Weekly bulletin of events in Russian mass media
Issue No. 48 (201), November 21 - 27, 2005

This bulletin was prepared by CJES analyst,
doctor of political science Mikhail Melnikov (mel@cjes.ru)

I. Events of the Week

1. The number of Internet users in Russia will have reached some 21.8 million by the end of 2005, Russian Information Technologies and Communications Minister Leonid Reiman told a press conference in Tunisia on November 24. According to Reiman, the total number of computers in Russia (not including office computers) will exceed 17.4 million by the end of 2005.

The information and communication technologies industry has been growing dynamically for the past five years, Reiman said.


2. The heads of the Omsk media organizations are trying to consolidate the city’s divided journalistic community by creating a club of editors-in-chief.

The meeting between the heads of the Omsk media organizations held in the Omsk House of Journalists on November 22 was characterized by the majority of its participants as “historical.” Indeed, no one can remember when the heads of the city’s leading media organizations, which have very diverse information policies, last met together. The majority of the meeting participants agreed that there is a need to consolidate the city’s journalistic community to solve problems faced by the city’s journalists. As a result, an agreement was reached to create a club of editors-in-chief.


II. Detentions of Journalists


1. Leonid Tsvetkov, editor of the newspaper Uralsky Kolokol (published in the town of Yemanzhelinsk, Chelyabinsk region) was detained in the Chelyabinsk region on November 22 on suspicion of extortion and taking a bribe from Yury Gorbunov, a member of the regions Legislative Assembly. A criminal case against Tsevtkov has been opened. The journalist has been asked to sign a paper promising not to leave the area.

Tsvetkov was detained by police officers as he received an envelope with money that had been marked with special invisible ink. According to Gorbunov, who is running for the region’s parliament for a second time, the journalist wanted 40,000 rubles in exchange for guarantees that no compromising materials about him would be published. After several meetings (some of which Gorbunov secretly taped), the men reached an agreement. Gorbunov contacted the police before the last meeting, when the journalist was to receive the money.

The detention was such a big surprise to Tsvetkov that he fell ill and had to be hospitalized. He was diagnosed with heart failure and is still in intensive care.

Gorbunov and Vitaly Tsvetkov (the brother of Leonid Tsvetkov), who is general director of the local brick-making plant, are both running for the Chelyabinsk region’s parliament. The men have had a very public conflict for several years. Leonid Tsvetkov’s wife has told reporters her husband has been collecting compromising materials about Yury Gorbunov, who was formerly mayor of Yemanzhelinsk, for ten years.


2. A group of cameramen with the television company VETTA (Perm Territory) was detained by the security guards of the limited liability company Tekhstroi last week while filming the area close to the company territory. The guards kept journalists in a closed room for about an hour, promising to release them if they showed what they had filmed. The guards also threatened to beat the journalists and destroy their equipment.


3. Sergei Khazov, an observer with the information agency Vash Vybor-Samara, and Ilya Almosov, a freelancer for the agency, were prevented from working by the security guards of the Samara region’s scientific library on November 16. The guards did not like the fact that the journalists were interviewing visitors in the library without registering with the library’s security service. The journalists believe the guards prevented them from fulfilling their professional duties by illegally detaining them.


III. Restrictions on Journalists. Pressure on the Media


1. The Nizhny Novgorod region’s Governor Valery Shantsev said he intends to make meetings of the region’s government closed to the press.

“I don’t want to make govemnrment meetings a reality show. I do not want government meetings to be open to the press,” Shantsev told reporters on Wednesday. “These are working meetings and there is no need to have the press present there,” he said. At the same time, Shantsev recalled at the press service prepares all the materials the media need after government meetings.


2. Arkady Vereikin, chairman of the State Television and radio Company Pskov, has been invited to a meeting of the committee on labor and social policy of the Pskov region’s Assembly. The parliamentarians intends to talk to Vereikin about their concerns about the fact that local television does not have translation into sign language, which makes it impossible for hearing-impaired people to get information from television. In addition, they want to discuss with Vereikin Pskov’s information policy, in particular the recent exodus of journalists from the company.


3. Olga Romanova, the host of REN TV information program 24, was barred from appearing on REN TV on November 24. The security guards simply did not let her into the studio minutes before her program was to go on the air, citing an order form REN TV General Director Alexander Ordzhonikidze.

Ordzhonikidze said the decision to bar Romanova from appearing on REN TV was made because she has told her colleagues about two news reports (one dealing with a crystal chapel made by sculptor Zurab Tsereteli and the other about a case involving the son of the Russian defense ministry), which had recently been taken off the air

The company Surgutneftegaz, which is known to be close to the Kremlin, became the main REN TV shareholder in September 2005.


4. The administration of the Pskov region has developed rules governing journalists’ accreditation with the region’s administration. A CJES legal expert’s commentary to these rules is located at the end of this bulletin.


IV. Lawsuits against Journalists


1. The November 17 session of the Omsk Oktyabrsky District Court, ended in a scandal after Justice Vera Syshchikova did not allow the plaintiff to take part in the trial for being one minute late.

