Fighting Putin and the Kremlin’s grip in neo-authoritarian Russia: The experience of liberal journalists

Abstract

Russia is one of the most dangerous countries for journalists, and the conflict with Ukraine and Russia’s involvement in Syria present even further challenges for the future of Russian journalism. In addition to the financial pressures, physical attacks, abductions and harassment, liberal journalists now face an increasing threat to the democratising role they see themselves as playing. President Vladimir Putin’s soaring popularity and the elaborate range of tactics used to suppress press freedom are forcing liberal media to rethink their mission(s) and identity(ies). This article presents empirical evidence on the range of tactics used by the Russian authorities as well as the coping strategies adopted by journalists. The study shows that some Russian media and journalists demonstrate a great degree of resilience in their efforts to expose wrongdoings and hold the powerful to account. The article questions the applicability of Western-centric normative media system theories because it shows that the breadth, depth and mechanisms of control in modern-day Russia are very different from the ones used during Soviet times, and yet, Russian media and society do not appear to be on a linear journey from authoritarianism to democracy. The article presents the findings of a semi-ethnographic study of some of Russia’s most influential liberal news outlets – Novaya Gazeta, Radio Echo of Moscow and Radio Free Europe/Liberty. The study was conducted in May 2014 in the midst of the conflict with Ukraine. It involved observations of editorial meetings, documentary analysis and interviews with editors, deputy editors and journalists.

Aleksandr Minkin: A pioneer of investigative journalism in Soviet Central Asia (1979–1991)

“…In Russia as well, the glasnost generation of free journalists was undoubtedly the most disappointed by the subsequent tightening of the scope of journalistic freedom endorsed by the Kremlin and became the most exposed to violence, murders, obstacles, and increasing pressure from the authorities in the 1990s and 2000s while witnessing the impairment of that media revolution. Nevertheless, in the aftermath of the 2014 Ukrainian crisis, these liberal and dissenting journalists are much more involved in fighting Putin’s neo-authoritarianism (Slavtcheva-Petkova, 2017), becoming again frontliners in defense of freedom of press and information.…”

Resisting Perceived Interference in Journalistic Autonomy: The Study of Public Service Media in Slovakia

“…Available studies that explore the practices used by journalists when they feel their autonomy is endangered focus mostly on cases of external political interference that occur in flawed democracies and authoritarian or hybrid regimes (see Ataman & Çoban, 2019, for Turkey;Barrios & Miller, 2020, for Columbia;Fedirko, 2020, for Ukraine;Slavtcheva-Petkova, 2019, for Russia). These practices include: seeking support from editors (Barrios & Miller, 2020;Slavtcheva-Petkova, 2019); sharing or handing over sensitive stories to other colleagues or working anonymously (Ataman & Çoban, 2019;Barrios & Miller, 2020); using social media to attract followers in order to raise the costs for the potential sources of the pressure (Barrios & Miller, 2020); trying to solve the problems by directly contacting the sources of the pressure (Slavtcheva-Petkova, 2019); practicing borderless and cross-border journalism (Ataman & Çoban, 2019); and using the support of international actors (Ataman & Çoban, 2019;Barrios & Miller, 2020).…”

“…Empirical studies mostly focus on the perceived level of journalistic autonomy in various countries (Ahva et al, 2017;Hughes et al, 2017), or, from the opposite angle, on exploring various types and forms of interference in journalistic autonomy (Akhrarkhodjaeva, 2017b;Goyanes & Rodríguez-Castro, 2019) and on the extent of the journalists' experience with this interference (Clark & Grech, 2017;Hiltunen, 2019). However, the question of how journalists actually deal with the pressure and interference is less often addressed, and if so, available studies have focused mostly on external political interference that occurs in flawed democracies and authoritarian or hybrid regimes (Ataman & Çoban, 2019;Barrios & Miller, 2020;Slavtcheva-Petkova, 2019). Another relevant stream of literature, the research on conflicts in public service media, zeroes in on cultural clashes between the content makers and top managers who are responsible for administering and running "the factory" (Nissen, 2014), and on concrete cases when the independence of public service broadcasters was breached and journalistic autonomy constrained (Dragomir, 2017;Dzięciołowski, 2017;Koivunen, 2017).…”

Communication, democracy, and intelligentsia

“…In 2008, the presidential decree established Roskomnadzor, an agency overseeing 'licensing and permit issuing; control and supervision in telecommunications, information technology, and mass communications.' Among the news outlets accused of extremism under the new regulations were such well-known organizations as Gazeta.ru, Pravda.ru, and Kursiv (Azhgikhina, 2017;Eremenko, 2015;Fishman, 2017;Freedom House, 2017;Gainutdiner, 2017;Orttung & Walker, 2013;Polyakova, 2017;Slavtcheva-Petkova, 2017).…”

“…2015 was also the year when legislators passed the Data Storage Law (№ 242-FZ), requiring website operators and service providers to store Russian users' personal data. In the next two years, a spate of draconian laws and amendments were approved, the most notorious among these being the 'Yarovaya Amendments' that obligated service providers to save for six months all content passing through their domains and furnish security agencies with deciphering keys for all encoded information (Eremenko, 2015;Gainutdiner, 2017;Freedom House (2017) ;Orttung & Walker, 2013;Polyakova, 2017;Slavtcheva-Petkova, 2017.).…”