Is this the current view of freedom of the press?Is this the current view of freedom of the press?
By Francesca Mereu / Special to The Russia Journal
From virtually the moment President Vladimir Putin was installed as Russia's president, Western observers have been debating whether he is a reformer applying tough methods to reach a democratic goal, or a sinister figure bent on returning the country to a new kind of authoritarian regime.
Whatever the truth, Putin's period in the Kremlin has raised serious concerns about the future of independent media coverage of events in Russia.
The Chechen war
Journalists are required to have accreditation to work in Chechnya, and the information Russians receive from the war through the news is mostly confined to the official line. Journalists who have tried to cover the war independently have been subjected to serious government intimidation.
The highest profile case is that of Andrei Babitsky, the Radio Liberty correspondent who was first detained by the Russian military in Chechnya, and then later swapped for Russian soldiers held captive by Chechen fighters. In this instance, Russia clearly violated international war protocols. Protocol I to the Geneva Convention (Article 79), to which Russia is a signatory, states: "Journalists engaged in dangerous professional missions in areas of armed conflict shall be considered as civilians ... [and] they shall be protected as such. ..."
In May, police commandos raided the offices of the Media-MOST group, which runs the private NTV channel. A month later, Media-MOST owner Vladimir Gusinsky was arrested on fraud charges and briefly jailed. Gusinsky's media has been critical of the war in Chechnya and skeptical of Putin's democratic credentials.
In September, Russian military forces detained Ruslan M˙˙˙˙yev, a Chechen cameraman working for the Associated Press, on the grounds that he was not registered as a resident of Grozny. He was released the following day – after being beaten by Russian soldiers.
"Since the beginning of the conflict in October 1999, about 10 foreign journalists have been stopped and interrogated by the Russian secret services and forced to leave the combat zones," according to the Reporters Without Borders group, an international media watchdog. "Since 1997, at least 14 representatives of the press have died in the North Caucasus, considered to be one of the most dangerous regions for journalists."
Corruption
Journalists covering corruption have also fallen into Putin's clutches. In January, police raided the apartment of Alexander Khinshtein – a reporter with the capital’s daily Moskovsky Komsomolets – armed with a warrant to spirit him to a clinic for psychiatric examination. Khinshtein, at that time, was investigating Interior Minister Vladimir Rushailo's alleged illegal activities, and had also charged that tycoon Boris Berezovsky was providing money for Chechen warlords.
In May, Igor Dominkov, a journalist with Novaya Gazeta, was attacked by an unknown person and died a month later from his injuries. The paper's editor, Dmitry Muratov, is quite sure that Dominkov, who covered social and cultural issues, was mistaken for investigative reporter Oleg Sultanov, who had published several articles on corruption, and lives in the same building.
Regional media
The regional media are more restricted than Moscow-based outlets, and it is estimated that 80 percent of regional media are under the control of the local authorities.
In July, Irina Grebneva, the editor of the weekly Arsenyevskye Vesti, was jailed in Vladivostok on charges of "petty hooliganism," after publishing the transcript of a phone conversation involving Primorye officials, including Gov. Yevgeny Nazdratenko. Grebneva was sentenced to a five-day imprisonment and denied the right of appeal. Arsenyevskiye Vesti has been one of the few regional media outlets to criticize Nazdratenko and his allies.
Democratic survival
In spite of all this, Putin, in his remarkable statement of July 8 to the Russian parliament, said: "Censorship and interference in the activities of the media are prohibited by law. ... Without a truly free media, Russian democracy will not survive."
But, just over a month later, Putin broke his own word, again displaying his ambivalence to the free press, when he heavily criticized media coverage of the Kursk tragedy, saying the reporting was aimed to enhance the political fortunes of media owners.
The most recent digest report published by the Glasnost Defense Foundation, a media advocacy organization, provided a good explanation of the ambiguity between the president's deeds and his speech to parliament: "Putin repeated several times the sentence that it is impossible to build a democracy without a free press. But it is possible that the president meant: If without independent media there will be no democracy, let's destroy it so democracy will die."
According to the Glasnost report, the presidential administration organized a special department to take active measures against the independent media. "It is possible that, with this new project, journalists will be shadowed and their phones will be monitored. It is also possible that there will be a kind of psychological pressure [over journalists]," the report said.
Western worries
International watchdog organizations are also very worried about the situation in relation to freedom of the press in Russia.
The International Press Institute (IPI), a global network of editors and journalists, has placed Russia on its "IPI watch list," a twice-yearly compilation of countries, and charged that Russia appears to be moving toward a greater suppression and restriction of press freedom. Putin was informed of the decision by letter.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (New York), the International Federation of Journalists (Brussels), the International Federation of Periodical Press (London), the International Press Institute (Vienna) and the World Press Freedom Committee (Washington) are also alarmed about the intensifying threats against press freedom in Russia, and have also written to Putin.
Echo Moscow Radio reported that the Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly (PACE), is also concerned about the media situation in the country, assigning two of its committees to prepare reports on press freedom in Russia. PACE specifically mentioned the Babitsky case, the lack of journalists' rights in Chechnya, the Media-MOST situation and the Gusinsky arrest. In particular, PACE condemned the lack of a clear position from the Russian authorities on all these cases.
In the short time Putin has been in office, the media situation in the country has deteriorated dramatically. According to a report by the Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations, a watchdog organization of the Russian Union of Journalists, in the first six months of 2000 some 108 cases of censorship and pressure over the media took place. In comparison, in the whole of 1999 there were 157 cases, while in 1998 there were 126.
(E-mail Media Watch at media@russiajournal.com).
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