Novaya Gazeta logo |
|
| Type | weekly |
|---|---|
| Format | A2 per spread |
| Owner | Mikhail Gorbachev Alexander Lebedev |
| Editor | Dmitry Muratov |
| Founded | April 1, 1993 |
| Political alignment | Liberalism, Opposition |
| Headquarters | Moscow, Russia |
| Circulation | 184,400[1] |
| Official website | www.novayagazeta.ru |
Novaya Gazeta (Russian: Новая газета, translated as New Gazette) is a Russian newspaper well known in the country for its critical and investigative coverage of Russian political and social affairs.[2] It is published in Moscow, regions within Russia and in some foreign countries. As of 2009, the newspaper is published on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Four Novaya Gazeta journalists were murdered between 2001 and 2009.[3]
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Novaya Gazeta is known for being critical of Russian government policy. Journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was critical of Russia's actions in Chechnya, wrote for Novaya Gazeta until her assassination on October 7, 2006. The journalist wrote in an essay that the editors received:
Visitors every day in our editorial office who have nowhere else to bring their troubles, because the Kremlin finds their stories off-message, so that the only place they can be aired is in our newspaper, Novaya Gazeta.[4]
Yury Shchekochikhin, a renowned journalist and deputy in the State Duma, had also worked for the newspaper as an investigative journalist and had been a deputy Editor-in-Chief of it until he died after a mysterious and severe allergy on July 3, 2003. Some of his contributions published in Novaya Gazeta were related to the investigation of the Three Whales Corruption Scandal.
Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and State Duma Deputy Alexander Lebedev own 49% of the newspaper and the paper's staff controls the remaining 51% of shares. Gorbachev has long been a friend of the paper. He used the money from his 1990 Nobel Peace Prize to help set up Novaya Gazeta in 1993 and purchase its first computers.[5]
On 13 April 2009, the newspaper was granted the first-ever print interview in a Russian publication with President Dmitri Medvedev, discussing such issues as civil society and the social contract, transparency of public officials and Internet development.[6]
Svobodnoe Prostranstvo ("Free Space", Russian: Свободное Пространство), which formerly was a colour supplement to Novaya Gazeta, is included in the Friday issue.[7][8]
Novaya Gazeta issues regularly contain free inserts of its side-projects or other newly launched newspapers. United Civil Front newspaper (by the corresponding organisation) and Yabloko's newspaper were published in the form of such inserts in the past.
Current inserts are Shofyor ("Driver" or "chauffeur", Russian: Шофёр) side-project, popular-scientific Kentavr ("Centaur", Russian: Кентавр).
Le Monde diplomatique (Russian version) has been promoted by means of being issued as such inserts for one year. The number of subscribers after that has amounted to 43 and continuation of issuing the insert has been considered senseless.[9]
Novaya Gazeta has published The New York Times International Weekly on Fridays since 2009. This 8-page supplement features a selection of articles from The New York Times translated into Russian.
In 2004 the newspaper printed seven articles by columnist Georgy Rozhnov, which accused Sergey Kiriyenko of embezzling US$4.8 billion of International Monetary Fund funds in 1998 when he was Prime Minister of Russia.[10] The newspaper based the accusations on a letter allegedly written to Colin Powell and signed by US Congressmen Philip Crane, Mike Pence, Charlie Norwood, Dan Burton and Henry Bonilla and posted on the website of the American Defense Council.[11] The newspaper went on to claim that Kiriyenko had used some of the embezzled funds to purchase real estate in the United States. It was later revealed that the letter was a prank concocted by The eXile.[11][12] In response, Kiriyenko sued Novaya Gazeta and Rozhnov for libel,[12] and in passing judgement in favour of Kiriyenko the court ordered Novaya Gazeta to retract all publications relating to the accusations, and noted "Novaya gazeta’s content on the missing IMF funds include a great deal of unproven information" and also went on to say that the newspaper "is obliged to publish only officially proven information linking Mr Kiriyenko with embezzlement."[10]
On 26 November 2001, Novaya Gazeta published an article by Oleg Lurie stating that the management of the International Industrial Bank headed by Sergey Pugachyov had been involved in money laundering in the Bank of New York.[13] Pugachyov's bank brought a libel suit against the newspaper citing financial losses, as a number of its customers had allegedly changed the terms of their accounts in a loss-making way because of the publication. On 28 February 2002, the bank won the case in Moscow's Basmanny municipal court and was awarded 15 million rubles (about $500,000) in lost revenue, an unprecedented sum for Russian newspapers that might undermine the very existence of Novaya Gazeta, especially as on February 22 Novaya Gazeta had been ordered by the same Basmanny court to pay about $1 million for a corruption allegation against the Krasnodar Krai's top judge. In April the decision on the International Industrial Bank case was reconfirmed by a court. However, in an article of 27 May 2002,[14] Yulia Latynina, a Novaya Gazeta journalist, revealed that the bank's three customers named in the lawsuit were its subsidiaries or otherwise controlled by its board of directors, and claimed that Novaya Gazeta had requested to open a criminal fraud investigation into the activities of the bank. As a result, in June 2002 the International Industrial Bank renounced its claim to the compensation.[15][16]
On January 26, 2010, the paper's web site was subjected to a denial of service attack and effectively taken offline.[17] As of February 1, 2010, the site was still inaccessible. At the height of the attack the server was receiving 1.5 million connections per second.[18] The newspaper maintained its online presence by publishing articles on its LiveJournal page.[19] On April 7, 2011, the web site was targeted again with the same botnet that appears to be used in a large scale attack on LiveJournal that hosts many opposition blogs.[20][21][22][23]
Journalist and human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov was shot and killed in Moscow on 19 January 2009 leaving a press conference about his last minute appeal against the early release of Yuri Budanov, a former commander imprisoned for kidnapping, abuse of power and aggravated murder of a young Chechen woman.[25][26] Anastasia Baburova, a freelance journalist for Novaya Gazeta and a member of Autonomous Action, was with Markevlov at the time and was also shot and killed. Racist groups hailed Markelov's killing in Internet chatter, but it is unclear whether they were behind it.