The New Yorker has a truly superlative piece about a courageous Russian journalist named Anna Politkovskaya who was murdered by the Russian government because of her reporting on Chechnya. She was a friend of the man (named Litvinenko) who was poisoned with polonium 210 (also by the Russian government, most likely) in London — a case which received attention worldwide. Reading the article, I was struck by similarities between where the Russian press is now and where the American media seems to be headed. Here’s a few quotes:

“…the authorities understood at once: mass media could very easily be manipulated to achieve any goal. Whether the Kremlin needed to raise the rating of a President or bring down an opponent or conduct an operation to destroy a business, or a man, the media could do the job. Once the Kremlin understood that it could use journalists as instruments of its will, and saw that journalists would go along, everything that happened in the Putin era was, sadly, quite logical.”

(snip)

“There is no censorship—it’s much more advanced. I would call it a system of contacts and agreements between the Kremlin and the heads of television networks. There is no need to start every day with instructions. It is all done with winks and nods. They meet at the end of the week, and the problem, for TV and even in the printed press, is that self-censorship is worse than any other kind. Journalists know—they can feel—what is allowed and what is not.’’

(snip)

Networks soon became wholly owned by the state or by companies—like Gazprom, which owns three networks and also Izvestia—that function as corporate arms of the government.

(snip)

‘Why are you watching TV? People like you should go read the Internet if you want information. TV is not for you. It’s for the people. ’ ’

Related posts:

1. Propaganda?
2. Who do you trust?
3. Tale of Two Editorials - City News gets it - the D&C not so much.
4. Corning, NY and Washingon DC: A tale of two cities
5. a tale of two websites