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Russian Journalists Quit Over Censorship

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Mon May 21, 2007 01:52 PM
from the rebels-with-a-cause dept.
Censorship The Media
A state-controlled broadcast center in Russia has just seen the result of censorship restrictions imposed by the Kremlin. In a rare show of protest a group of journalists all resigned stating that they could no longer work under the harsh restrictions imposed by the state. "Artyom Khan, one of the reporters who resigned, said restrictions were introduced when new management was imported last month from Channel One, the state television station that documents Mr Putin's every move."
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[+] Kremlin Seeks to Control Online Media 220 comments
reporter writes "According to a disturbing report just published by Bloomberg, 'As the Kremlin gears up for the election of Putin's successor next March, Soviet-style controls are being extended to online news after a presidential decree last month set up a new agency to supervise both mass media and the Web.' However, unless the Kremlin pursues Chinese-style/Turkish-style blocking of the Internet-Protocol addresses of web sites like 'The Economist', even the Kremlin cannot control the online media. If Putin pulled the plug on an anti-Putin web site inside Russia, the anti-Putin web site could simply be migrated offshore to a server in, say, the United States."
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  • Well, (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It's a nice gesture, but the poor guy has a long road ahead of him.
    • In Soviet Russia, nice gesture=waaaaaaay better than a syringe full of polonium.
    • The "International Herald Tribune" has just published a report [iht.com] summarizing the state of independent journalism in Russia. The Kremlin is trying to seize the offices of the Russian Union of Journalists, which is the largest organization of independent journalists. Meanwhile, the Russian government uses its satellites to transmit "Russia Today", a government-funded pro-Kremlin program, to audiences in foreign countries like the USA and Germany. Also, Vladimir Putin has ordered the Russian News Service (RNS) t

  • Next up, Channel One Exposes Number Two... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by xxxJonBoyxxx (565205) on Monday May 21 2007, @01:58PM (#19211707)

    Channel One, the state television station that documents Mr Putin's every move...


    Czar Putin, you sure that's a good idea?

    "Next up, Channel One Exposes Number Two..."

  • To Putin (Score:3, Funny)

    by roman_mir (125474) on Monday May 21 2007, @01:59PM (#19211715) Homepage
    I've done far worse than kill you. I've hurt you. And I wish to go on hurting you. I shall leave you as you left me, as you left her: marooned for all eternity in the center of a dead planet, buried alive. Buried alive.

  • In Soviet Russia ... (Score:5, Funny)

    by PPH (736903) on Monday May 21 2007, @02:00PM (#19211719)
    ... Kremlin mods YOU down!
  • Whats a few surveillance cameras when poor Putin has a camera crew following him everywhere!!

  • right.. (Score:4, Funny)

    by mastershake_phd (1050150) on Monday May 21 2007, @02:01PM (#19211735) Homepage
    the state television station that documents Mr Putin's every move.
     
    If you were trying to run an oppressive state, why would you want your every move documented?

    • Re:right.. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Timesprout (579035) on Monday May 21 2007, @02:05PM (#19211779)
      Because he is trying to build up a personality cult. It would appear Mr Putin has deigns on power greater than the Russian Presidency.

      • No number of liberal bloggers ranting puts a bullet through the brain of a neocon!


        I didn't realize liberals believed in the right to bear arms.

        *ducks*

              • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

                by Khaed (544779)
                You've obviously never heard of Senator Diane Fienstien, who said she would take every gun from Americans if she could.

                Or the ridiculous Assault Weapons Ban, passed by a Democrat controlled congress and signed by Bill Clinton. A law that banned guns on cosmetic features and made a minimum impact on crime; most weapons used in crimes are not "assault" weapons (which are NOT machine guns -- fully automatic guns require a license and a yearly tax), they're stolen or otherwise illegally gotten pistols. When the
  • Too bad they don't have a writer's guild. They could regulate the censored censorship to regulate the censorship of Putin's Censorship.

    OR they could just get a job at the Washington Post for a few weeks before it falls apart.

  • Cold War, take... Two? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by u-bend (1095729) on Monday May 21 2007, @02:03PM (#19211751) Homepage Journal
    You know, there are probably a lot of frustrated Washington bureaucrats and military types that would love to see a re-emergence of a Soviet Russian state--we'd be fighting real commies again, and not elusive and often invisible terrorists. And the wiretapping infrastructure is there to catch the red sympathizers at home now! Ah, Russia, how your people are always out of one pan and into another fire.
    • Actually, I get the impression that at least some in Washington prefer an elusive and often invisible enemy. This way, it's a lot easier to just make shit up.

