Russian Minister Says His Deputy’s Media Freedom Remarks Not Official Position

(RIA Novosti – February 15, 2013)

Russian Minister of Communications and Mass Communication Nikolay Nikiforov has said that remarks recently voiced by his deputy Aleksey Volin regarding the role of journalism in the Russian society do not constitute the ministry’s official position. Nikiforov said this at the Economic Forum in Krasnoyarsk on 15 February, as reported by Russian news agency RIA Novosti on the same day.

At a conference held at the Faculty of Journalism of the Moscow State University, Volin said, in particular, that the goal of a journalist is to earn money for those who hired him, the report recalled.

“We have a corresponding conversation with him. He is sorry that his words had been divorced from the context… They do not constitute the position of the ministry,” Nikiforov was quoted as saying.

The minister said that he does not agree with Volin’s attitude and added that “interference in editorial policy of the media is unacceptable and contradicts the law”.

“He is flamboyant person and wanted to attract attention to this problem (of media freedom). The fact that a heated discussion took place after his statement just confirms the presence of this problem in our society,” Nikiforov said, adding that his subordinate “took the liberty of expressing his attitude towards media freedom in quite a tough manner”.