamentary election. They fear that if the precedent proves successful, the authorities will get an opportunity then to blacklist the opposition's web resources as extremist ones and thus to impose censorship in the Internet.

Opposition parties and independent media say murky forces have committed vast resources to hacking and crippling their Web sites in attacks similar to those that hit tech-savvy Estonia as the Baltic nation sparred with Russia over a Soviet war memorial.

While they offer no proof, the groups all point the finger at the Kremlin, calling the electronic siege an attempt to stifle Russia's last source of free, unfiltered information.

The victims, who range from liberal democrats to ultranationalists, contend that their hacker adversaries hope to harass the opposition with the approach of parliamentary elections in December and presidential elections next March.

Reliance on the Web also makes the opposition vulnerable to hackers.

The outlawed National Bolshevik Party says its Web sites were repeatedly hacked between February and April, as the nationalist group used the Internet to marshal "Dissenters' Marches" in Moscow, St. Petersburg and elsewhere.

The attacks were sophisticated as well as massive, said Alexei Sochnev, who is in charge of the National Bolsheviks' online network.

Mainstream media have also come under electronic assault, especially when they carry information likely to draw the attention of the government.

Kommersant's Web editor, Pavel Chernikov, said the major daily newspaper's site was attacked in early May. He called it retaliation for publishing a transcript of the interrogation of Boris Berezovsky a self-exiled oligarch who lives in London by Russian investigators.

On the same morning, the Web site of Ekho Moskvy, a liberal Moscow radio station where criticism of Kremlin policies can often be heard, was brought down by a DDoS attack.

Mr. Panfilov of the Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations said Russian opposition Web sites will find themselves under increasing pressure as election season heats up.

"There will be purges of online publications, shutdowns or takeovers of the last independent media outlets and strong pressure on Web users," he said.

References: Rossiyskaya Gazeta daily, October 11, 2006. Report by Yelena Yakovleva: "The Internet and the Person".

"Russians like the Internet, but doubt it will replace traditional mass media - poll", Interfax news agency, Nov 12, 2006.

"Some 25 million Russians use Internet services - Reiman", Itar-Tass news agency, December 18, 2006.

"All of Russia will have Internet and phone access", RIA Novosti economic commentator Mikhail Khmelev, March 24, 2007.

"Russia: Media Clampdown Sees Blogs Flourish", a report by Chloe Arnold, RFE/RL, September 10, 2007.

"Russians do in blogs what few can in media: argue", a report by Olesya Dmitracova, Reuters, December 18, 2006.

"Internet on March", report by Irina Petrakova and Andrey Stenin, Gazeta.ru, November 3, 2006. "KREMLIN TAKES MEASURES TO REGULATE THE INTERNET", report by Andrei Smirnov, Jamestown Foundation Eurasia Daily Monitor, March 22, 2007.

"Russia: Media Decree Targets Internet, Digital TV", report by Floriana Fossato, RFE/RL, March 28, 2007.

"Putin Tightens Internet Controls Before Presidential Election", by Henry Meyer, Bloomberg, April 10, 2007.

"Criminal Case Opened Against User Of Russian Internet Magazine", Itar-Tass news agency, April 13, 2007.

"Russia: Working the Net", report by Galina Stolyarova, a writer for The St. Petersburg Times, an English-language newspaper, for Transitions Online, www.tol.cz, 14 June 2007.

"Russia needs Internet censorship: official ", AFP, June 22, 2007.

"Russian Law Enforcers Advocate Internet Anti-terrorism Censorship", Itar-Tass news agency, June 22, 2007.

"Russia accused of crippling online media", report by Mansur Mirovalev, AP, July 22, 2007.

According to the Law on Mass Media, there are specific grounds for the canceling a mass media company activity: "No provision shall be made for the use of mass media for purposes of committing criminally indictable deeds, divulging information containing a state secret or any other law-protective secret, the performance of extremist activities, and also for the spreading of broadcasts propagandizing pornography or the cult of violence and cruelty." As the "extremism" has the wide interpretation including "Public slander directed towards figures fulfilling the state duties of the Russian Federation or has duties which have the connection with their execution and the fact of slander is established in the court decision," mass media companies can be closed after the three warnings according to these points. For instance, in 2006 39 warnings were issued to mass media companies concerning extremism:

[ LINK ], and 3 warning during the first six months of 2007 ([ LINK ]).

References: Press-release of Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), July 28, 2006 for more information: //www.ifex.org/en/content/view/full/76025/.

References: There are many stories on inner and internal censorship available at International Freedom of Expression Network website at www.ifex.org. See, for example, 7 Radio Journalists Quit Jobs in Protest by Svetlana Osadchuk, The Moscow Times daily, May 21, 2007. See also [ LINK ].

Very strict censorship has been introduced in one of the biggest news resources on the Russian radio airwaves. All reporters from Russian News Service have left the company to protest editorial policies which they describe as censorship. Russian News Service, a subsidiary of the Russian Media Group holding, makes news for three major radio stations with total audience of about 8 million people. Artem Khan, a correspondent from Russian News Service, said on May 17, 2007 he and all his colleagues have walked out because of censorship and pressure from the companys new executives who took office in April.

The change of leadership at RSN, which occurred in mid April, resembled a special operation. It took less than 24 hours to radically change the entire policy of the Russian Media Group's (RMG's) information sub-department, which prepares the news not only for its own frequency of 107.00 FM but also for all the holding company's radio stations. A single day, 10 April, saw a change of leadership at Ren-TV, RSN, and Radio Rossii. Sergey Arkhipov, a former RMG shareholder, left for a state radio station, and Radio Rossii's managers were moved sideways to lead Ren-TV, while a landing force from Channel One turned up at RSN. Mikhail Baklanov was dismissed from the post of general director at RSN, which he headed for 12 years from the moment it was founded. On the same day the radio station's collective of journalists were acquainted with their new bosses -- Aleksandr Shkolnik, member of the Public Chamber and director of children's programs at Channel One, who became the general director, and Channel One news anchor Vsevolod Neroznak, who became chief editor.

A current employee at RSN told Gazeta.ru that Shkolnik and Neroznak read out the new rules of information policy at the meeting. "Our newsmakers are the first persons in United Russia and members of the Public Chamber. If we talk of defenders of human rights, they are the official defenders of human rights -- Vladimir Lukin and Ella Pamfilova."

"We were told that our listeners are well-to-do people who need something positive, people with an interest in fashionable cuff links and neckties," the RSN employee told Gazeta.ru.

Later Neroznak met separately with correspondents and, so one of the participants in that meeting said, read out a so-called "blacklist" from a piece of paper -- a list of people prohibited on air. "As for Kasyanov, Kasparov, and Ryzhkov, we do not mention them, and if some events involving them take place, for now we will use the phrase 'liberal radicals,'" Neroznak explained to the correspondents. "America is our enemy," the chief editor added another thesis for understanding. In a few days listeners to the radio stations belonging to RMG noticed that direct broadcasts had vanished from the news. At the radio station itself all programs and materials are now proofread in advance by the chief editor before going on air. ("Russian Brainwashing Service" by Aleksey Levchenko, Gazeta.ru, April 18, 2007) and Russian News Service Goes Off Air, Kommersant daily, May 18, 2007

At their first meeting with journalists since taking over Russias largest independent radio news network, the managers had startling news of their own: from now on, they said, at least 50 percent of the reports about Russia must be positive.

How would they know what constituted positive news? When we talk of death, violence or poverty, for example, this is not positive, said one editor at the station who did not want to be identified for fear of retribution. If the stock market is up, that is positive. The weather can also be positive.

The tactic of the new anti-free media campaign has been to impose state ownership on media companies and replace editors with those who are supporters of Mr. Putin ¬ or offer a generally more upbeat report on developments in Russia these days. (50% Good News Is the Bad News in Russian Radio by Andrew E. Kramer, New York Times, April 22, 2007)

See also Russian journalists charge censorship, Reuters, April 18, 2007

The director-general of the Russian News Service (RSN), Aleksandr Shkolnik, denied claims of censorship at the RSN. (Russian radio service manager denies censorship claims, Interfax news agency, 18 May, 2007)

Vsevolod Neroznak, the services editor in chief, denied details of the resigning journalists allegations, saying that there was no formula for positive news, but that positive news was part of the networks new philosophy. Our country is growing, our economy is developing, and there is a lot of positive news, he said. I cannot see any problem with this. He also said that there was no blacklist of sources but that the network would not cover extremist items. Asked what constituted an extremist item, he said, There are Russian laws, and everything is written there. (Eviction Notice Is Latest Russian Move Against Journalists by C. J. Chivers, New York Times daily, May 19, 2007)

See also Russia: State Cracks Down On Media Ahead Of Journalists' Congress by Chloe Arnold, RFE/RL, May 23, 2007.

