*Novye Izvestia*
No 17
February 5, 2008
*TRAGIC COUNT*
Author: Yevgenia Zubchenko
*COMMITTEE TO PROTECT JOURNALISTS IS CRITICAL OF THE STATE OF AFFAIRS WITH FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION IN RUSSIA*
Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) presented its latest report titled Attacks On The Media (2007). At least 65 journalists were murdered worldwide in the line of duty, almost half of them in Iraq. The state of affairs with freedom of expression in Russia was castigated as unacceptable.
CPJ, an international non-governmental organization with headquarters in New York, has been drafting these reports for years. Authors of the latest indicate that 2007 became the worst year since 1994 when 66 journalists had been killed. Iraq is branded in the document as “a slaughterhouse for the press”: over 170 journalists and technicians of media outlets perished in this country since March 2003. China on the other hand is the leader in the number of imprisoned journalists (29 editors and journalists). According to CPJ, 127 journalists were imprisoned throughout the world by December 1, 2007.
Authors of the report analyze the situation in Russia and point out that the recent parliamentary campaign included “certain events disturbing for the media and civil society.” CPJ experts are convinced that media outlets and non-governmental organizations in Russia with the temerity to criticize the regime are put under pressure or closed altogether. “The Russian authorities made use of the charges of extremism and bureaucratic means of punishment,” the report stated. Still, the authors did comment on “certain progress” made in investigation of assassinations of Igor Domnikov, Yuri Schekochikhin, and Anna Politkovskaya (all of them Novaya Gazeta journalists).
CPJ analysts also commented on the new trends in the relations between the powers-that-be and the media. “Regional authorities used fabricated charged in connection copyright violations or the use of piratical software to shut down independent or oppositionist media outlets on the eve of elections,” experts said. The report made a reference to Sergei Kurt-Adjiyev, Novaya Gazeta (Samara) editor charged with the use of unlicensed software.
As for assassinations, the CPJ report only mentions the death of Ivan Safronov, military observer of Kommersant. According to the Glasnost Protection Foundation in the meantime, 8 journalists including Safronov perished in Russia in 2007. “They mostly concentrate on whatever deaths foment scandals or whatever, while a great deal of journalists killed in the provinces are never even mentioned,” Glasnost Protection Foundation President Aleksei Simonov said. On the other hand, data always differ depending on the criteria used by the compiling organization. Reporters Without Frontiers, for example, claims that 86 journalists were killed in 2007 while the International Journalistic Organization compiled a list of 100 (but this structure does not differentiate between journalists and their assistants).
In any event, specialists tend to agree with CPJ’s conclusions on the state of affairs with freedom of expression in Russia. “They say true,” Igor Yakovenko, General Secretary of the Russian Journalistic Union, said. “Most media outlets accepted the rules of the game forced on them by the authorities. By and large, there is nobody left to apply pressure to.” “Most journalists are trying to revert to the double-think practiced in the Soviet Union,” Yakovenko said.
Simonov agrees that journalists in Russia gave in. “Freedom of expression exists only in several newspapers, one radio broadcaster, and one program on REN-TV channel,” Simonov said. “All others play one and the same tune.”