Russia Sees Harsh Crackdown On Independent Media

By NATALIYA VASILYEVA, Associated Press, San Francisco Chronicle: World
Sun, 12/21/2014 - 4:05am

The Dozhd news channel, whose editor-in-chief Zygar was given a Committee to Protect Journalists award last month, rose to prominence in 2011 with its coverage of the mass protests against President Vladimir Putin — which state-owned television largely ignored. Putin's government has been careful not to order the channel to shut down, but a Kremlin-instigated smear campaign has driven this rare independent broadcaster to the brink of demise. Lobkov spent most of his television career on NTV, a legendary channel taken over by state-controlled gas company Gazprom in 2001, a move that forced independent journalists to flee. Pressure on independent media intensified this year as the Kremlin sought to unify the country behind the annexation of Crimea and Russia's involvement in eastern Ukraine. Since its inception in 2010, Dozhd had its studio in a former chocolate factory on the Moskva River, but its landlord broke the lease in November, forcing the channel to look for new space. Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, accused Dozhd of "crossing a moral and ethical red line," while the State Duma condemned the channel for "neo-Nazism" and "betraying your own people." The channel cut its expenses in half, shed about 30 percent of its staff and reduced its monthly budget to 20 million rubles ($357,000) — just a fraction of any state TV budget — before being hit with the eviction notice. Zygar, the editor-in-chief, insists that broadcasting out of an apartment is a temporary measure that doesn't affect the quality of the content Dozhd is providing, and says its audience is still growing.

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