    • You know, there are probably a lot of frustrated Washington bureaucrats and military types that would love to see a re-emergence of a Soviet Russian state--we'd be fighting real commies again, and not elusive and often invisible terrorists.


      That's what Iraq was at least partially about. Saddam Hussein was a very visible public figure -- it gave the folks back at home something to 'rally around.' With the War on Terror we're now back to shadow fighting enemies that we know very little about who sneak around blowing up stuff and killing troops. Does this last description sound familiar? It should if you know anything about the Vietnam War.

      If there's a big boogieman out there, we need to build weapons and tanks and planes and spend big bucks doing it. But the public rarely rallies behind a cause that looks confusing and hopeless... the American public likes the classic "the good guys (U.S.)" vs "the bad guys (Russia, Saddam, Ax1s of da 3v1l, etc.)", not us vs. some tactics.

    • Wrong, we'd be fighting both. Namely elusive, invisible terrorists possibly funded and probably armed by the kremlin. We'd be moving towards all out war with Russia while trying to continue our game of whack-a-mole with the terrorists. More likely, the millitary would not be happy with a revived Soviet opposition, it would be too much. Though the traditional Soviet enemy was easier to deal with, and would be preferable, we can't have both at the same time. Too expensive.
      • Perhaps poor wording on my part. My statement was a whimsical "what-if" which was inspired by a mental image of mostly older, mostly white guys in Washington mopping their brows and having private moments of nostalgia for the cold war days (especially the later ones). Sure, people died in the 80s (google Maj Nicholson), and Vietnam was a disaster, but we largely felt good about ourselves as the champions of freedom, democracy and capitalism. Now, while still ostensibly standing for those things, we're havin
      • The Kremlin has never funded terrorists and the documents the neocons used to claim those things were in fact so-called "Black Propaganda" released by the CIA to dissuade neutrals from the USSR by associating them with terrorists. And of course, Islamic terrorism has always been a joke given that we've had only two attacks in the past two decades whereas white supremacists and anti-choicers* have made made over 32 attacks in 2007 alone.

        *You lose the right to be called pro-"life" when you try to take the
    • if anything, europe is way more agitated than the usa. this is because the eu expanded into old soviet bloc countries and a russian awakening from its post cold war hangover is feeling rather nationalistic about it's old sphere of influence. witness the latest conflagration in estonia over just a world war ii statue of a russian soldier being moved

      plus the recent summit in samara resulted in nothing but serious discord [spiegel.de]

      so russia and europe are seriously butting heads right now, but the usa? not so much

      the cold war was characterized by an ideology which directly threatened the usa. communism was dead set on taking over the world. so it was a real global struggle. now, russia is just a garden variety autocracy. if russia went into chile or peru or bolivia in the cold war, the usa would get agitated: communism spreading. but russia could go over now and give tanks and kalishnikovs to these countries and it would be no big deal: there is no ideological oomph behind the gesture, no real threat in terms of ideas. communism has died, lost its lustre, no one seriously believes in it anymore

      and today? today we have islamic fundamentalists who are dead set on putting large swaths of the world under sharia law. and the meddling usa is a prime enemy of that effort, so it will be targetted big time. in some ways this new world is less dangerous, because massive world war of huge armies and scary war machinery won't be unleashed at the slightest gaffe or bravado. but in other ways, the threat of fundamentalist terrorism is more dangerous, since if someone sets a nuke off in times square, there is no clear line of accountability. if russia nuked times square, red square would cease to exist too. if times square gets nuked today, who can you blame?

  • Not too different from MSNBC (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Vicarius (1093097) on Monday May 21 2007, @02:04PM (#19211759)
    Not saying there is no censorship in Russian media, but why can't "state controlled" network can't impose its own agenda like many other media companies do?

    IMHO, if you want an objective news coverage, you have to look at the Internet, where an open uncensored discussion is possible.

    • Re:Not too different from MSNBC (Score:5, Funny)

      by Bearpaw (13080) on Monday May 21 2007, @02:19PM (#19211969)

      IMHO, if you want an objective news coverage, you have to look at the Internet, where an open uncensored discussion is possible.
      This must be some usage of the word "objective" with which I am not yet familiar.

      ("Less corporate-dominated", I'd agree. But "objective" ...?)

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by clarkkent09 (1104833)
      Not sure I understand what "state controlled" means here. Is it financed by the state i.e. from the taxes? From what I can tell from wikipedia, Channel One is a privately owned company, no?