References: Glasnost Defense Foundation President Alexei Simonov; International Freedom of Exchange network Web site.

How so-called stop lists are used on TV, see here: [ LINK ].

There are various ways to apply censorship to artists. For example, in May 2007, Russian customs officials have refused to ship six works of art, including two that poke fun at President Vladimir Putin, to a German art gallery for an exhibition, saying they could spark a dispute. (See more about it here: Customs Blocks Satirical Art From Being Sent to Germany, Reuters, May 23, 2007).

See also First Blacklist of Literature is Released, The Moscow Times daily, July 17, 2007.

See also here: [ LINK ] and [ LINK ] How its implemented, see [ LINK ].

References: According to the Art. 10 of Law on Mass Media, "the application for the registration of a mass medium shall indicate information about the founder (co-founders) provided for by the present Law...".

References: According to the Art. 10 of Law on Mass Media, "the application for the registration of a mass medium shall indicate information about the founder (co-founders) provided for by the present Law...".

Comparing Russian TV in 1990s and at present, Yelena Zelinskaya, president of Media Union and member of the Public Chamber said it had fully changed its function, i.e. in 1990s "it was, along with other media, a component of political life. It played an active people, influenced [the public] to the extent it could and in some way sometimes even showed the direction, etc. At least its function was, I would say, of greater participation in the political life of the country. But today the function of the TV has totally shifted to the side of the entertainment component." (Russian Ekho Moskvy radio's "Kitchen of Andrey Cherkizov" programme, hosted by Andrey Cherkizov, broadcast at 1808 gmt on 5 November)

Oleg Panfilov, the head of the Moscow-based Journalism in Extreme Situations, called Russian media the "empire of lies."

"From a position of a freedom of speech, the situation in the Russian mass media can be estimated as catastrophic," he said. "Television is the core with more than 90 percent of the population depending on it as their main source of information. But now in Russia all five national TV channels are used by the state for propagation, for distribution of an official position."

Panfilov said that there is next to no opportunity for Russians to receive independent news.

"Only a small part of the population can search for independent sources of information through the Internet, or by the old Soviet tradition to listen to programs of foreign radio stations in Russian." (Russian Media Called 'Empire of Lies' by Alexandra Poolos, ABCNews.com, Jan. 10, 2007)

An interesting opinion on current situation with media in Russia compared to the 1990-s by journalist Anatoli Baranov is here: [ LINK ].

Oleg Panfilov, director of the Moscow-based Centre for Journalism in Extreme Situations: Censorship is banned under the constitution, but it exists in the form of self-censorship by editors and proprietors fearful of laws that mean they can easily find themselves in court if their organizations produce reports that offend the Kremlin. (Press freedom: To understand these outrages, you need a Russian history lesson, The Independent daily (UK), March 12, 2007)

Independent news reporting on themes like corruption, poverty, public health and the wars in Chechnya flourished after the Soviet Unions collapse but has sharply declined under President Vladimir V. Putin. Critics of the Kremlin say that opposition views are now at risk of disappearing from the public discourse.

Russia Today, a state-run global television channel, was created in 2005 to promote pro-Kremlin views in formats that resemble modern news broadcasts.

A few news Web sites, a shrinking pool of independent newspapers, all with limited circulations, and a sole radio station, Ekho Moskvy, are almost the only remaining outlets for independent news and public dissent.

Foreign radio material has been restricted or blocked from most frequencies across the country. (Eviction Notice Is Latest Russian Move Against Journalists by C. J. Chivers, New York Times daily, May 19, 2007)

New media magnates, most notably Alisher Usmanov, Arkadiy Gaydamak, Oleg Deripaska, Yuriy Kovalchuk, Grigoriy Berezkin, and Konstantin Remchukov, are buying up media and announcing plans to create media empires. Most are clearly pro-government and eager to curry favor with President Vladimir Putin. But while some (Gaydamak) already have made their media pro-government, others (Usmanov and Deripaska) have appeared to leave the editorial policy of their media alone, at least for the time being. However, with parliamentary and presidential elections coming in 2007 and 2008, they may exercise greater control over their media's political line when pressed by the Kremlin.

During 2006 and 2007, oligarchs who built their fortunes in metals, banking, and energy took over a large number of newspapers, magazines, TV channels, and websites and created media holding companies. Usmanov bought the daily Kommersant, the magazine Sekret Firmy, the website Gazeta.ru, and television channel 7TV and announced creation of a multimedia company.

Gaydamak bought the business paper Biznes and created a multimedia company modeled on Bloomberg business news. Deripaska bought part ownership of the business weekly Ekspert and developed his RAINKO media company. Kovalchuk's Peterburg TV was expanded to a national channel and renamed Pyatyy Kanal, and his Abros media holding bought control of RenTV in December 2006. Berezkin set up a media holding company in 2006 and bought Komsomolskaya Pravda, the country's most read daily. Remchukov in early 2007 took over personal control of his Nezavisimaya Gazeta and began using it to express his own views. (Analysis: Pro-Kremlin Russian Businessmen Building New Media Empires, OSC [US Open Source Center], May 3, 2007)

In April 2007, Surgutneftegaz oil and natural gas company has sold a 75% stake in Media-Invest that holds 35% in REN TV, widely considered the most independent of Russia's national television channels, to Kovalchuks Rossiya, a Kremlin-connected bank.

National Association of Telebroadcasters President Eduard Sagalayev said previously REN TV has been the last national television network that has pursued an independent information policy, as much as was possible in today's conditions. (Kremlin-friendly bank takes over last independent TV channel, RIA Novosti news agency, April 13, 2007)

In spring 2007, TV-Tsentr's (Moscow TV channel) political news show, "Fighters Club," also faced restrictions and was ultimately shut down for failing to follow Kremlin guidelines. According to the show's host, Aleksei Navalny, deputy presidential administration head Vladislav Surkov and Aleksei Chesnakov, who heads of the presidential administration's information department, cleared participants and topics for the show in advance.

When Navalny deviated from the approved guidelines, the show was taken off the air. Navalny also revealed that he was warned about existence of so-called "blacklists" of people the Kremlin did not want on the air.

Sergei Markov, director of the Institute of Political Studies, which is closely linked to the Kremlin, defended the Kremlin's policies toward the media. "In these conditions in Russia, with our weak and fragile political parties," he said, "television is a nuclear weapon. And now people say it would be good if different people could use this weapon. But that is threatening. True, [television management] does not want to have problems, so they have gotten rid of all politics from television, leaving only entertainment." (Russia: Pressure Mounting On Opposition, Media by Victor Yasmann, RFE/RL, April 24, 2007)

Some diversity of perspective exists in print media at the national level, which are privately owned. Ownership of regional print media is less diverse and often concentrated in the hands of local authorities. Private owners of media outlets are generally billionaire business magnates or large companies like the state-controlled energy conglomerate Gazprom, which holds majority stakes in the newspaper Izvestia and radio station Ekho Moskvy. However, the law requires little transparency in media ownership, and media watchdogs expressed concern in 2006 that companies like Gazprom would purchase additional newspapers, such as Komsomolskaya Pravda, and tighten the establishments grip on the media ahead of the 2008 presidential election. The government continued to disadvantage private media by allocating subsidies to state-controlled outlets and controlling the means of production and distribution. (Freedom of the Press 2007, report on Russia by Freedom House, May 1, 2007)

Boris Reznik (United Russia), deputy chairman of the Duma Committee for Information Policy, is thoroughly skeptical about these conclusions. "That's a rough estimate," he told us. "Sure, we do have certain problems. Media outlets in Russia need better economic independence. The VAT rate should be cut, and so on... Anyway, I don't think that newspapers and radio broadcasters fear speaking their mind."

According to Reznik, whatever censorship may exist in Russian journalism is strictly self-imposed. "It's easier for journalists this way," the lawmaker said. "They are trying to appease the authorities all on their own. Nobody is telling them to."

Mikhail Fedotov, Secretary of the Russian Journalists Union, blames all these negative evaluations on the authorities' reluctance to set up the legislative and economic conditions necessary for independence of the media. "We have great laws that defend journalists and their rights, but they are enforced and honored only in the capital," Fedotov said. "Regional authorities never miss a single chance - or petty excuse - to do away with an independent media outlet. Besides, it is regional authorities themselves that usually finance local newspapers and TV networks."

