(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – February 18, 2014) State television host Dmitry Kiselyov, known for his strong opposition to gay rights in Russia, has been awarded the Order of Service to the Fatherland by President Vladimir Putin. A presidential decree published on the government’s legal documents website said the honor was bestowed on Kiselyov for his contribution to Russia’s “social […]
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[“Putin and the media – Dreams about Russia – Beyond the spectacle of the Sochi Olympics is a crackdown on Russia’s media” – The Economist – February 15, 2014 – economist.com/news/europe/21596580-beyond-spectacle-sochi-olympics-crackdown-russias-media-dreams-about-russia] The Economist reports on concerns over media freedoms in Russia, including actions taken in the lead-up to the Sochi Olympics: Just as Vladimir Putin’s greatest project [the Sochi Olympics] […]
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[“What the Papers Say, Feb. 14, 2014” – The Moscow Times/BBC Monitoring – themoscowtimes.com/news/article/what-the-papers-say-feb-14-2014/494555.html] The Moscow Times and BBC Monitoring parse the latest news from Russian print newspapers. Nezavisimaya Gazeta 1. Sergei Neverov article headlined “People’s support is priority” says that today the State Duma is to pass in the third reading a bill on elections to the State Duma […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – February 13, 2014) Russia came 148th out of 180 countries on this year’s press freedom rankings from Reporters Without Borders, keeping the same spot that it occupied last year. France-based Reporters Without Borders said that the level of freedom of information violations throughout the world increased by 1.8 percent compared with 2012. Some of the […]
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MOSCOW, February 10 (RIA Novosti) – A reporter for Russia’s leading television channel admitted lifting huge chunks of a nationalist report about the Sochi Olympics’ opening ceremony for use in her own report, which aired over the weekend. Irada Zeinalova said she quoted a report by Kremlin-bashing web resource Sputnik & Pogrom without attribution for a broadcast on Channel One. […]
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MOSCOW, February 10 (RIA Novosti) – Russia’s major satellite provider stopped broadcasting Dozhd independent television channel Monday after the network became embroiled into a controversy over an opinion poll about World War II. Tricolor TV, Russia’s biggest satellite TV provider, said a week ago that its board of directors had unanimously decided to exclude the liberal Dozhd channel from all […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – John Freedman, Moscow Times theater editor – February 10, 2014) I once wrote most of what I planned to be a book about Russia. I got as far as sending chapters out to publishers. One of the few editors who was kind enough to reject me personally explained why my proposal was not of interest. […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Michael Bohm – February 7, 2014) Michael Bohm is opinion page editor of The Moscow Times. For Russians watching state television news over the past several weeks, the message about the political turmoil in Ukraine is clear: The anti-government protests are a U.S. plot. Take, for example, this Jan. 22 evening news broadcast on Channel […]
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(RFE/RL – rferl.org – Tom Balmforth – MOSCOW – February 5, 2014) Just shy of four years ago a new private television channel appeared on the Russian media scene. With a new generation of talent, snappy and hip programming, and a politically independent line, Dozhd (Rain) TV presented a sharp contrast to the drab and predictable Kremlin-controlled media. And it […]
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(Interfax – February 4, 2014) A number of members of the presidential human rights council have sent a letter to Russian Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev asking him to check the actions of major Russian satellite TV operators that have dropped independent television channel Dozhd from their packages, privately-owned Russian news agency Interfax reported on 4 February. “We believe that the […]
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(Moscow News – themoscownews.com – Natalia Antonova – January 31, 2014) The scandal surrounding the independent Dozhd TV channel has so far progressed in a predictable and chilling fashion: Media organization does something that many people find to be tactless and/or offensive, said people express their dismay, the media organization apologizes… and then surrealism begins to take over. In case […]
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Subject: Comment on the Economist editorial entitled “The triumph of Vladimir Putin” (JRL 2014-#21) Date: Sat, 1 Feb 2014 From: Ben Aris <editor@bne.eu> [Editor, Business New Europe] I have to comment on the Economist editorial entitled “The triumph of Vladimir Putin” (JRL 2014-#22) as it is a classic example of Russian bashing that is full of mistakes, half-truths, omissions and […]