      It does make all the difference. A public TV station should not use taxpayers money to promote a particular party or a politician. A private company can do whatever it wants.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by turing_m (1030530)
      "Not saying there is no censorship in Russian media, but why can't "state controlled" network can't impose its own agenda like many other media companies do?"

      It's a good question, but to answer it you need learn to read between the lines. You have to understand that a monopoly of influence is "good" when one group of people wield it, and "bad" when another group of people wield it.

      Putin is "bad" because he dispossessed several oligarchs of their ill-gotten wealth. If he were "good", Putin would allow so-cal

  • Actually, this is good news (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Control Group (105494) * on Monday May 21 2007, @02:08PM (#19211825) Homepage
    It speaks well of the net progress in the ex-USSR from the mid-eighties to now that a) these journalists weren't shot/sent to Lefortovo and shot/sent to cut down trees in Siberia until they didn't need to be shot, and b) that the rest of the world has heard about it.

    On the time scale of massive societal shifts, things are still looking up. Backsliding, certainly, but it's still a far cry from the heyday of Soviet control.

    • It speaks well of the net progress in the ex-USSR from the mid-eighties to now that a) these journalists weren't shot/sent to Lefortovo and shot/sent to cut down trees in Siberia until they didn't need to be shot, and b) that the rest of the world has heard about it.

      It's certainly an improvement from the days when they would have been shot and then sent to cut down trees in Siberia. Honest mistake and all, but that was one hell of a cold winter for everyone in the city.

    • Re:Actually, this is good news (Score:4, Insightful)

      by flyingsquid (813711) on Monday May 21 2007, @03:34PM (#19212891)
      It speaks well of the net progress in the ex-USSR from the mid-eighties to now that a) these journalists weren't shot/sent to Lefortovo and shot/sent to cut down trees in Siberia until they didn't need to be shot, and b) that the rest of the world has heard about it. On the time scale of massive societal shifts, things are still looking up. Backsliding, certainly, but it's still a far cry from the heyday of Soviet control.

      Tell that to Anna Politkovskaya and Paul Klebnikov, or the other Russian journalists who have been assassinated in recent years. Trying to read this as somehow being good news sounds disturbingly like the Neocon concept that democracy is somehow the long-term natural outcome of the human history, Bush's "people want to be free" theory. That idea is misguided as best, and as Iraq shows, dangerously unrealistic at worst. Western democracy is no more the natural outcome for a group of people than a house is the natural outcome for a pile of plywood, nails, and two-by-fours. Like making a house, democracy takes a lot of hard work and design, and continual upkeep. The developments in Russia- along with Russia's efforts to spread fear with its polonium assassinaton, and poisoning Ukraining politician Viktor Yushchenko with dioxin- suggest a deep, broad move towards totalitarianism. The odds of Russia emerging with a free society are good, but the outcome is not certain. It is too soon to pat ourselves on the back.

      Consider that the emergence of western-style democracies with individual rights and accountable heads of state is a recent development, something that has only become fully developed in the past few hundred years. Meanwhile, China has been ruled by totalitarianism of one form or another for thousands of years. So, looking at the big picture, isn't the sure money on totalitarianism to eventually take over the world, not democracy? Sure, the spread and success of democracy has been a remarkable success story... but for a while, it looked like Communism might well be the system to take over the world, and then that fell apart almost overnight. How can we be so certain that democracy won't be a similar historical anomaly? Remember how certain people were that democracy would take root in Iraq, and beat out the forces of the Baathists, radical Islamists, militias and criminals? Every time something went wrong, instead of looking at the possibility we were failing, we patted ourselves on the back and said, "Yes, but look at the big picture! It's so much better than it was under Saddam!". Democracy still may win in Iraq, but our arrogance and complacency, our certainty that it would win out over the forces of totalitarianism, religious extremism, and anarchy, have vastly reduced the chances that it will.

      Don't read this the wrong way. I actually agree with the Neocons on one issue: democracies should promote democracy outside their borders. But I think we need to understand that while this fight may be winnable, fighting for freedom is a hard, uphill fight, and that we are not necessarily destined to win the fight.

  • Too bad... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DoofusOfDeath (636671) on Monday May 21 2007, @02:16PM (#19211917)
    Too bad that their resignations will somehow fail to appear on the evening news programs. That kind of limits (but doesn't totally erase, I suspect) the impact of their protests.

  • Russia is well on its way (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Sciros (986030) on Monday May 21 2007, @02:17PM (#19211931) Journal
    back to Soviet times. But this time with a healthy mix of organized crime and even more corruption!