According to Fedotov, Russia last climbed to the first top dozen countries on freedom of the media lists in the 1990s, together with the Czech Republic and Estonia, when the majority of media outlets were truly independent. (Non-Free Media Day by Olga Pavlikova, Gazeta daily, May 3, 2007)

Vice President of the Media Union and deputy head of the Public Chamber's commission for freedom of speech Yelena Zelinskaya has blasted the evaluation of the state of freedom of speech in Russia made by the U.S. Committee to Protect Journalists and called the report biased. "I would not like to make any comments here because one gets the impression that they are making all their evaluations at the emotional level and we question their professionalism," she told Interfax on May 2, commenting on a report by the committee issued ahead of World Press Freedom Day marked on May 3.

"The question arises as to how often those behind the report have actually visited the Gambia or Congo to have a true idea of developments there and compare them with us?" Zelinskaya said. (Russian Expert Questions Freedom House Evaluation Of Russia, Interfax news agency, May 2, 2007)

Commenting on the troubled condition of Russia's news media, former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev observed: "The one thing I can say is that it's pointless today to watch television [in Russia]." (CIS: Behind An 'Information Curtain' by Christopher Walker, RFE/RL, May 2, 2007)

A story of the thrice-weekly Novaya Gazeta - a lonely independent voice of Russian printed media: Russian newspaper quite a story itself by David Holley, Los Angeles Times, May 21, 2007. What was the response from Russian authorities accused of prosecuting the national media? On May 3, 2007 Public Chamber and All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM) announced on a future cooperation on a study aimed at evaluating freedom of expression throughout Russia. Yelena Zelenskaya, Mediasoyuz Vice President and deputy chairperson of a Public Chamber commission, claims that the working group to be established for the purpose of evaluating freedom of expression will take into account every relevant factor in every region.

The working group will embark on its mission in May. It expects to complete the task before the term of office of current Public Chamber member ends - that is, by the end of the year. "We are not aiming to refute or support foreign researchers and their conclusions," Zelenskaya explained. "I'm convinced that they are doing their job to the best of their ability, but they are foreigners, and - let's face it - they don't really care about what is happening here."

The purpose of this move was discussed on the Russian Ekho Moskvy radio programme "Lukavaya Tsifra" (Tricky Figures) broadcast on 8 May and presented by Antonina Samsonova and Masha Mayers. The guests were Director of the Public Research Foundation Igor Yakovenko and head of VTsIOM Leontiy Byzov.

Yakovenko agreed that although there could be disagreements over research methods used by Freedom House, on the whole their assessment of Russia as a country without free media is correct. "Russia has state monopoly on television; practically all television channels are under state control; hardly anybody can argue with this. I mean public-political channels. We witness journalism being squeezed out of the media and substituted by propaganda. Speaking about nationwide channels, on the whole journalists have left them and have been replaced by propagandists like [Gleb] Pavlovskiy, [Mikhail] Leontyev and so on," he said.

Byzov said the Freedom House report is rather subjective. He also noted that, unlike Freedom House experts and other "respectable organizations", Russian society does not see the lack of freedom of speech as an urgent problem. "We have carried out an opinion poll," he said. "Just over 20 per cent of Russian agreed that freedom of speech is restricted in Russia. Over 45 per cent disagreed and the rest did not know."

Byzov said that trust in the media is growing in Russia, currently standing at over 50 percent. "Of course, this concerns first of all major nationwide television channels, which provide over 80 per cent of information, especially political information. Moreover, people welcome state control over the media. Asked what they want, people say the state must influence the media even more. Many support censorship, not political but rather moral. In fact, it comes out that people admit: yes, the state controls the media and restricts its freedom but they see more positive than negative in this situation," he said.

Yakovenko argued that television is not longer just part of the media, it has turned into "a tool for mass propaganda and manipulation". (Russian radio discusses Moscow's response to Freedom House report, BBC Monitoring, source: Ekho Moskvy radio, Moscow, in Russian 1908 gmt 8 May 07)

Vsevolod Bogdanov, chairman of the Union of Russian Journalists, complained that only 3-5 per cent of journalism in the country remained free and more or less independent. "Right now, it is mainly propaganda," he summed up. (Moscow congress debates crimes against journalists by Madina Shavlokhova, Gazeta daily, 29 May, 2007)

According to a statement by the Public Chamber's press service received on July 19 by Interfax, the working group is expected to include representatives from the Glasnost Defence Foundation, the All-Russia Centre for the Study of Public Opinion (VTsIOM), MediaSoyuz, the alliance of heads of regional mass media, the Russian Union of Journalists, and the Guild of Press Publishers. Other interested organizations may be invited to join this list.

The Public Chamber's press service also said that on the request of the "public activists", VTsIOM had prepared its own proposal for the meeting as to how the index of freedom of speech and the press would be calculated, but that "the concept presented was imperfect and required serious amendment".

In particular, the large-scale public opinion polls proposed by VTsIOM were pointless, said the president of the Glasnost Defense Foundation Aleksey Simonov.

"In order to assess freedom of speech, for example in the press, it is useless to research the readership's opinion. In the Stalin era, 90 per cent of people surveyed would have said that the press was free - people simply believed it," said Simonov.

Rather than analyzing the opinions of Russians, the Glasnost Defense Foundation has suggested researching the content of the domestic media. "Not long ago, we carried out content analysis of television broadcasts in the regions, and it turned out that 85 per cent of information was devoted to the authorities, compared to only 20 percent devoted to society," said Simonov. For his part, the secretary of the Union of Journalists and author of the current law on the media Mikhail Fedotov said that there was a "risk that the average man on the street doesn't correctly understand the term free speech." "If you ask someone: Are our mass media free? they will say yes, thinking of our tabloid press and scandalous programs on television," he explained. (NGOs invited to help design index of freedom of speech in Russia, Interfax news agency, 19 July, 2007)

Will the working group do better than foreign researchers? Time will tell. A comparison of its conclusions with assessments made by the Russian Union of Journalists (RUJ) and the Glasnost Defense Foundation will be particularly revealing. Alexei Simonov and Boris Timoshenko, the heads of the Glasnost Defense Foundation, released the Glasnost Maps on May 2. Both organizations studied the media freedom situation in Russia's regions between September 2006 and March 2007.

Using different colors, the map of Russia shows that only 21 regions are relatively free, while 43 are relatively un-free. Seventeen remain un-free. The color green was chosen to depict free provinces, but the color appears nowhere on the map of Russia.

The state of affairs changed in 15 regions - for the better in seven and for the worse in eight. The list of relatively non-free regions now includes the capital and the Moscow region even though both were better off six months ago. Two incidents (the murders of two journalists and biased coverage of the Dissenter March) had their thoroughly negative effect on the rating of Moscow and the Moscow region.

According to the RUJ, the Ryazan and Belgorod regions stand out as "freedom isles" against the general background of non-free regions. Simonov and Timoshenko, however, disagree and regard these particular regions as relatively non-free. "As usual, the situation is problematic in Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, and Kemerovo," Timoshenko said.

The RUJ and Glasnost Defense Foundation based their conclusions on a questionnaire survey. The list of questions this time was more extensive than in the past. Experts say that existence of independent printing houses is an important factor. Consider Krasnoyarsk, for instance, where all printing companies were closed down and sealed on the eve of the recent election. Accreditation for journalists at official events and functions is a grave problem in many regions. The authorities never hesitate to deny information to independent media outlets. Timoshenko and Simonov referred to an incident in Cherepovets where absolutely all journalists were once asked to vacate the premises of the local legislature.

The map charted by the Glasnost Defense Foundation lacks data on five regions, and the RUJ map lacks data on 50 regions. Timoshenko maintains that local journalist unions refused to cooperate for fear of incurring the wrath of the regional authorities.