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(Moscow News – themoscownews.com – Natalia Antonova – January 30, 2014) Anna Arutunyan’s “The Putin Mystique” came out in Britain this week, and this article is not an attempt to review the book. Although we frequently highlight the accomplishments of our friends and colleagues as part of the buys of the week rubric, an actual review of Anna’s book would […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, January 29, 2014) Any Russian with access to the Internet can get some idea of the dizzying and kaleidoscopic developments in Ukraine, but Russians who rely on government-controlled television are being fed a more or less constant diet of propaganda designed to promote “permanent hysteria” about that country, according to a “Novaya […]
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MOSCOW, January 30 (RIA Novosti) – Staff of an online TV station in Russia face a threat of up to two years in prison after prosecutors announced an “extremism” investigation Thursday into an opinion poll concerning World War II. The liberal Dozhd (“Rain”) channel triggered the ire of conservatives by asking on its website whether the Soviet Union should have […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Eradzh Nidoev – January 29, 2014) While online video streaming in the U.S. has shown that the Internet can be effectively monetized by film and television, the fear of piracy in Russia has limited the spread of such services here. Only now, a few companies are taking the plunge and offering online streaming services, and […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – January 24, 2014) The Moscow News, an English-language Moscow weekly that recently became an insert in the Russian-language Moskovskiye Novosti, has been told to shut down its print edition. Editor Natalia Antonova wrote on the news agency’s website that “the print edition of The Moscow News has been shut down by order of the management.” […]
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(Moscow News – themoscownews.com – Natalia Antonova – January 23, 2014) Dear readers, the print edition of The Moscow News has been shut down by order of the management. The January 23 issue, which came out today as part of Moskovskiye Novosti, was our last print publication until further notice. Our website remains active, and we will continue bringing you […]
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MOSCOW, January 22 (RIA Novosti) A bill that would have branded Russian media outlets that receive more than 50 percent of their funding from abroad as “foreign agents” was withdrawn from consideration in the State Duma on Tuesday. The bill’s authors said they had decided to reintroduce the legislation at a later date with a lower threshold for qualification […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Ivan Nechepurenko – January 16, 2014) As pundits speculated about possible political repercussions of Russia’s decision to bar U.S. journalist David Satter, the country’s often cumbersome and conflicting visa application process came into the spotlight on Wednesday. While for some observers the visa bureaucracy was seen as a tool to cushion the state’s political decisions, […]
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MOSCOW, January 14 (RIA Novosti) The Russian defense industry will create its own “news factory” to offset the “Russophobic” produce of state-owned television channels, a senior official said. Russian television revels in vulgarity and sensationalism, and its makers show “disdain for everything created by domestic labor and Russia’s great culture,” said Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, who is responsible […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Ivan Nechepurenko – January 14, 2014) Russia has barred a U.S. journalist for five years in a move that has triggered a frenzy between Russian authorities and Western media on Tuesday, signaling possible heightened tensions ahead of upcoming Winter Olympic Games in Sochi. It was not clear whether David Satter, 66, was banned entry into […]
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MOSCOW, January 10 (RIA Novosti) People living in more than a third of Russia’s small towns and villages have no access to the Internet, a new government study shows. Despite the boom in Internet use in Russia, some 6,700 localities have no opportunity to get online, the Ministry of Communications and Mass Media said on its website. The figure […]
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MOSCOW, January 10 (RIA Novosti) Russian TV celebrity and socialite Ksenia Sobchak has said she was strip-searched at Miami Airport after a security check wrongly detected explosives on her fingers, a claim the US authorities have denied. Sobchak, 32, formerly the host of a long-running reality show and now an anchor at an independent TV channel, claimed on Twitter […]
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(Secrecy News – blogs.fas.org/secrecy – Steven Aftergood – January 8, 2014) Beginning in 1974, the U.S. intelligence community provided the public with a broad selection of foreign news reports, updated daily. These were collected and translated by the Central Intelligence Agency’s Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), which was reconstituted in 2004 as the Open Source Center (OSC). But the CIA […]