    In a couple more years it might get to the point where being outspoken like this journalist will get you a one-way-ticket to the far East >_>

  • FTA (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Cancer_Cures (1000619) on Monday May 21 2007, @02:18PM (#19211959)
    Eight reporters from the Russian News Service said they could not work under new rules that required them not to interview or mention opposition leaders such as Garry Kasparov and to ensure 50% coverage of "positive news". Kinda like how the U.S. main stream media does not mention Dennis Kucinich or Ron Paul.

    • mainstream media (Score:5, Funny)

      by Bearpaw (13080) on Monday May 21 2007, @02:25PM (#19212023)

      Kinda like how the U.S. main stream media does not mention Dennis Kucinich or Ron Paul.
      Corporate media focuses on serious candidates, which are easily distinguished from non-serious candidates because ... um ... because if Kucinich or Paul were serious candidates, they'd be getting more media coverage.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Kinda like how the U.S. main stream media does not mention Dennis Kucinich or Ron Paul.
      Ron Paul was in the national spotlight last week and made an Ass out of himself.

      Dennis Kucinich, was in all the Democratic primary debates back in 2004 amd made Howard Dean look like a moderate.

      Just because the left and right nutjobs don't get to see thier candidates taken seriously in the media does not make it censorship. It makes your candidate a nutjob. Media companies are not going to waste time and effort on anyon
  • Congratulations Comrades! You and your journalist friends have just been selected for a trip to Political Re-education Camp! You'll spend 6 years and 6 months enjoying our fabulous new facilities located in sunny Siberia. You'll enjoy a rigorous exercise routine designed exclusively for our attendees by our award winning staff of high ranking former KGB officials! You'll marvel at our state of the art housing facilities with all the amenities you've come to know and love, such things as fresh running wa

  • The good news... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TrappedByMyself (861094) on Monday May 21 2007, @02:32PM (#19212101)
    ...is that we know about this story. The journalists didn't disappear into the night before they could be heard. It may not seem like it, but it is progress.
    • Help me take back Slashdot. When did 'News for Nerds' become 'FUD and Conspiracy Theories for Extremist Nutjobs'?

      Good question. I'd guess sometime between users number 105495 and 861095.

      I kid, of course.
  • Someone has to do it...

    "Khaaaaaaaaan!!"

  • can at least follow russians' suit? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by superwiz (655733) on Monday May 21 2007, @02:48PM (#19212305) Journal
    How many journalists quit in post-911 self-imposed editor censorship? Is this what the world has come to? Russian journalists have more ethics than ours?

  • LA Times front page today (Score:4, Insightful)

    by sjw02001 (820841) on Monday May 21 2007, @03:02PM (#19212527)
    http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-f g-gazeta21may21,1,1616926,full.story?coll=la-headl ines-world&ctrack=3&cset=true/ [latimes.com]
    For those who don't RTFA, this basically says there is one independent newspaper which publishes 3 times a week, is funded mostly by Gorbachev and another prominent politician, incurs huge losses, and has had mysterious accidents including death happen to several reporters. Any political scientist can tell you that this is not a sign of a healthy free press, and without a healthy free press democracy suffers due to lack of good information. Basically, the West has been worried about Putin and his backsliding into authoritarianism for quite some time but hasn't had the balls to do much about it. Yes, there is the internet, but you assume that a) everyone in Russia who wants to can get their news from the net, which is not true for many poor elderly folks, and b) those who might be politically savvy are tech savvy enough to find the independent sources on the net. If you lived through Soviet times, you'd be skittish about seeking out politically sensitive info if you had any sense.
    In other words, this is a big deal.

  • This is progress! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by $criptah (467422) on Monday May 21 2007, @04:33PM (#19213677) Homepage

    Khrushchev and Kennedy are talking about freedom of expression. Kennedy says, "In United States, anybody can come out and scream 'Kennedy sucks!' Nothing will happen to that person because we have freedom of expression in the United States." Khrushchev smiles and says, "So what? If a person goes to the Red Square and shouts 'Kennedy sucks!' nothing will happen to that person too!"

    We have a bunch of folks who resigned because of the censorship. That is awesome! At least they did not up in Siberia like my ancestors. I bet writing a letter and saying "I do not work here anymore." was easier than living on a bread-and-water-and-beatings diet in prison. I am not going to engage into a debate on us-vs-them because every governmentt in the world has a dark side.

    In the past, way too many Russian journalists died under interesting circumstances. These guys are alive, so the country is heading somewhere when compared to its neighbor, Belarus.

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