Mikhail Fedotov, RUJ secretary and a co-author of the law on the media, said that freedom of expression still exists in Russia, but "its territory is constantly shrinking." He added: "The blame for that rests with the authorities, the business community, and journalists themselves." (The Freedom Index by Anastasia Novikova, Gazeta daily, May 4-6, 2007)

Map of Glasnost: : [ LINK ] 8 [ LINK ]; [ LINK ]; [ LINK ]

Paula Schriefer from Freedom House said at the hearing on "Freedom of the Media in the OSCE Region" organized in August 2007 by the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (Helsinki Commission), said that Russia's three leading television channels are entirely subject to government censorship: "But their broadcasts are so professional - and so colorful and glamorous compared to the Soviet era - that most viewers are absolutely convinced that what they see and hear is true." (Only Iraq Is More Dangerous by Mariam Magomedova, Novye Izvestia daily, August 6, 2007)

"No one is claiming that things are heavenlike in Russia," says Gleb Pavlovsky, a Kremlin adviser. "We have never lived in an absolutely free country, but we have never had as much press freedom as we have today." (In Russia, 'space for journalism is narrow' by Fred Weir, Christian Science Monitor, May 24, 2007)

One girl from Nizhny Novgorod said Russia cannot be democratic because Russians are like children - they need a strong leader, who can use the belt on them if necessary. A boy from the nationwide Nashi youth movement adds that he does not agree that freedom of choice and free speech have got more restricted under Vladimir Putin. "Personally, I don't feel it," he tells me. "Yes, we use tough measures to crack down on disorder. But that's just the Russian way of doing things." (Fighting for free speech in Russia by Bridget Kendall, BBC, May 30, 2007)

See also East: 'New Kind Of Press Censorship' In CIS, Heather Maher interviewed Freedom Houses director of studies, Christoper Walker , RFE/RL, June 25, 2007

However, across the country, even in small, remote towns, local journalists are addressing issues that national television channels stopped covering long ago, and which appear rarely in the national press. Moreover, readers seem to admire this stance, suggesting that those who produce information and those who consume it can still choose to support a free press.

In October 2006 in Berdsk, the main owner of the newspaper initially pulled an article about Galina Zyryanova, an elderly woman who was severely beaten by the deputy police chief, because the deputy was his friend. The paper published the story two months later -- without the owner's consent -- alongside an editorial that explained the delay and apologized for the editors' "faint-heartedness." Two weeks later, the editorial team quit and started its own publication, which has received good feedback from readers and has seen its circulation steadily increase. Conflicts with owners and the mass exodus of editorial staff are not the only way for hard-hitting stories to make it onto the front page. Articles similar to those that caused so much trouble for the journalists at Berdsky Kuryer appear regularly in other regional publications, whose owners actually encourage their reporters and editors to pursue thoughtful, unbiased reporting on important and often controversial issues.

The story of Private Andrei Sychyov, whose legs and genitals had to be amputated after a brutal hazing incident at the Chelyabinsk Armor Academy 2005 New Year's Eve, first appeared in Vecherny Krasnoturinsk, Sychyov's hometown paper. It wasn't covered by national and international media until two weeks later.

Newspapers that display remarkable courage and integrity are far more numerous than generally believed, but they are nevertheless far too few for a country of this size. Today, local media outlets face many challenges. They have to compete with state-sponsored publications, which receive funding from various levels of the government and distort the market -- not to mention money from local tycoons and corporate media outlets. In the run-up to the parliamentary election in 2007 and the presidential vote in 2008, big money is expected to be injected into the media market.

As the election cycle approaches, nervousness and uncertainty have taken root among regional journalists. Not known for their openness, government officials are becoming even more obstructive, denying independent media access to information with increasing frequency. Given the low quality of regional journalism on the whole, many ambitious, small independent media outlets also suffer from a sense of isolation and inferiority. Often regional newspapers lose their most talented journalists to Moscow or other cities, or to better-paid professions, such as public relations.

Moscow-based colleagues and the international journalism community have already sounded the death knell of responsible journalism in Russia. At times, they seem more interested in reporting the efforts of the Kremlin to take control of the media than the media's efforts to report the truth. The rare articles on regional media that do appear often make no distinction between independent and opposition publications, or between government repression and legitimate court cases arising from the irresponsible behavior of particular media outlets. This sort of coverage helps to cultivate a sense of cynicism and lethargy among honest journalists, resulting in an overall lack of morale, which is particularly damaging to efforts to attract young people into the profession. (Regional Journalists Fight for Press Freedom by Maria Eismont and Rebecca Hewitt, Moscow Times, November 21, 2006)

See also Russia: Wrestling With Bears by Nick Guroff, Transitions Online, www.tol.cz, 29 May 2007.

The evidence suggests that planting stories, long practiced in Russia, is becoming even more widespread. Whether they like it or not, journalists, elected officials, business people, and public relations executives are locked in a corrupt cycle that most think they can't break. The inevitable result is TV news barely fit to watch and newspapers unfit to read.

The most depressing thing is that nobody hides this sort of thing anymore, said political analyst Boris Vishnevsky, a member of the reformist Yabloko party. Things are done quite openly these days. Some editors who are not at liberty to deny a request from Smolny (St. Petersburg City Hall) do publish planted stories but feel remorse, and try to sign them in a special way, allowing readers to guess that the stories were forced on them.

One St. Petersburg editor gives such articles a fictitious byline, sometimes an anagram of the name of St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matvienko, or a name containing a reference to Smolny, or a hybrid of the two.

"I can't afford a confrontation with the city government ¬ so I hope my audience can read between the lines, the editor, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said. An aide to a democratic lawmaker in the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly admitted having a monthly "media allowance budget" that regularly buys his boss a quote, an interview, or a feature in the local print media.

This year, planted stories were the focus of a study by a group of political science students at Herzen Pedagogical University in St. Petersburg. Following internships at the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly, these fifth-year students analyzed the coverage of a series of significant political events in local newspapers. The results were depressing yet predictable.

The alarming thing was that the publications openly supporting City Hall keep repeating the key arguments of the politicians almost word for word. They dont quote any critics. And the quotes all look as if they were written by the same person, someone who has, lets say, a limited vocabulary, said Alexander Balayan, one of the reports authors. We could even see identical mistakes or misspellings circulating from article to article.

The students said it was impossible to establish the identity of the writers of these pro-government reports. By contrast, journalists who wrote balanced reports on the same topics used their real names and were accessible.

The editorial offices of publications where the allegedly paid stories appeared were evasive, Balayan said. The staff would say that the person we were looking for is not here, or has never worked here, or that this is a pen-name, but we dont know who the writer is.  What drives Russian journalists into serving politicians and oligarchs, instead of their audiences? Ten or even five years ago it was difficult for poorly paid journalists to resist the financial temptation. But these days, in most cases, it is a matter of keeping your job. (In Russia, a little well-placed cash can get you good press by Galina Stolyarova, a reporter for English-language newspaper The St. Petersburg Times, Transitions Online, www.tol.cz, 13 December 2006)

References: There are a few media outlets that tend to follow professional ethics with regard to reporting. Many other don't, due to pressure from senior management and/or money. "Live TV" has for all intents and purposes been abolished on all channels and any broadcasts on social issues that are likely to involve a clash of wide-ranging opinion, pass through a censorship process, politely but invariably called editing.

Federal publications allow themselves to express individual opinions that diverge in this way or that from the official government view, but they do so so politely and shyly, that they hardly make a ripple. Our research has shown that up to 70 percent of material printed in the press or broadcast on TV and radio, is about the government and its representatives."

Presentation by Alexei Simonov, the founder and the head of the Glasnost Defense Foundation (Russia).

A three-month survey done by TNS Gallup Media in 2006 reported that more than 90 percent of citizens watched the evening news on Channel One (Vremya program, 9 p.m.) at least once during those three months; more than 90 percent watched the evening news on the Rossiya channel (Vesti program, 8 p.m.) at least once; and more than 80 percent watched the evening news on the NTV channel (Segondya Vecherom program, 7 p.m.) at least once. Thus, in the space of one month, more than 90 percent of citizens watched at least one news broadcast.

The "Television As Seen by Viewers 2006" report demonstrated that three-quarters of pensioners watch television news broadcasts every day; only one-third of young people do so. A fifth of young people watch the news less than once a week. Almost a fifth of middle-aged people take only a superficial interest in the news.

Over two-thirds of respondents agree that "news programs are over-politicized, with everything revolving around politics." So even now, before the election campaign season, viewers are already annoyed by an excessive emphasis on politics in news broadcasts.

Pensioners aged over 65; when people in Russia retire, become dependent on the state and its policies, so they take an interest in politics. (The News In The Campaign Race by Ilya Tsarkov, senior analyst, Video International Analytical Center, Izvestia daily, August 16, 2007)

In January 2007, the Medialogy media monitoring company has released its fourth annual survey of media coverage for Russia's political parties.

