A Dying Industry of Independent Media in Russia

According to an article from The Moscow Times, there are so few independent media outlets in Russia that you can count them all on one hand. Dozhd is an independent television channel, Novaya Gazeta is an independent newspaper, The New Times is an independent weekly magazine, and finally Ekho Moskvy, an independent radio station.

Ekho Moskvy is in trouble because one of its employees tweeted inappropriately. The employee tweeted that "he realized there is a higher justice" after learning that the son of the Kremlin chief of staff, Sergei Ivanov, drowned at sea in the United Arab Emirates while swimming.

What the employee was referring to was that a couple years ago, the same son of Ivanov, Alexander, ran down an elderly woman and killed her at a cross walk in front of many witnesses. He never got in trouble for this, in fact it was the contrary. "He put pressure on investigators and relatives of the deceased, even going so far as to file false charges against the woman's son-in-law for having supposedly beaten him at the scene."

Gazprom Media owns a large stake in Ekho Moskvy. Mikhail Lesin is the head of Gazprom Media and instructed Ekho Moskvy editor-in-chief, Alexei Venediktov, to fire the employee who posted the tweet. Venediktov refused, first because an employee has the right to post whatever he wants on a personal Twitter account and, second, because the employee in question happens to be one of his best journalists. Lesin undoubtedly anticipated that answer and responded by ordering Venediktov to either fire the employee or resign himself. What's more, the Ekho Moskvy board of directors even scheduled an urgent meeting to discuss the station's editor-in-chief as well as its entire broadcasting concept. (Moscow Times)

This story gets a lot deeper. It involves Russian politics and how it is presented through the media. Most of the radio stations in Russia are pro-Kremlin, while Ekho Moskvy is independent, so they broadcast pro-Putin standpoints as well. For having both viewpoints, this also encourages the government to shut down the station and turn it into something else, like a music station.

Russia is different than the United States when it comes to how they control their media. This problem would never arise in the US, we have rights granted to us that prevent that problem. However, the use of Twitter and the potential issues it can cause relates in both Russia and the United States. This employee who tweeted definitely put himself in danger by basically saying that Ivanov's son deserved to die, hinting at some sort of Karma.

Sure, the employee is allowed to post anything personal but this is certainly controversial. In a place where independent media is limited, one must be careful on how they utilize their power. The government in Russia is looking for any excuse to shut down these stations, and to be shut down over a tweet is not the way to use the power. Just from this article, I can tell that the industry is dying, referring to independent media. The government has a lot of power over media in Russia, so they have to be even more careful than we have to be here in the United States.

It is a strange idea that the independent media in Russia is so limited, compared to the United States independent media, which seems to be the most free form of media. A partial purpose of having an independent media site is to express ideas without interference from the government or to be afraid of other limitations. In other words, God bless America.