Teaching Comparative

More government control in Russia

From the New York Times

Kremlin Curtails U.S.-Financed Radio Broadcasts to Russians

"MOSCOW, July 7 — American-financed radio news broadcasts to Russia, a staple of the American government's outreach efforts since the cold war, have been sharply curtailed in recent months under legal pressure from the Russian government, according to Russian and American officials.

"The pressure has knocked programs off the air in much of the country...

"The suppression of the Western-financed news, which began last year weeks after a journalist for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty infuriated the Kremlin by interviewing Shamil Basayev, the Chechen rebel leader, has been indirect but highly effective, officials said.

"Rather than confront the news services' operations directly, regulators from the Culture Ministry have audited the services' partners across the nation... The audits found that the stations had not complied with provisions of Russian media law requiring them to submit and adhere to "concepts of programming" that delineate how much air time will include material they produce themselves and how much will come from external sources...

"Regulators warned the Russian stations that they would risk losing their licenses if they continued to broadcast the material provided by the American news services. As a result, one station after another has dropped the programming.

"The crackdown, first reported by The Washington Post, has followed Kremlin efforts since President Valdimir V. Putin came to office in 2000 to control or restrict independent journalism in Russia, especially on the airwaves. Television stations fell under the Kremlin's sway and now principally act as instruments of the state..."

The Guardian (UK) reports on the same topic, noting that,

"The news is an awkward reminder of the administration's crackdown on the media and comes days before Mr Putin hosts his G8 colleagues for a summit in St Petersburg. The US and the EU have criticised the lengthy media crackdown in Russia...

"Civil society advocates say such bureaucratic regulations are designed to give officials scope to close organisations that are politically inconvenient.

"The restriction removes a dissenting voice in the Russian media that millions have tuned in to for an alternative point of view since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991."

Russia forces US-funded radio services off the air

posted by Ken Wedding @ 9:50 AM