In 2006, the media became substantially more cautious in evaluating Russian politicians. Changes in coverage of the United Russia party were particularly noticeable. In 2005, United Russia was mentioned 50,796 times in newspapers and magazines, on radio and television, in online resources, and by news agencies. In 2006, that figure rose to 67,500. The proportion of articles or news items focused on United Russia or its members also increased, though not by much. Despite this, the quantity of coverage containing some evaluation  whether negative or positive - decreased substantially.

Here's an important detail: in 2005, United Russia got most of its praise on television and most criticism in the newspapers  both regional and national newspapers. The situation changed in 2006. Due to competition with the Kremlin's second party, Just Russia, United Russia was mentioned less frequently on national television (1,900 times compared to 2,331 times in 2005); but it was mentioned more often in the newspapers. The regional newspapers changed their attitude abruptly. In 2005, they were almost always critical of United Russia: 2,418 critical mentions as opposed to 1,232 positive mentions. But 2006 produced only 639 critical evaluations of United Russia, compared to 845 positive mentions. Even the national newspapers have shown a trend in favor of United Russia; Medialogy notes that they had always been very critical of United Russia. In 2005, United Russia got 1,565 negative mentions and only 131 positive mentions in the national newspapers. In 2006, these figures were 1,196 and 144 respectively.

Moscow-based national newspapers showed a somewhat unexpected fondness for the Communist Party, which has always been weakest in Moscow. Although the total number of articles about the Communists has declined for several years in a row, positive mentions have outnumbered negative mentions for the second year running. The regional newspapers are different: they give less coverage to the Communist Party, and criticize it more often. It's no coincidence that most Communist voters live in the regions.

Vladimir Zhirinovsky's position has remained stable for the second consecutive year. His party, the LDPR, gets mostly negative coverage (only 40 positive mentions), but it's being mentioned more often (15,807 times in 2005, 18,244 in 2006). In terms of media coverage, 2006 was the best year for Just Russia and the parties that merged into it - the Party of Life and the Party of Pensioners. However, as Medialogy admits, they were promoted almost entirely on television. According to Medialogy, online publications in 2006 contained no positive mentions of the Just Russia party at all.

The indisputable outsiders of 2006 were the pro-democracy parties: the Union of Right Forces and Yabloko, which are ceasing to get even passing mentions. The number of articles or news reports focused on them is declining rapidly, halving in comparison to 2005. Yabloko is worse off. It set an unfortunate record in 2006: only 18 positive mentions in the entire Russian media, compared to 246 negative mentions. (Journalists Have Grown Cautious by Gennadi Savchenko, Gazeta, January 15, 2007)

See also Just Russia Shows and Tells by Aleksandra Zaytseva, Gazeta.ru, January 17, 2007.

"I think a differentiation between the channels will emerge closer to the elections, so that one channel will support United Russia more, while another will support Just Russia more," Mikhail Fedotov, Secretary of the Journalists' Union, believes, "but I cannot believe that any of the existing channels will support the CPRF, or Yabloko, or the SPS (Union of Right-Wing Forces) -- the parties for which the authorities have mapped out a path leading in the direction of the crematorium."

The proximity of the federal election campaign is having a substantial influence on the qualitative characteristics of news bulletins and analysis programs. The Medialogiya statistics indicate that the TV channels' policy has recently become more restrained and neutral. A reduction is taking place in the number of reports of both a positive and a negative nature. Thus, in January-February 2007 there has not been a single negative report about major players in the election campaign like Just Russia, the LDPR (Liberal Democratic Party of Russia), or even the CPRF, which is traditionally the victim of the TV channels' prejudice. ("Plotting Against United Russia on the Air. TV Channels Cannot Help Promoting CPRF Brand" by Igor Romanov and Natalya Kostenko, Nezavisimaya Gazeta daily, February 19, 2007)

An analysis of the presence of political parties on Russian television commissioned by Nezavisimaya Gazeta and conducted by the Medialogiya company in March 2007 provides interesting food for thought

Closer inspection of the data shows that there are fundamental differences in the quality of television coverage of parties. For example, the metric of "reports in which the target party is the most important element" looks like this: United Russia 73; Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) 26; Just Russia 37; Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) 10; Union of Right-Wing Forces (SPS) 9; Yabloko 5. Clearly a rating of 5 or 9 under this metric is virtually nothing, given that March was the month of regional parliamentary elections.

As for the ratio of positive to negative reports, the figures were: Yabloko 0:32; the SPS 18:19; the LDPR 21:12; Just Russia 55:6; the CPRF 44:0; and United Russia 94:7. Clearly these ratios arise from deliberate media planning by the heads of television channels' political editorial offices. This is where the filter is located.

We are probably witnessing the implementation of a new Kremlin information strategy. The increasing television presence of representatives of various political forces in the coming months should help Russia's image makers in their efforts to adjust the image of Putin's Russia. Within the country too, many voters may feel that they are adequately informed about the positions of rival politicians. (Editorial: "More Airtime for Politicians. Authorities Adjusting Their Strategy", Nezavisimaya Gazeta daily, April 3, 2007)

The monitoring ordered by the Communist Party (CPRF) was conducted by the Center for Studies of Political Culture. In fact, some TV network seem to be determined not to make any references to the Communist Party at all. The TV-Center made no references to the CPRF over six consecutive days, NTV over 13 days, and Channel over 16. As far as the Communists are concerned, their positions on major issues were misreported even when the CPRF was mentioned. Russia TV-network for example made a wrong emphasis when reporting on Gennadi Zyuganov's trip to Perm, and RBK-TV reported the party's rebranding which had never even been contemplated.

United Russia is the only political party in Russia which is entirely satisfied with its media coverage. Sergei Mironov, Federation Council speaker and Just Russia leader, said that references to his political party are taboo for television networks.

Yabloko deputy leader Sergei Mitrokhin maintains that the same veto has been slapped on references to his party as well. "NTV crews visit me frequently, but that pretty much sums it up. The story never makes it to air," he said.

Alexei Mitrofanov of the LDPR told this correspondent that this party was only mentioned in REN-TV news programs and "sometimes in NTV's." Mitrofanov said his appearances in talk shows and entertainment programs were actually attempts "to break through this information blockade". Boris Nadezhdin, chairman of the Federal Political Council of the Union of Right Forces, also complains that he is compelled to stoop to "clownery" to get on the air. United Russia alone is smug. Valery Ryazansky, Deputy Secretary of the Presidium of the General Council, assured us that "there is no deliberate discrimination of other political parties" and "United Russia is only mentioned because its leaders are so active." ("They Edit Us Out All the Time" by Yevgenia Zubchenko, Novye Izvestia daily, July 24, 2007)

How political parties are covered by media in mid-October, after parliamentary campaign was officially announced - see "Phone-In to Every Leader! Party Bosses Demand Access to the Airwaves in Line with the Example of the No. 1 on the United Russia List" by Vladimir Razuvayev Jr., Nezavisimaya Gazeta, October 24, 2007.

The appointment on 22 August of Andrey Pisarev, adviser to the political department of United Russia's executive committee, as deputy director of state-owned Channel One in charge of overseeing election coverage is stirring objections from opposition parties. Opposition parties are protesting that Channel One cannot be objective. Media recalled a similar example from the 2003 Duma election when a new Channel One deputy director was named and used the channel to favor a party then preferred by the Kremlin. Pisarev has had especially close ties to the Russian Orthodox Church and nationalist circles and is characterized by some media as an "ideologue" for nationalists.

The daily Kommersant (22 August) had reported the appointment had been made upon the recommendation of Putin's staff (the Main Directorate for Domestic Politics of the presidential Administration).

In response to Kommersant questions, Channel One Director Konstantin Ernst said the appointment had been made a month ago and that "this was my personal initiative" and "no one forced anything" on him. He argued Pisarev has long worked with Channel One as producer of the Sunday "Vremya" news program. He explained Pisarev will coordinate election projects, political filming, and TV debates-- "that is, everything relating to the coming federal elections" (Kommersant.ru, 22 August). (United Russia PR Man Named To Head State TV Coverage of Election, Russia-- OSC [US Open Source Center] Report, August 28, 2007)

New electoral legislation explains how the media should cover the elections. Central Electoral Commission (CEC) member Igor Fedorov: "There are two important new regulations for the media. Firstly, candidates are forbidden to criticize their opponents on television. Secondly, media outlets will now face penalties for publishing any materials containing calls for extremist action." Parties also face the threat of punishments - up to and including disqualification. For media outlets, the ultimate penalty is license cancellation.