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(Secrecy News – blogs.fas.org/secrecy – Steven Aftergood – December 23, 2013) More than a dozen professional societies and public interest groups wrote to the Director of National Intelligence last week to ask him to preserve public access to foreign news reports gathered, translated and published by the Open Source Center and marketed to subscribers through the NTIS World News Connection. […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – January 3, 2014) Media watchdog Reporters Without Borders has urged Russia to free opposition journalists locked up in the country’s jails, expressing concern that lesser-known cases would be forgotten after the recent release of high-profile prisoners. “The release of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Pussy Riot and Greenpeace activists must not divert attention from the many other threats […]
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(Moscow News – themoscownews.com – David Burghardt – December 31, 2013) Margarita Simonyan has been named editor-in-chief of the newly founded Rossiya Segodnya, previously called RIA Novosti, the news agency’s general director, Dmitry Kiselyov, announced on Tuesday. Simonyan was appointed editor-in-chief of the Moscow-based English-language television station RT in 2005. “This key position could only be held by a person […]
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MOSCOW, December 30 (RIA Novosti) Russian leader Vladimir Putin has been named International Person of the Year by Britain’s The Times newspaper for succeeding in his ambition of bringing Moscow back to the international top table. The paper said Putin, 61, a judo black belt, has hip-flipped US President Barack Obama on the Syrian crisis, wrestled the EU to […]
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(RIA Novosti – December 23, 2013) Editor in Chief of Moskovskiy Komsomolets daily Pavel Gusev, TV presenter Kseniya Sobchak and Editor in Chief of Ekho Moskvy radio Aleksey Venediktov have been named as Russia’s most frequently quoted journalists, RIA Novosti news agency reported on 23 December quoting media monitoring service Medialogiya. They were followed by TV journalists Nikolay Svanidze and […]
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(Moscow News – themoscownews.com – Anna Arutunyan – December 20, 2013) The Kremlin’s drastic overhaul of state-owned media, which would see RIA Novosti, Russia’s biggest news agency, dissolved and absorbed into a new holding, has left industry insiders and experts wondering what, exactly, would arise in its place and how deeply the national media landscape will be affected. “The time […]
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(RFE/RL – rferl.org – Claire Bigg – December 9, 2013) Russia’s state-run television channels are not known for their impartiality. Their coverage of the massive pro-European protests that have engulfed Ukraine is no exception, analysts say. Russian state television has been churning out what critics describe as misleading, at times downright odd reports since protests erupted almost two weeks ago […]
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(RFE/RL – rferl.org – Daisy Sindelar – December 10, 2013) A popular clip circulating on the Internet shows just how much a journalist can change in Vladimir Putin’s Russia. In 1999, as Putin was coming to power, Dmitry Kiselyov was a promising television broadcaster with strong opinions about the difference between journalism and propaganda. “A journalist cannot be separated from […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber – December 10, 2013) Dmitry Kiselyov, the ultraconservative television host who was appointed Monday to head a new global news service on the base of RIA Novosti, said Tuesday that parts of the news agency would be preserved and that its staff would remain “in demand.” Kiselyov also said he would meet soon […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber – December 10, 2013) President Vladimir Putin on Monday issued a decree ordering the liquidation of RIA Novosti, the massive state-owned news agency, and mandated the creation of a new global news agency to be headed by an aggressively pro-Kremlin television host. In its own article about the news, RIA Novosti’s English-language service […]
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[Putin dissolves state news agency, tightens grip on Russia media – Reuters – Timothy Heritage – December 9 – http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/09/us-russia-media-idUSBRE9B80I120131209] Reuters covers Russia President Vladimir Putin’s decision to dissolve RIA Novosti and absorb its operations into new entity called Rossiya Segodnya, with a mission of promoting Russia abroad: President Vladimir Putin tightened his control over Russia’s media on Monday by […]
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MOSCOW, December 9 (RIA Novosti) The Kremlin announced Monday the dissolution of RIA Novosti, the country’s major state-run news agency, amid a significant reorganization of state-owned media assets. News agency RIA Novosti and the state-owned Voice of Russia radio will be scrapped and absorbed into a new media conglomerate called Rossiya Segodnya, according to a decree signed by President […]
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(Government.ru – December 6, 2013) [Complete transcript in Russian here: http://government.ru/news/8790] The traditional annual live interview with Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev on the round-up of the Government’s work over the year. Asking the questions were Irada Zeinalova (Channel One), Sergei Brilyov (VGTRK), Marianna Maksimovskaya (Ren TV), Vadim Takmenyov (NTV) and Mikhail Zygar (TV Rain). Transcript: Sergei Brilyov: Good afternoon. TV […]
