210 results arranged by date
New York, April 11, 2003—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is concerned about the “Anti-Terrorist Convention,” which was signed on Tuesday, April 8, by directors of several leading national broadcast media outlets, who agreed to accept voluntary restrictions on their coverage of terrorism and anti-terrorist government operations. The media executives who signed the agreement (click…
Russian president Vladimir Putin, along with his coterie of conservative former intelligence officials, pressed ahead in 2002 to impose his vision of a “dictatorship of the law” in Russia to create a “managed democracy.” Putin’s goal of an obedient and patriotic press meant that the Kremlin continued using various branches of the state apparatus to…
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is extremely concerned about an official warning issued by the Russian Media Ministry on Wednesday, February 26, to the Moscow-based communist, ultra-nationalist weekly Zavtra. This warning, which followed the publication of an interview with exiled Chechen separatist leader Akhmed Zakayev, is the latest in the Russian government’s…
New York, March 5, 2003—A suspect accused of issuing death threats against Anna Politkovskaya, a correspondent with the Moscow-based twice weekly newspaper Novaya Gazeta, was cleared of the criminal charge against him yesterday. Politkovskaya is well known in Russia for her investigative reports on human rights abuses committed by the Russian military in Chechnya. The…
New York, February 28, 2003—Zamid Ayubov, a 40-year-old Chechen journalist for the local pro-Russian administration’s thrice-weekly Vozrozhdeniye Chechni, was beaten and detained by Interior Ministry forces in the Chechen capitol of Grozny on the evening of February 16. Ayubov was assaulted when he approached an Interior Ministry unit and identified himself as a journalist researching…
New York, October 25, 2002—The hostage standoff in central Moscow has highlighted growing restrictions on the Russian media, including this week’s passage of legislation banning “propaganda of terrorism” in mass media. Although the legislation has not become law, the government is already using it to censor coverage of the hostage crisis. A large group of…
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply concerned that the independent, twice-weekly newspaper Novaya Gazeta, could be closed by the Basmanny District Court of Moscow at any time following proceedings to seal the paper’s property that were initiated last week by a bailiff. This action comes as a result of an excessive damage award in a recent libel suit against the paper.
A decade after the demise of the Soviet Union, Russia still struggled to define the limits of free expression. Nowhere was the struggle more intense than in the media. President Vladimir Putin’s administration was either directly involved in or held responsible for a broad range of abuses, including the selective use of tax audits, prosecutions,…
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is extremely concerned that crippling damage awards in two recent libel suits threaten the survival of the independent, twice-weekly newspaper Novaya Gazeta. We also condemn a recent attempt to assassinate one of the paper’s reporters.
Moscow, March 7, 2002—Three representatives of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) today completed a four-day mission to Russia with an urgent call for the release of jailed Russian journalist Grigory Pasko. “We are here to support our Russian colleagues in attempting to free Grigory Pasko, and to halt what seems to be an increasingly…