Russia's Media Freedoms Under Attack

by Elisa Marincola

(IPS) -- Twenty years after former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev began his process of economic restructuring called perestroika, media freedom in Russia is under attack again from the Kremlin, watchdogs say.

Glasnost (openness in media and publishing), one of the main tools of perestroika, is getting clouded again, speakers said at a conference '1985-2005: Twenty Years That Changed the World' held in Turin in Italy over the weekend. The conference was organized by the World Political Forum founded by Gorbachev to promote the perestroika principles.

The new concerns were raised as the U.S.-based watchdog Freedom House downgraded Russia from 'partly free' to 'not free' in its Freedom in the World Survey 2005.

"Russia's step backwards into the Not Free category is the culmination of a growing trend under President Vladimir Putin to concentrate political authority, harass and intimidate the media, and politicize the country's law-enforcement system," the conservative Freedom House said in a release.

"My personal opinion is that 20 years after Gorbachev's glasnost and perestroika, Russia is moving closer to the state of its press in 1986," Barbara Assenova, Freedom House senior program manager told IPS.

In January this year the Russia-based Glasnost Defense Foundation (GDF) recorded a series of attacks on the media, including censorship, closing down of radio and television stations, violation of journalists' rights and denial of access to information. But this has still not led to significant protests from Russia people.

"We cannot say there is no freedom of speech or of media," Galina Ackerman, Radio France Internationale journalist and author of a report on the nuclear incident in Chernobyl told IPS. The Kremlin controls television stations but there are independent newspapers such as Novaya Gazeta, or radio stations like the Echo of Moscow -- and the journalists there have not been imprisoned, she said. The problem is that journalists "prefer to censor themselves."

GDF president Aleksei Simonov said some of the media is independent but not neutral. "The problem is just the lack of neutral press," he told IPS. "Nobody, neither political nor financial groups, support a neutral press."

In the District of Karelia, 17 of the 30 district and municipal newspapers receive federal subsidies, Simonov said. "Non-governmental district media outlets are very rare; they have survived either due to local companies' desire to have 'alternative' newspapers at hand, or else due to these newspapers' involvement in party or political activities." As a rule, the managers of such companies are political figures, he said.

In Kaliningrad province legislation giving right to information about state procedures came into force three years ago; but only six people have invoked the legislation, Simonov said.

Alexander Yakovlev, a close aide of Gorbachev for a while and a leading architect of glasnost and perestroika who is now president of the Russian International Democracy Foundation, said the present modernization of Russia follows an authoritarian model. The government can easily close any media, but prefers to act through journalists who report information provided by official sources.

As a result, people do not trust Russian media any more, Yakovlev told IPS. They prefer foreign satellite television stations, and English-speaking youths turn to U.S. or European news websites.

Ackerman sees historical reasons for this lack of free media. Former Stalinist ways were never quite removed, she said. "Those who fight for freedom of expression, human rights and for the rights of Chechens are a minority."

In a survey organized by freedom activist Mihail Gorshkov -- 'Perestroika as Seen by the Russian: Perspectives 20 Years Later' -- the majority of Russians see only "low standards of living, the protracted economic crisis, and the inability of officials to address the urgent needs of the country."

"In Russia democracy is what allows people first of all to achieve individual well-being, then to carry out social justice, and finally to keep law and order," Gorshkov said at the meeting.

Few people who have seen their living standards decline sharply since the overthrow of communism worry about freedom for a self-censored media, he added.