Oct 25, 2012 3 min read

In the 12 years since Vladimir Puttin came to power in Russia, we have witnessed a fledgling democracy revert to dictatorship. As president, then as prime minister and now as president again, Putin has continually clamped down on political opponents while at the same time putting most of the media under government control. Opponents, if not outlawed, detained or jailed, are ignored by state-owned newspapers and television stations, while Putin’s United Russia party and its demonstrations receive thorough coverage. IREX, the nonprofit research organization, noted in its Media Sustainability report for 2012 that in advance of the December parliamentary elections and the March presidential vote, some state-owned media outlets were barred from selling advertising space to opposition parties. “Many journalists and photographers were denied access to the polling stations or were prohibited from taking election-day photos,” the report stated. “In the days after the elections, many journalists covering public protests against election fraud were detained and beaten by police.” Since Putin first came to power in 2000, journalism has become perhaps the country’s most dangerous profession. Thirty-two reporters and editors have been murdered since then, according to Britain’s The Observer. They include the 2006 slaying of Ann Politkovskaya, who had won fame – and the ire of the Russian government – for her reporting from Chechnya. Though news that reaches the West comes to us from Moscow, the conflict between the media and the Russian government goes on far from the walls of the Kremlin. Independent newspapers, radio and TV stations are under attack from city and state government throughout the vast nation. In Novokuznetsk, a city the size of Pittsburgh that’s 2,200 miles east of Moscow, reporting the truth has never been easy, but the past dozen years have been particularly difficult for the few independently – owned media outlets, which are under near constant barrage of harassment and lawsuits from the city administration and officials of the Kemerovo oblast, or state. The Observer-Reporter has had a long relationship with the Kuznetsk Worker, an independent newspaper in Novokuznetsk. For eight years beginning in 1996, writers and editors visited and worked in each other’s newspapers. One journalist to visit Washington several times was police reporter Mikhail Zelenchukov. Zelenchukov worked in the city’s police department before joining the Kuznetsk Worker as a reporter. He left the newspaper to report for local television stations, and just this week received a Journalist of the Year award for crime reporting. Zelenchukov, however, has been silenced. In an email we received yesterday, he wrote: “I am recognized the best, but I don’t have work. No one wants to print my investigation; it is very dangerous. Many owners of newspapers and television only print the official reports of the police and other departments of government. No investigation, no revelations. No one wants to conflict with the mayor and the governor. No one believes that the court protects the rights of journalists. Nobody needs sensations, all want to earn a lot of money. … This is like the time of socialism – one totalitarian regime was replaced by another.” It is especially important at this time, when we are all so weary of the incessant election campaigns, to consider how fortunate we are to have free elections, and for opponents of those in power to have the right to question, criticize and replace them. And it is so important, too, to understand that this would not be possible without a free press. Russia provides us with the proof that one freedom cannot exist without the other.