The plaintiff is Dmitry Gutenev, a reporter with the newspaper Pravda, who is seeking a re-trial of the criminal case against him and the return of his property, which has been seized under a court ruling. Gutenev managed to get into the courtroom despite the judge’s decision. When the judge demanded that he leave and called bailiffs to ensure he complies, the journalist said: “This court session is taking place because of me. Why should I not attend it?”

The newspaper Vash OREOL reported the following on November 23: “The case is beginning to look increasingly like an anecdote: the plaintiff, safe and sound, was present when the court was deciding whether it should try the case in his absence! And the decision was positive.”

The journalist, who contends his innocence, says he was ready to provide to the court new evidence. However, Justice Syshchikova refused to hear it. The journalist can appeal within ten days if he can prove that he had good grounds to be late for the trial.


2. Taus Dzhabrailov, the head of the State Council of Chechnya, on November 22 filed a defamation lawsuit against the newspaper Novaya Gazeta. Dzhabrailov is seeking a refutation of the information stated in an article by Anna Politkovskaya entitled Zidan dlya Tainogo Golosovaniya.

In her article, Politkovskaya alleges that Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov personally beat up a man named Taus (his last name is not mentioned in the article). Nevertheless, Dzhabrailov found the article to be defamatory to him.


3. The Yaroslavl region’s prosecutor Mikhail Zelepukin has signed a decree to close the extortion case against Natalya Ilyushenkova, a reporter with the Yaroslavl region’s newspaper Zolotoye Koltso. The case against the journalist was opened by the Rybinsk law enforcement agencies.

Ilyushenkova was detained on August 31, 2005 as she received money from Eduard Litovsky, a businessman and a member of the Rybinsk City Council. Litovsky had contacted the police, saying the journalist was extorting money from him, threatening to publish information compromising him. Prosecutor Zelepukin closed the case against the journalist after finding no evidence of a crime in her actions.


4. The Moscow City Elections Commission on November 24 found Rodina party’s election advertisement featuring a group of men with origins in the Caucasus eating watermelons and throwing litter on a Moscow street to be in breach of the Moscow election legislation. The commission’s chairman Valentin Gorbunov said the ad has been found to “fan ethnic feud, that is, to violate Article 55 of the Moscow Elections Code.”

Rodina leader Dmitry Rogozin has told Interfax news agency that the Moscow City Elections Commission’s decision on the ad shows that the Moscow administration intends “to use its administrative resources to prevent the party from running for the city Duma.”


5. The Russian Central Elections Commission on November 25 found the election advertisement featuring Yabloko leader Grigory Yavlinsky, which has recently been aired on television, to be illegal and called on the broadcasts of the advertisement to be stopped.

The Central Elections Commission said the party Svobodnaya Rossiya, which the ad advertises, used the image of Yavlinsky, who is not running for the December 4 Duma elections, without his written consent. The Commission also cancelled the earlier decision made by the Moscow City Elections Commission, which found the ad to be legal.


Commentary Prepared by CJES Legal Expert Boris Panteleyev for Section III.4


The past week was very rich in information reports dealing with the regulating governing the relations between the media and the regional authorities.

Among the new documents on these issues over the past week are the media accreditation rules adopted by the administration of the Pskov region. Previously, there were no regulations governing the relations between the media and the region’s executive administration. Of course, any written rules are always better than unlimited bureaucratic arbitrariness. However, some provisions of the new rules lead us to assume that they will not help avoid conflicts because the region’s administration unilaterally interprets the law On the Mass Media to its benefit to limit the media access to official information.

Among these doubtful provisions is Item 4.3, which states that media organizations seeking accreditation are required to furnish two latest editions for the current year or two latest materials covering the work of the region’s administration aired over the past two months f the current year (for the electronic media). What is the porpoise of this strange provision? Did its authors intend to assume the functions of collecting mandatory copies of print products =, or were they looking to become literary critics? In any case, the law On the Mass media says nothing about such requirements. In addition, this requirement in effect makes it impossible for new media organizations to become accredited.

In general, the new document is very categorical and intolerant of any mistakes made by journalists. Under Item 5.3, a journalist can lose his or her accreditation and have his or her press identification confiscated if he or his organization has violated the new rules, has disseminated untrue information undermining the business reputation of the region’s administration, and defaming the honor, dignity and business reputation of officials of the region’s administration, which has been confirmed by a court ruling that has gone into effect. Journalists who have lost their accreditation can never have it reinstated under these rules.

The Pskov region’s administrative seems to give a lot of attention to protecting its “business reputation,” which, as we know, only businessmen can have.

All this makes it very difficult to believe that accreditation under the current law On the Mass media only provides journalists with additional advantages and not imposes new restrictions on them.


Event     Report by own correspondents
Attacks on journalists     
Journalists killed     
Journalists detained and arrested     1- Chelyabinsk region
1 – Perm region
1 – Samara region
Legal and judicial persecution     1 –Omsk region
6 –Moscow
1 – Chechen Republic
1 – Yaroslavl region
1 – Vladimir region
1 – Tver region
Other kinds of harassing editorial boards and journalists     1 – Pskov region
1 – Nizhny Novgorod region
1 – Arkhangelsk region
1 – Moscow
Restriction of access to information     2 – Moscow
1 – Nizhny Novgorod region
Disappeared journalists     
http://www.cjes.ru/bulletin/?bulletin_id=1795&lang=eng