CEC member Maya Grishina: "We have to draw a distinction between defamation and criticism. Defamation is a crime, while criticism is forbidden only in individual speeches on television - other campaign materials may contain critical accounts of party activities. But if Party A criticizes Party B on television for failing to keep some promise, then Party A will be punished."

The law protects journalists as well as punishing them. Media workers covering the elections may not be fired during the campaign, or within a year after the campaign. (Will The Elections Turn Into A Media War by Natalia Antipova, Izvestia daily, August 30, 2007)

What is the official stand on media coverage of political parties?

Russia's chief election commissioner Vladimir Churov disagrees that only one party gets all attention in domestic mass media.The positions of major parties on television and radio are leveling off, he told foreign journalists on September 13.

"There are many large interviews with the leaders of opposition parties," Churov said.

"As for the Internet, there's complete freedom there, one does what he wants, and so do I," he said. (Ruling, Opposition Parties Get Equal Attention In Mass Media  Churov, Interfax news agency, September 13, 2007)

References: Various publications and reports by Russian media, political parties, polling agenices, NGOs, and experts.

See more it here: [ LINK ]; [ LINK ]; [ LINK ]; [ LINK ].

This picture is radically at odds with the results of joint research done by the Center for Extreme Journalism and a Slovakian public organization, MEMO 98, which specializes in press monitoring. In March-May 2006 they monitored five Russian television networks (Channel One, Rossiya, TV Center, NTV, and Ren-TV) and four newspapers (Rossiiskaya Gazeta daily, Parlamentskaya Gazeta daily, Kommersant daily, and Komsomolskaya Pravda daily).

The experts measured how much airtime and column space was given to various political topics, and assessed the nature of the coverage: positive, negative, or neutral. In the periods studied, most television channels didn't give the opposition any significant airtime, or any opportunities to dispute the political views of the authorities; the president, the government, and the United Russia party got over 91 percent of the time devoted to political news in prime-time news broadcasts on Channel One and the Rossiya channel; coverage of the president on three state-controlled television channels was exclusively positive or neutral.

There was more pluralism in the newspapers, but their audience is limited. Based on the data from the second monitoring period, it is apparent that these data are not the result of short-term anomalies, but appear to reflect genuine trends in Russian media. Note that Russia ranked 158th out of 194 countries in Freedom House's media freedom survey this year, and Reporters Without Borders ranked Russia 138th out of 167 countries last autumn. Of course, an opinion poll shouldn't be compared directly to press monitoring research. All the same, the pictures they paint are strikingly different.

Certain flaws in the VTsIOM poll are readily apparent, and may be perceived as distorting the picture. VTsIOM asked respondents to compare the media access opportunities available to parties - but political authority in Russia isn't party-based. Television broadcasts devote more time to the president and the government than they do to the United Russia party. An editorial called "The Taste of Porridge", published at Vedomosti daily (Moscow) on August 9, 2006, noted that "another point is sadder still. How can people who eat nothing but porridge be expected to answer questions about the fine points of French cuisine? Only two television networks broadcast across all of Russia: Channel One (ORT) and Rossiya (99.8 percent and 98.5 percent of Russian territory respectively).

The situation is the same for radio broadcasting: Radio Russia and Radio Mayak cover the most territory. It's mostly urban residents who get their political news from the Internet or newspapers. In other words, the only source of information for most citizens about possible restrictions on the opposition, or the quality of the opposition itself, are television broadcasts that don't mention the opposition or any restrictions on opposition activities. In fact, it's surprising that citizens are familiar with the word "opposition" at all. Thus, the respondents in the VTsIOM poll live in a restricted media environment."

References: VTsIOM poll: [ LINK ]; Joint research by the Center for Extreme Journalism and a Slovakian public organization, MEMO 98: [ LINK ]; [ LINK ].

According to Oleg Panfilov, director of the Russian Center for Extreme Journalism, the number of attacks on the media is huge - and most of those who put pressure on the media are state officials, who have no apprehensions about being penalized for doing so. In the Yeltsin era, only a few journalists faced criminal prosecution; but there have been about 50 cases a year since 2000. Moreover, Russia has denied visas to about 40 foreign journalists. "They wrote about what happened in Chechnya during the two wars. This is an act of revenge by the authorities," says Panfilov. (THE ONLY PLACE THAT'S MORE DANGEROUS IS IRAQ by Yevgenia Zubchenko, Novye Izvestia daily, January 24, 2007)

A Moscow journalist was sentenced to five years in prison Monday on charges of inciting ethnic hatred in reports about the conflict in Chechnya.

Human rights activists and lawyers said the sentence for Boris Stomakhin, editor of Radikalnaya Politika, a Moscow-based monthly newspaper, was unprecedented in its severity. Stomakhin, who also contributed opinion articles to the rebel Kavkaz Center Web site, frequently called the presence of federal troops in Chechnya an "occupation," and compared President Vladimir Putin to Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic. Moscow's Butyrsky District Court ruled that "Stomakhin approved of the terrorists' actions, which were aimed at destroying the Russian people as a race," Interfax reported.

In October 2006, Vladimir Rakhmankov, editor of the Web magazine Kursiv, was found guilty of insulting a public official and fined 20,000 rubles (US$750) for referring to President Vladimir Putin as "a phallic symbol."

Boris Timoshenko, head of the monitoring center at the Glasnost Protection Foundation, said he could not understand why the written word had inspired such a harsh prison sentence, while the authorities do not seem to respond similarly to racially motivated violence.

"We are seeing fewer and fewer journalists who can provide reliable and truthful reporting on Chechnya," said Nina Ognianova, the U.S.-based Committee to Protect Journalists program coordinator for Europe and Central Asia. (Editor Jailed for His Coverage of Chechnya by Maria Levitov, Moscow Times daily, November 21, 2006).

"Over the past five or six years, Russia has become the world leader in terms of the number of criminal cases opened against journalists, with over 50 such criminal cases annually, plus another 5,000-6,000 civil cases in which journalists are defendants," Oleg Panfilov, the head of the Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations told Interfax on August 2.

"As courts in Russia are controlled by bureaucrats, journalists will seek justice in Strasbourg, and the number of their complaints to the European Court of Human Rights will be growing," Panfilov said.

Panfilov welcomed a recent ruling by the Strasbourg Court, in which it acknowledged that three Russian journalists - Viktor Chemodurov, who was earlier found guilty of insulting Kursk Governor Alexander Rutskoi after several years of judicial hearings, and Viktor Dyuldin and Alexander Kislov, who were found guilty of insulting Penza authorities in their open letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin - were held liable unlawfully.

Elaborating on prosecutions of journalists in Russia, Panfilov also pointed out that earlier they had mainly been charged with libel, but "in the last half a year, journalists have been actively accused of extremism."

"This is exactly what we were afraid of when the legislation on countering extremism was being adopted," he said. (Russian Journalists Fated To Appeal To Strasbourg Court More Often - CJES Head, Interfax news agency, Aug 2, 2007)

Some cases of the police prosecution of the media go unnoticed by human rights activists and journalists. On December 5, 2006, police in Rybinsk, Yaroslavl Oblast, arrested antiwar journalist Andrey Novikov. He was charged on the basis of writings that he had not yet published (of "using mass media to publicly incite extremist activity" in violation of Article 280 of the Russian Criminal Code). Furthermore, officials and pro-government media insinuated Novikov was mentally ill, raising the specter of a return to Soviet-era practices against dissidents.

Russian media gave almost no coverage to Novikov's arrest. Even the Chechen rebel websites, as well as human rights websites that often cover such issues, devoted comparatively little attention to the case.

The Russian news agency Regnum, which covers regional developments, carried the first report on Novikov's arrest on 18 January. Regnum cited Yaroslavl Oblast prosecutor Yegor Timofeyev as saying the charges against Novikov were based on two e-mails he had sent to Chechenpress and to Yaroslavl Oblast's largest newspaper, Zolotoye Koltso.

