Russian government censorship of Chechnya coverage

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This article has been tagged since March 2007.

At the start of the Second Chechen War federal authorities had designed and introduced a comprehensive system to control media access to the battlefield. [1]

The Russian government's control of all Russian television stations and its use of repressive rules, harassment, censorship, intimidation [2] and attacks on journalists (including the kidnapping of Radio Liberty correspondent Andrei Babitsky by the Russian military) almost completely deprived the Russian public of the independent information on the conflict. Local journalists in Chechnya face intense harassment and obstruction [3], while foreign journalists and media outlets are pressured into censoring their reports on the conflict, [4] making it nearly impossible for journalists to provide balanced coverage of Chechnya.

Since 2001, with the news dominated with the news of the Israeli-Arab conflict and the U.S. War on Terrorism, the conflict is almost completely forgetten by the international media. [5] Few Russian journalists write on Chechnya nowadays, and even fewer dare to criticize the government, instead choosing self-censorship.[6]

In 2005, Duma passed the law making the journalists being able to have access to and publish information about terrorist attacks only with permission from those directing counter-terrorist operations. [7] This allows the authorities to control the Russian media to the same extent that the visa law allows it to control foreign journalists (on August 2, 2005, responding to the airing of an interview with Basayev, Moscow banned journalists of the American ABC network from working in Russia [8]).

In 2006, Duma approved the Law on Fighting Extremist Activity, broadening the definition of extremism to include media criticism of public officials and provide for imprisonment of up to three years for journalists and the suspension or closure of their publications. [9] The law was used to used same year to shut down the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society [10] and convict its executive director Stanislav Dmitrievsky of "extremist" activities by publishing an open letter by Maskhadov in which the latter appealed to the European Parliament to hold Russia responsible for "genocide in Chechnya." [11]

Same year, Boris Stomakhin, Moscow journalist editor of Radikalnaya Politika was sentenced to five years in prison on charges of inciting ethnic hatred in reports about the conflict in Chechnya. [12] Also in 2006 Anna Politkovskaya, Russian journalist and political activist well known for her opposition to the Chechen conflict and Russian authorities, was shot dead in Moscow in an apparent contract killing.

In 2007, a poll asked Russians how they thought the situation in Chechnya was covered in the Russian media. 49 percent said they thought the coverage does not give a clear sense of what is happening, while 28 percent said it is not objective and "hides" the problems that exist there; only 11 percent said they were happy with media coverage of Chechnya. [13]

Practically all the local Chechen media are under total control of the pro-Moscow government.^{[citation needed]}