Well, yes, obviously—censorship and all that. Everyone knows it, and Putin denies it. But this is just staggering in its sheer bluntness and childish naivety.
Brazen simplicity is worse than theft. We are filing a lawsuit over this act of censorship and demanding that a criminal case be opened for obstructing journalistic activity. I am also formally appealing to the journalists’ union, urging it to finally do something useful and take this to court as well.
So. In Siberia, there is a media outlet called Sib.fm.
On September 18, they published a news item saying that I was coming to Novosibirsk and holding a rally. A routine story, nothing special.
But then the story was deleted, and some time later the outlet’s editor-in-chief announced that he was leaving. In an interview with Radio Liberty (the Russian service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty), he said plainly why:
All of this was outrageous and criminal enough, but this morning the owner of Sib.fm also came forward with an explanation—and it is magnificent:
Great, right? Some people who financially support the outlet asked them to.
Which, put plainly, means: some ugly United Russia mug sitting in the State Duma bought up our outlet to push its own politics, so the name “Navalny” is banned here.
But we will still call ourselves a media outlet, call our staff “journalists,” and pontificate about all sorts of important issues.
I would very much like whatever remains of Russia’s journalistic community to respond to this somehow.
P.S. This is exactly why we included a policy plank saying that oligarchs should not own media outlets. Because these “people who financially support the outlet,” along with the editors-in-chief who serve them, have broken everything for us—from Kommersant to Lenta. In essence, they are worse than Kiselyov (Dmitry Kiselyov, a prominent pro-Kremlin TV propagandist).
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