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.
