Leonid Gennadievich Parfyonov (Russian: Леонид Геннадьевич Парфёнов, b. January 26, 1960, Cherepovets, Vologda Oblast) is a Russian news anchor, journalist and an author of some popular TV shows. From December 3, 2004 until December 20, 2007 he was an Editor-in-Chief of the Russian edition of Newsweek.
He is also the author and narrator of the documentary cycle Namedni 1961-2003: Nasha Era in 42 TV series (1997). For this work he was presented with the TEFI award and also a special prize in 2004.
In November 2010 he became the first recipient of the Listyev Prize, in honour of Vladislav Listyev, a Russian journalist who was murdered in 1995 in Moscow. On receipt of the prize, he made a speech damning Russian TV, saying “journalists are not journalists at all but bureaucrats, following the logic of service and submission”.[1] In the past, Parfyonov had refrained from making political statements, saying "I am a professional journalist, not a professional revolutionary. My job is to report, not to climb the barricades".[2]