Campaigners accused the Kremlin yesterday on Friday of killing off the last vestiges of independent TV in Russia, after it emerged that the two remaining private TV channels would come under state control next year.
REN TV and St Petersburg’s Fifth Channel, which are sometimes critical of the authorities, have until now been Russia’s last semi-independent private stations. They are the only channels on which opposition politicians can air their views, or where dissenting voices may be heard.
Next year both channels’ news bulletins will be restructured, Russia’s Kommersant newspaper reported on Friday. The state-owned, pro-Kremlin English language station Russia Today will take over responsibility for their news broadcasts from next year, the paper said.
Journalists said they were appalled by the move.
“This means independent TV will be destroyed. It will disappear,” said Oleg Ptashkin, a former correspondent with Russia’s state-run Channel One TV. Ptashkin added: “Russians won’t be able to find alternative views to state propaganda. We are returning to the Soviet regime and Soviet model.”
Asked what he thought of Russia Today, founded by the Kremlin in 2005 to counter perceived “hostile” Western reporting of Russia, he said: “It’s a third-rate channel, which produces Soviet propaganda.”
Soon after becoming president in 2000, Vladimir Putin squashed the country’s independent TV stations, bringing them under the control of government-friendly corporations. Until now, the Kremlin has not interfered with REN TV or the Fifth Channel. But the economic crisis, and fear of an uprising, appears to have persuaded Russia’s risk-averse leadership to pull the plug on the last surviving television platforms for liberal views and discussion.
“Speaking personally, I’m sad. They have a brilliant team of professionals. They’ve won several prizes from the academy of Russian television,” Olga Shorina, spokeswoman for the democratic opposition movement Solidarity, said.
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