Timofeyev said Novikov had expressed support for Chechen rebel leaders and "called for the bombing of Russian cities, including Rybinsk." Regnum reported that a court had remanded Novikov for psychiatric evaluation

The Russian media's scant attention to Novikov's arrest sharply contrasts with their intense focus on the murders of Kremlin critic and former FSB agent Aleksandr Litvinenko -- who, like Novikov, was a frequent writer for Chechenpress -- and of antiwar journalist Anna Politkovskaya. It may be that most Russian journalists are cowed by official pressure. Furthermore, perhaps only highly sensational events, like the high-profile killings of Litvinenko and Politkovskaya, can now draw media attention, while the arrest and prosecution of antiwar journalists for their writings are seen as unremarkable. Finally, Russian journalists may be unsympathetic to Novikov's extreme anti-Russian rhetoric or have doubts about his sanity. (Moscow Steps Up Repression Against Pro-Chechen Journalists, OSC [US Open Source Center] Analysis February 7, 2007)

Just ahead of election season, Russia's politicians change the laws so they can put more dissidents in prison. These days, when Kremlin officials talk about "extremists" they usually mean the political opposition, and The Other Russia coalition in particular.In late July President Vladimir Putin signed a series of amendments that his majority party, United Russia, claims are targeted against nationalists and those planning violence. But the political opposition warns that the new clauses will amount to a crackdown on freedom of expression.

Under the new legislation no fewer than 13 aspects of extremism will become offenses. They include "public slander of state officials," "hampering the lawful activity of state organizations," "humiliating national pride," and "hooliganism committed for political or ideological motives."

And the intelligence services will be allowed to tap the phones of anyone suspected of extremism. In most democracies it takes reasonable suspicion of plotting serious offenses like terrorism, murder, or kidnapping to justify phone bugging.

Russian journalists and editors have every reason to be concerned. It will take only a stroke of the pen to brand a media report critical of the Kremlin as "public slander of state officials." And those responsible will be at risk of up to three years in prison.

These loosely written and hastily adopted measures will make it much easier for the state to stifle its critics. And these clauses, with their vague wording, leave great scope for draconian interpretation. That could allow them to be used just as easily against peaceful democratic opposition groups as against real extremists who are ready to use violent means to gain their objectives.

The new clauses suggest the authorities are increasingly fearful of a wave of civil protests of the kind that brought thousands of people onto the streets in the spring. So those who take to the streets in the future, and those who distribute the leaflets calling on them to protest, can be harshly dealt with under the catch-all clauses passed against "extremism."

Those legal amendments take a big step backward into the Soviet past. What we are looking at is essentially a revival of the repressive laws of the communist era against such things as "anti-Soviet campaigning and propaganda" (Article 70 of the Soviet Criminal Code) and "distribution of information discrediting the Soviet regime" (Article 190).

("The Thugocracy Lands Another Punch" by Galina Stolyarova, a writer for The St. Petersburg Times, 16 August 2007, available at [ LINK ]) See more about it here: [ LINK ] and [ LINK ]; [ LINK ].

References: Glasnost Defense Foundation survey; Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations reports.

Alexei Simonov: In reality, practically all television stations in Russia are owned by either the federal government or municipal governments. Self-supporting media outlets do exist, of course, but even they are "part of the team."

Question: The statistics your Foundation has compiled indicate that journalists are being prosecuted less frequently now, but assaulted and murdered more frequently. Alexei Simonov: What counts, and what worries me, is that journalists now face criminal charges more often. (Nothing More Unhealthy For the Media Than Elections, an interview with Glasnost Defense Foundation Chairman Alexei Simonov by Alexander Kolesnichenko, Novye Izvestia daily, January 16, 2007)

One example of such prosecution is very illustrative. On October 22, a regional court of Saratov, a major city on Volga river, found guilty on the charge of libel Mr Vladimir Spiryagin, editor-in-chief of Saratovski Rasklad a local newspaper. He was accused of publishing on August 9, 2007 an article about Vyacheslav Volodin, Secretary General of Edinaya Rossiya party, and MP. The article claimed that Volodin allegedly wounded a local woman while hunting. The editor was sentenced to 180 hours of community service and made to pay a fine. (In Saratov an editor of a local newspaper was indicted for libel, Kommersant daily, October 22, 2007, available at [ LINK ])

A newspaper editor was put on trial in an Ufa court on charges of extremist activity for publishing two commentaries calling for the resignation of Bashkortostan's leader. Murtaza Rakhimov. Viktor Shmakov, editor of the Provintsialniye Vesti, faces up to five years in jail for publishing the articles that claimed corruption and human rights abuses in the region.

The articles were written by a local opposition leader, Airat Dilmukhametov, who also faces the same charge in the case. (For more information, see Editor on Trial in Extremism Case, The Moscow Times daily, March 20, 2007)

However, prosecution against journalists backfires sometimes [ LINK ] Al.Simonovs report is available here: [ LINK ]

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) released in October 2006 a report called "Deadly News" listing the world's most murderous countries for journalists in 1991-2006. Russia came in third, after Iraq and Algeria. "These are countries that were experiencing war, major conflicts. What's different about Russia is that there is no declaration of war in Russia itself, it is nominally at peace, and yet we've documented these 13 contract-style killings since Vladimir Putin took office. So that is a major indicator of the kind of press freedom climate that you find today in Russia."

Some of the journalists on the CPJ list of contract-killing victims were, like Politkovskaya, critical of government policy -- whether at a national or local level. Many others were covering corruption at the time of their deaths. And the further you get from the federal center, the more brazen the attacks on journalists become.

A Channel One television reporter said he was shot in the shoulder by an unidentified gunman outside his apartment building last week in an attack that might be linked to a book he is writing about the 1990s aluminum wars.

Andrei Kalitin, 37, said he was shot at around 9 p.m. on June 17, 2007 in the courtyard of a street in southern Moscow. The attacker fired a shingle shot with a gun equipped with a silencer, Kalitin told the Kommersant daily. He said the attacker's face was obscured by a baseball cap. See about it here: Journalist Writing Book on Metals Tells of Attack. The Moscow Times daily, June 18, 2007.

See a similar story: [ LINK ], and here: [ LINK ], and here: [ LINK ].

As a result, the USA has granted political asylum to two Russian journalists - Radio Liberty analyst Yuriy Bagrov and Regnum news agency chief editor Fatima Tlisova. Tlisova and Bagrov were persecuted by the authorities for their publications about the events in the North Caucasus, the International Committee to Protect Journalists in New York has said on July 2. The journalists told a news conference they had been threatened, persecuted by the FSB, which made their work in Russia impossible.

Human rights activists note that there are at least one hundred journalists in Russia who would have good reasons for fleeing the country. (Two Russian Journalists Find Political Asylum in US, Kommersant daily, July 2, 2007)

See also 'Journalism is my only weapon', The Guardian daily, June 26, 2007.

References: Glasnost Defense Foundation (Russia) survey; Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations reports. Al.Simonovs report is available here: [ LINK ]. "Russia: Two Journalists Die In Contract Killings A Year", a report by Claire Bigg, RFE/RL, October 10, 2006. A full list of journalists killed in Russia in 1991-2006 is included.

See also a story of a Russia access to information campaigner: [ LINK ].

Some of the journalists on the CPJ list of contract-killing victims were, like Anna Politkovskaya, critical of government policy -- whether at a national or local level. Many others were covering corruption at the time of their deaths. And the further you get from the federal center, the more brazen the attacks on journalists become.

The case of Anna Politkovskaya, a Novaya Gazeta journalist shot dead in October 2006, is the most prominent of them. Mr. Putin called her killing a crime of loathsome brutality. Then he went on.I think that journalists should be aware that her influence on political life was extremely insignificant in scale, Mr. Putin said, according to the news agency Interfax. She was known in journalist and human rights circles, but her influence on political life in Russia was minimal.

The International Federation of Journalists secretary-general, Aidan White, said at a news conference on Nov. 8, 2006 in Moscow that according to his information, since 1993, 211 journalists and other people connected to the media were murdered in Russia.

Ms. Politkovskaya became famous for her investigations of the war in Chechnya and its messy, bloody consequences across the Northern Caucasus. Her reports in Novaya Gazeta and in a book published in 2002 and called The Second Chechen War in Russian and A Small Corner of Hell: Dispatches from Chechnya in its English translation served like few others in Russia to challenge the official view of the conflict.But she had a minor presence in Russia's key media outlets, many of which -- particularly television -- are state-controlled.

A radical Russian party, the National Bolsheviks, alleged in the late October 2006 that the murder of Anna Politkovskaya was tied to her work on establishing an international tribunal on war crimes in Chechnya, and said top officials including President Vladimir Putin should be questioned in connection with the killing.

In an interview in the late October 2006 with Politkovskaya's newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, Russian rights activist Stanislav Dmitriyevsky said that he and Politkovskaya had started discussing a possible tribunal and that they had received the first funding. "We were preparing the juridical basis for this tribunal," he was quoted as saying.

