RUSSIA GETS LOW GRADE FOR PRESS FREEDOM

MOSCOW, October 28 (RIA Novosti) – Russia ranks 140th for press freedom
in the year 2004, according to a new global index released by Reporters
Without Borders. The survey covers 167 countries worldwide.

The organization points out in a commentary that Russian media coverage
of the Beslan hostage-taking crisis earlier this year revealed the
Kremlin’s ongoing control of major television broadcasters in the
country. It also criticizes the Russian government for censoring the
coverage of developments in Chechnya and the recent murder of Paul
Khlebnikov, Moscow-based Editor-in-Chief of the Forbes magazine’s
Russian-language version.

Reporters Without Borders has upgraded Russia from its last year’s
148th position, notes the Novye Izvestia daily. It now ranks above the
former Soviet republics of Uzbekistan (142nd position) and Belarus
(144th). Latvia (10th position), Estonia (11th), and Lithuania
(16th) were found to be the best performers across the former Soviet
Union. Russia also ranks below Moldova (78th place), Armenia (83rd),
Georgia (94th), Tajikistan (95th), Kyrgyzstan (107th), Kazakhstan
(131st), and Azerbaijan (136th). It comes on the list immediately
after Ukraine (139th).

Officials at Russia’s Federal Media Agency told Novye Izvestia they
would not comment on Reporters Without Borders’ new press freedom
index. “We don’t regulate what media produce,” they said. “We aren’t
a censoring body. We’ve got no censorship at all, for that matter.”

Oleg Panfilov, Director of the Moscow-based Center for Journalism in
Extreme Situations, who contributed to last year’s survey, has told the
newspaper that he sees the conclusions of the compilers of the rating
as biased. He said he could not figure out what kind of methods they
employed. “Reporters [Without Borders] uses a mathematical approach
of some sort,” he pointed out in an Izvestiya interview. “In the newly
released survey, Nigeria comes 118th, this despite the situation with
press freedomthere being still worse than in Russia. And then, the
situation varies across the Russian provinces. Thus, for instance,
the Perm Region has no government-controlled newspapers at all. Whereas
in Kalmykia, the situation with press freedom is as bad as in [the
former Soviet republic of] Turkmenistan.”

The main assessment criteria for Reporters Without Borders’ press
freedom index include the level of censorship, the number of
journalists arrested and murdered, the government share in major
media organizations, and journalist activity’s regulatory foundation.