Are Putin's Censors Stricter Than the Soviets?
Last edited Mon Mar 16, 2015, 06:20 PM - Edit history (1)
A bold, 6,500-word opinion piece published this week in the Moscow Times details what it calls a "new censorship" imposed on the Russian news media by President Vladimir Putin and his allies, enforced by political power and Kremlin-friendly commercial interests.
Written by Vasily Gatov, a journalist and media critic, the piece charges the Kremlin with manipulation of the nation's news media that, "like a cancerous tumor ... supplants everything of value or vitality with diseased tissue." The headline is "How the Kremlin and the Media Ended Up in Bed Together." An editors' note at the top says the Russian news media "have turned into creators of the Matrix-like artificial reality."
Without a monolithic Communist Party in control of civic life as in the Soviet Union, Gatov writes, the Putin regime gives out favors in the form of money, property, and jobs. The tools of modern censorship, he says, include tying strings to government media funding, cultivating informants on media staff, and direct Kremlin calls to chief editors.
The piece, striking in its irreverence, is the longest ever published in the Moscow Times, an English-language daily based in the Russian capital. The newspaper, founded in 1992 by Dutch investors, is now owned by a company based in Helsinki that holds 50 publications that reach 12 million people, according to its website. Gatov, 49, is planning a second piece on the topic.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-13/are-putin-s-censors-stricter-than-the-soviets-