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MOSCOW. Nov 26 (Interfax) – Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev will sum up the results of the year 2013 on December 6 in the traditional live televised interview, titled “A Conversation with the Prime Minister,” the government’s spokesperson Natalya Timakova announced. “The interview will proceed in the traditional format,” she said. “The main themes to be covered are the government’s performance […]
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Subject: No. 139: Governors and Mayors Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2013 From: “Russian Analytical Digest (RAD)” <newslist@isn.ch> RUSSIAN ANALYTICAL DIGEST Newsletter 18 November 2013/No. 139 GOVERNORS AND MAYORS To download this issue please click here: http://www.css.ethz.ch/publications/DetailansichtPubDB_EN?rec_id=2781 Analyses Dynamics of Regional Inequality in the Russian Federation: Circular and Cumulative Causality, by David Lane, Cambridge The Revival of Russia’s Gubernatorial Elections: Liberalization […]
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MOSCOW. Nov 21 (Interfax) – U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul said he was angry with mass media reports on Washington supporting the Russian opposition. McFaul said at a public meeting in Moscow on Wednesday that nothing made him angrier about the Russian media than propaganda about the U.S. government sponsoring Russian opposition. According to the ambassador, he saw Russian […]
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MOSCOW. Dec 18 (Interfax) – Russian President Vladimir Putin will give a press conference at noon on December 19, 2013, the Kremlin press service reported on Monday. The venue of the press conference and the admission procedures will be reported later. The accreditation and briefings department of the press service and information department has begun accreditation procedures for the press […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Delphine d’Amora – November 15, 2013) President Vladimir Putin has reprimanded officials for discussing government issues in the mass media and suggested that those who oppose government policy had better leave their posts. The president was speaking Thursday at a meeting of the Strategic Initiatives Advisory Board when he was asked about a contentious bill […]
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NOVO-OGARYOVO, near Moscow. Nov 14 (Interfax) – Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned it is unacceptable for senior government figures to discuss a planned decision with the media before it has been discussed in government. At a meeting of the supervisory board of the Strategic Initiatives Agency on Thursday, the president of the Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Sergei […]
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(Pravda.ru – Anton Kulikov – November 12, 2013) The Russian State Duma deputies proposed an introduction of the “Separatist Propaganda” article in the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation and establishing a prison sentence of three to six years for said propaganda. So far this is only a draft bill, and its future is unclear. The document was proposed for […]
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MOSCOW. Nov 12 (Interfax) – Russian President Vladimir Putin has played down the fact that Forbes’ magazine has declared him the world’s most powerful person. “I’m grateful to the experts at Forbes, but this is what I think of it: one is always uneasy about it because it’s restrictive somewhat, it may put restrictions on your decision making,” Putin told […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Dmitriy Romendik, RBTH – November 12, 2013) A growing number of Russian journalists are writing on the Internet to reach their readers directly, without intermediaries in the shape of investors, publishers or editors. While this mode of professional existence has not generated large financial dividends so far, it has given them editorial independence. […]
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MOSCOW, November 12 (RIA Novosti) Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that being labeled the world’s most powerful person by Forbes magazine this year has made him “more cautious,” his first-ever public comment on the issue. “I appreciate Forbes experts’ opinion, but I personally believe that, first, it always makes you cautious because it limits you a little bit […]
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(RFE/RL – rferl.org – Liz Fuller – November 6, 2013) Not for the first time, the chairman of the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) and Russian State Duma deputy speaker Vladimir Zhirinovsky has incurred the wrath of North Caucasus officials by making disparaging remarks about the region. Speaking on a TV talk show late last month, Zhirinovsky advocated […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Yevgeny Shestakov, International Affairs Editor at Rossiyskaya Gazeta, special to RBTH – November 7, 2013) There are a number of reasons why the U.S. edition of Forbes magazine nominated Russian President Vladimir Putin as the most powerful person in 2013. It is difficult to gauge the accuracy of those experts who say Putin’s […]
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