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Free Press Under Siege In Russia

January 14, 2008

It was the same question at the end of every class.

“Yes, but is there really a free press in Canada?” asked a young Russian student slouched in the front row of my journalism and public policy course at St. Petersburg State University.

“Can Canadian reporters really write what they see?” a young woman asked at the end of a lecture about political reporting.

Each time I said yes, there was a tiny groan and students rolled their eyes. Some things don’t need translation. The concept of a free press seemed as far-fetched to these Russian journalism students as the tooth fairy, or Santa Claus.

When I was invited to teach at the journalism school of St. Petersburg State University as part of a program run by the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, I knew that things were bad for journalists in Russia, but I did not appreciate quite how bad.

Diana Kachalova, editor-in-chief of a chain of community weeklies in St. Petersburg, helped me understand.

“United Russia is like a tank coming down on the people,” she said, referring to the ruling party.

“I feel like I’m returning to when I was young, in the 1970s.”

In the Soviet era, censorship was simple and complete. An official censor vetted every word and image that appeared in the media. The current system of censorship is more complex, more dangerous and harder to expose.

There was an international outcry when Russian President Vladimir Putin indirectly took control of major television networks several years ago.

There was also an international outcry when a prominent investigative journalist was killed in 2006 and the editor of Forbes (Russia) was killed in 2004.

But many of the constraints on reporters and editors here are not the stuff of dramatic public headlines, they are daily difficulties that make it harder and harder to find and print the truth.

Kachalova said one magazine that ran irreverent photos of officials mysteriously disappeared from every newsstand in the city before it went on sale.

A newspaper that distributes in the subway was warned it would lose its distribution agreement if it is critical of the government.

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