Russia: Newspaper Vedomosti sees tightening of control as press freedom is under attack

Senior staff at Vedomosti, one of Russia’s most highly regarded, independent business newspapers, published an editorial on Thursday 23 April, condemning their own new acting editor-in-chief, Andrey Shmarov. He has been accused of banning criticism of constitutional amendments backed by Vladimir Putin and the use of data from an independent pollster.

“With this editorial, we would like to confirm that we cherish the values upon which Vedomosti’s reputation is built and we intend to continue defending them. If Vedomosti loses its reputation, it will become just another subservient and controlled media outlet driven not by readers’ need for verified news and high-quality analysis but by the interests and ambitions of its official and hidden owners. There are already enough media outlets like this in Russia,” said the editorial.

In the editorial, the Vedomosti journalists called for Shmarov, who only became the new editor-in-chief a month ago, to be replaced. After his installation on 24 March, he promptly alienated the staff in a bawdy introduction where he touted his ignorance about Vedomosti’s own code of ethics, professed not to read the newspaper itself, and then defended Harvey Weinstein and expressed skepticism about the very concept of sexual harassment.
On Wednesday, Ksenia Boletskaya, the newspaper’s media editor, wrote that Shmarov had banned the publication of polls by the independent pollster Levada because the Kremlin had opposed them, and that Shmarov had blocked reporters from criticising Putin’s plans to use constitutional amendments to “zero out” his presidential terms, potentially allowing him to hold power until 2036.

“For failing to follow the bans, you’ll be fired,” Boletskaya wrote.

The newspaper staff also claim that Shmarov personally intervened to change the headline of an article about Russia’s largest oil producer, Rosneft. In mid-April, he intervened again in the newspaper’s reporting about Rosneft – this time completely removing an op-ed by columnist Konstantin Sonin titled, “A Hard Time of Responsibility.”
Vedomosti, founded in 1999 in a partnership that included the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal, is one of Russia’s most storied business newspapers and is one of the shrinking numbers of independent news outlets still running.
Since new laws were imposed in 2014 that limited foreign control and investment of media, a number of independent outlets have been censored by owners with pro-government views.
In 2014, staff at the news website Lenta.ru complained of censorship and quit en masse after the site’s editor was dismissed and sources speaking to Meduza, an independent media outlet forced to operate from Riga, say Vedomosti’s new controversial chief editor was handpicked by the Putin administration.
In 2016, a newly installed manager of RBC, another business news site, which had written about controversial topics including Putin’s children, told reporters there were “solid double lines” that the reporters had to be careful not to cross. Asked what those were, the manager replied: “Unfortunately, nobody knows where the solid double line is.”
A week ago, independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta was forced to take down an article about measures introduced to tackle the coronavirus in the North Caucasus region of Chechnya following a request by the country’s media regulator, Roskomnadzor. The Kremlin-backed leader of the region, Ramzan Kadyrov, had slammed the article as “absurd” and threatened to physically harm the author, Yelena Milashina.
Her article had focused on the lack of protective gear for medical personnel in Chechnya and local authorities’ mass detention of residents who allegedly violated strict quarantine measures.

Kadyrov said that Novaya Gazeta’s story on Chechens underreporting potential coronavirus symptoms out of fear for their safety would lead “someone” to “commit a crime” against its author.

The veteran journalist and her lawyer were previously subjected to a physical attack in a Chechen hotel in February that Kadyrov said had no witnesses.
The representative on media freedom for the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Harlem Desir, expressed concern about Roskomnadzor’s move, saying that “media must be able to report on the pandemic, and citizens must have access to information.”

He also strongly condemned the death threats against Milashina, a recipient of the 2013 International Woman of Courage Award, saying: “This is worrying and should stop immediately. Journalists must have the right to report on Covid-19 without intimidation.”

Kadyrov also openly threatened the RFE/RL’s North Caucasus Service chief, Aslan Doukaev. In a video posted on YouTube on 1 April, Kadyrov uses vulgar words during a discussion about an RFE/RL article challenging the Chechen authorities’ policies toward farmers during the coronavirus pandemic with several members of his government. He is cursing Doukaev, the author of the article and threatening to punish him “to the full extent.”