guardian.co.uk,
Miriam Elder in Moscow, Monday 28 November 2011
The Kremlin
has launched a campaign to crack down on Russians' access to critical western
media, according to a former employee of the country's main state-run news agency.
The
RIA-Novosti news agency last weekend reportedly ordered the employee to avoid
stories critical of the prime minister, Vladimir Putin, and his United Russia
party ahead of the elections.
Following
the order, the employee, Grigory Okhotin, resigned his post at Inosmi, a
website which translates articles from foreign press sources and is run by the
news agency.
"They
told me rather clearly not to translate harsh stories about Putin or United
Russia," Okhotin said. "Or, they said, you can translate some but
soften the headlines and don't put them on the front page." The order came
from the RIA-Novosti leadership, Okhotin claimed.
But a
RIA-Novosti spokeswoman, Alla Nadezhkina, said the organisation maintained a
"neutral position and objective approach". She said published by
Okhotin contained "clear distortions regarding the editorial politics of
RIA-Novosti and Inosmi, based on his own fantasies". No order had to
soften headlines, she said.
Marina
Pustilnik, editor-in-chief of Inosmi, refused to confirm or deny the order.
"I recommend you look at the website – there is quite a bit of material on
the elections and Putin."
On Monday,
the day after a party congress officially cementing Putin's candidacy in the 4
March presidential election, the top stories on Inosmi concerned modernisation,
the eurozone crisis and Iran.
The Kremlin
has become increasingly nervous about public support as it prepares for a
parliamentary vote on Sunday and presidential elections in the spring. Polls
show a steady decrease in support for United Russia, as well as for Putin, who
is expected to return to the presidency after serving four years as premier.
Most
Russians get their news from state-run TV, which is curated by Vladislav
Surkov, the Kremlin's ideologist and a Putin ally. But with internet use
skyrocketing, many Russians are turning to the web as an independent source of
news.
Livejournal,
Russia's main blogging platform and a hotbed of opposition thought, came under
DDoS [distributed denial of service] attack , an action many bloggers linked to
Sunday's vote. The platform last came under large-scale attack in April.
"These attacks are against multiple journals worldwide, several of which
are political in nature," the group said at the time.
The alleged
censorship attempt at the state-run project came as Putin, speaking at his
party congress, accused "representatives of some foreign countries"
of seeking to undermine Russia's elections.
"You
can't pressure the western press, can't ask them to soften their tone ahead of
the elections," Okhotin wrote in an essay about the affair, published on a
popular blog alongside
internet chat with an Inosmi editor about the censorship order.
The essay
was sent to translators, he said, "because you can't just plug up the
throat of the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Guardian and other
western media".
He added:
"It's an astonishing tale that will astonish nobody. I was ready to quit
at any minute, since joining nearly a year ago. It wasn't
unexpected."
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