Shortly after Politkovskaya's killing, a Russian court shut down Dmitriyevsky's non-governmental organization, the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society. The NGO had campaigned energetically against the government's crackdown on separatists in Chechnya and published reports alleging torture, abductions and killings of civilians by Russian forces and their pro-Moscow Chechen allies.

Prosecutors justified the demand for the group's closure under a new law that makes it illegal for an NGO to be headed by a person with a criminal record. Dmitriyevsky was convicted in February 2006 of inciting ethnic hatred and given a a two-year suspended sentence.

Russian Prosecutor-General Yury Chaika says foreign-based enemies of the Kremlin were behind the murder of Anna Politkovskaya. The crusading journalist's colleagues accuse Chaika of playing politics instead of solving the crimes.

Chaika announced on August 27, 2007 that 10 people had been arrested in connection with Politkovskaya's murder on October 7, 2006.

Among those accused of organizing and carrying out the killing are a Chechen crime boss, a Federal Security Service (FSB) officer, a police major, and three former police officers. "Novaya gazeta" has been conducting its own investigation into the murder. Sokolov says the paper's findings supports Chaika's allegations -- to a degree.

Chaika claims the masterminds behind Politkovskaya's assassination were living outside of Russia, and that the murder was part of a plot to discredit President Vladimir Putin and destabilize the country in the run-up to national elections. Sokolov noted that Chaika's comments nearly exactly echoed a statement made by Putin shortly after Politkovskaya's death. At the time, Putin claimed that "people who are hiding from Russian law enforcement have been hatching plans to sacrifice someone and create an anti-Russian wave in the world."

The prosecutor-general didn't name names when referring to the Kremlin's alleged foreign enemies, but he appeared to be referring to one person: Boris Berezovsky. According to Chaika, the murder of Politkovskaya could be related to two previous crimes of similar magnitude - the murders of Central Bank executive Andrei Kozlov last year and Forbes Russia editor Paul Khlebnikov in 2004. Chaika said the suspects belonged to a gang specializing in this sort of crime.

In its annual report, released in autumn 2006, the Committee to Protect Journalists called Russia "the third-deadliest country in the world for journalists over the past 15 years, behind only the conflict-ridden countries of Iraq and Algeria."

In a report released in March 2007, the Brussels-based International News Safety Institute says 88 people working for the media died violently in Russia since 1996, second only to Iraq. The Freedom House report, entitled Freedom of the Press 2007: A Global Survey of Media Independence released on May 1, lumped Russia between Azerbaijan and Brunei near the bottom of a list of 195 countries. The report stresses that the government of Russia is doing all it can to "made independent media outlets unavailable" and start controlling the Internet. Russia fell six places from last year to the 165th spot. It has the status of "not free."

The U.S. State Department said on May 2, 2007 Russia is among the seven worst offenders in terms of press freedom, along with Afghanistan, Venezuela, Pakistan, the Philippines, Egypt and Lebanon. (U.S. ranks Russia among seven least free countries for press, RIA Novosti news agency, May 2, 2007)

The U.S.-based Committee to Protect Journalists said in a report issued on May 2 that Russia had slipped badly over the past five years, earning it a spot on a list of 10 backsliders that also included Azerbaijan, Cuba, Pakistan, Egypt, Morocco, Thailand and a group of African countries. Russia ranked third worst, better than Ethiopia and Gambia but worse than the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The report said a key factor indicating a deterioration in Russian media freedom was a law that defines extremism as the "public slander toward figures fulfilling state duties," among other things. The amendments to the Law on Fighting Extremist Activity, which Putin then signed in July 2007, authorized up to three years imprisonment for journalists as well as the suspension or closure of their publications if they were convicted.

Fifty to 60 attacks were carried out against journalists in 2006, said Mikhail Melnikov, a researcher at the Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations. (3 Reports Criticize Media Freedom by Natalya Krainova, Moscow Times daily, May 3, 2007)

Eleven to 13 journalists are believed to have been murdered in Russia because of their work since 2000, the year President Vladimir Putin came to power.

In early March, Ivan Safronov, a reporter for the independent daily Kommersant who covered military affairs, fell four stories to his death from a window in his Moscow apartment building. Safronov had been questioned several times by the Federal Security Service in connection with his work but was never charged with anything, according to the Associated Press. Early police statements that suggest his death was a suicide have been rejected by Safronovs co-workers. Until now, investigators didnt find any connection between his death and his reports, and believe it was either a suicide or an incident.

"The fact that the journalists who were killed were almost exclusively critics of the Kremlin does not on its own make the Kremlin responsible," said Kirill Kabanov, chairman of the Russian Anti-Corruption Committee, a nongovernmental organization based in Moscow. "But the fact that investigations of these murders always stall and that nobody has been brought to justice shows either that the state is too weak to mount an uncompromised and transparent investigation or that it has a hand in the crimes."

Tatyana Protasenko, a senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said less than 10 percent of Russian journalists believe that the mass media in the country are powerful enough to force the authorities to respond.

Vladimir Osinsky, a senior lecturer in the journalism department of St. Petersburg State University, says a frequent complaint he hears from his former students is the lack of response to their work from those involved in decision-making.

"Stories on social issues, intended to help people, provoke no reaction from the authorities, thus making reporters feel worthless," Osinsky said. "The result is that journalists are trying to avoid writing about things they know should be changed but cannot help in changing. Compared to physical killings, it seems like a minor complaint hardly worth mentioning, but it makes so many strong and talented people depressed."

And official investigations into the deaths of journalists who challenge the state or the forces of law and order are surrounded by an extra layer of secrecy, say friends and relatives of victims. (Russia: One by One by Galina Stolyarova, a writer for The St. Petersburg Times, an English-language newspaper, Transitions Online, www.tol.cz, 12 March 2007)

In February-March 2007 alone three journalists have been killed in Russia, head of the monitoring service of the Glasnost Defense Foundation Boris Timoshenko told Interfax on April 9, 2007. He said that two journalists were killed in March (Ivan Safronov of the Kommersant daily, Moscow, and Leonid Etkind, the founder and editor- in-chief of the Career newspaper in Saratov). Another journalist (Vyacheslav Ifanov, a photographer with the New Television studio in Aleisk in the Altai territory) was killed in early April.

Timoshenko said that according to the Foundation's figures there were seven assaults against journalists in March, six criminal cases against journalists and media outlets were registered, and 21 instances of detention of journalists by police were recorded.

Journalists and media outlets faced 20 lawsuits totaling 24,470,000 rubles in March, as well, and six earlier lawsuits had been heard. Three of these suits were won by the plaintiffs, and 226,500 rubles had to be paid to them in compensation for moral damages.

The Foundation's Monitoring Service also said that March saw cases of denial of access to information, threats against journalists and media outlets, refusal to print (distribute) media, blackouts, and the shutting down of broadcasting operations. (Some 220 Journalists Died In Russia In The Last 15 Years - Right Campaigners, Interfax news agency, April 9, 2007)

According to Aleksey Simonov, president of the Glasnost Defense Foundation, in today's Russian society, journalists are completely defenseless, and in most cases the agencies try to write off the murders of journalists as domestic crimes. For example, according to the reports of the MVD [Ministry of Internal Affairs] for 2004-2006, Russia's clear-up rate with respect to serious and especially serious crimes is 50 per cent. As far as crimes committed against journalists were concerned, a total of only 90 proceedings were instituted with respect to more than 200 crimes. ((Moscow congress debates crimes against journalists by Madina Shavlokhova, Gazeta daily, 29 May, 2007)

References: "Russia: Two Journalists Die In Contract Killings A Year", a report by Claire Bigg, RFE/RL, October 10, 2006. A full list of journalists killed in Russia in 1991-2006 is included.

Al.Simonovs report is available here: [ LINK ].

Numerous publications in Novaya Gazeta three-weekly (Moscow), October 2006-September 2007. "In a Risky Place to Gather News, a Very Familiar Story", a report by STEVEN LEE MYERS, New York Times, October 11, 2006.

"Radical Russian party alleges Politkovskaya killing tied to her work toward tribunal on Chechnya", a report by JUDITH INGRAM, AP, October 31, 2006.

"International journalists' group to monitor Politkovskaya murder probe", Interfax news agency, November 8, 2006.

CHECHEN TRACE LED TO THE POLICE by Sergei Mashkin, Yuri Syun, Olga Allenova, Kommersant, August 28, 2007.

Death of a journalist that is potentially linked to his research on corruption: [ LINK ].