livius drusus
09-06-2004, 11:57 PM
I just read this Guardian article (http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,14173,1298488,00.html) on some really shady goings on in Russia. Not only are journalists critical of the government getting fired at a dizzying pace, but now one of them's been poisoned! There are no more independent TV stations
Politkovskaya, who writes for the current affairs magazine Novaya Gazeta, was on her way to the siege in Beslan from Moscow when she collapsed mysteriously.
According to the Moscow Times today, "Politkovskaya was flying from Vnukovo Airport to Rostov-on-Don and fainted on the plane. Immediately after landing, she was taken to a local hospital, where doctors found she had been poisoned, Novaya Gazeta editor Dmitry Muratov told the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists."
<snip>
The allegation that she was poisoned with the intention of preventing her from covering the Beslan siege comes as the Russian media has been hit by two other strange incidents - the sacking of the editor of Izvestia and the detention of another prominent journalist who was trying to cover the siege.
But wait, there's more:
In July, Savik Shuster, host of the highly rated Svoboda Slova (Free Speech) television programme was relieved of his duties less than a week after criticising politicians for refusing to debate new social legislation.
A month earlier Leonid Parfyonov, a well-known satirist, was taken off air for trying to broadcast an interview with the widow of the slain Chechen leader, Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev.
TV reporting, apparently, is less than vigorous:
Restrained and allegedly biased TV coverage of Friday's drama sparked an outcry in certain corners of the country's press, with some commentators - including Izvestia's Irina Petrovskaya - angry that Russia's three main channels hesitated to show live footage from the besieged school and then kept their reporting cautious and unquestioning.
As it turns out, there are no more fully independent TV stations in Russia, so it's either government-owned or BBC/CNN on cable.
The last fully independent channel, TVS, was shut down and replaced with a sports channel last year.
The reason given for the closure was the station's financial problems, but critics of the Kremlin pointed to its timing, a few months before the elections which saw Mr Putin given his second term as president.
It's yet another scary indication that capitalism and civic freedoms are entirely unrelated.
Politkovskaya, who writes for the current affairs magazine Novaya Gazeta, was on her way to the siege in Beslan from Moscow when she collapsed mysteriously.
According to the Moscow Times today, "Politkovskaya was flying from Vnukovo Airport to Rostov-on-Don and fainted on the plane. Immediately after landing, she was taken to a local hospital, where doctors found she had been poisoned, Novaya Gazeta editor Dmitry Muratov told the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists."
<snip>
The allegation that she was poisoned with the intention of preventing her from covering the Beslan siege comes as the Russian media has been hit by two other strange incidents - the sacking of the editor of Izvestia and the detention of another prominent journalist who was trying to cover the siege.
But wait, there's more:
In July, Savik Shuster, host of the highly rated Svoboda Slova (Free Speech) television programme was relieved of his duties less than a week after criticising politicians for refusing to debate new social legislation.
A month earlier Leonid Parfyonov, a well-known satirist, was taken off air for trying to broadcast an interview with the widow of the slain Chechen leader, Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev.
TV reporting, apparently, is less than vigorous:
Restrained and allegedly biased TV coverage of Friday's drama sparked an outcry in certain corners of the country's press, with some commentators - including Izvestia's Irina Petrovskaya - angry that Russia's three main channels hesitated to show live footage from the besieged school and then kept their reporting cautious and unquestioning.
As it turns out, there are no more fully independent TV stations in Russia, so it's either government-owned or BBC/CNN on cable.
The last fully independent channel, TVS, was shut down and replaced with a sports channel last year.
The reason given for the closure was the station's financial problems, but critics of the Kremlin pointed to its timing, a few months before the elections which saw Mr Putin given his second term as president.
It's yet another scary indication that capitalism and civic freedoms are entirely unrelated.