The Kremlin’s ax hit one of the very few Russian newspapers that do not present the news following the dictates of Putin’s propaganda. The online newspaper Meduza has ended up on the black list that Moscow reserves for the media: the list of newspapers branded with the infamous “foreign agent” label. This was enough to bring down advertising investments in the blink of an eye, Alexey Kovalyov, one of Meduza’s best-known reporters, explained to La Stampa. The newspaper has closed its offices, has cut the salaries of its editors, sometimes down to half, and is now struggling to survive.
«Now – reports Kovalyov – all published materials must be preceded by a message that says that Meduza is a foreign agent, and this message must be written in larger characters than those of the article itself. This also concerns advertising and therefore almost all advertisers have immediately left because they do not want to see this text on their ad ”.
Readers’ support: “Almost 80,000 donations”
“The goal of the authorities is to kill Meduza”, he said without mincing words the director, Ivan Kolpakov.
In the Russian media landscape dotted with pro-government TV and newspapers, Meduza is undoubtedly a point of reference for those who want to get informed with news written in a clear way and without the usual smokescreen of the media enslaved to the Kremlin.
Meduza was founded in 2014, and not in Russia but in Latvia to try to remain independent and avoid being targeted in Moscow’s constant crackdown on newspapers and the web. In these seven years it has conquered a large number of readers and now they could be the ones to save it from this umpteenth slap of Russia to the freedom of the press. A few days after the Russian Ministry of Justice defined her as a “foreign agent”, Meduza has in fact launched a fundraiser among readers and the first results are encouraging: as of May 12 – in fact, the newspaper said – almost 80,000 people carried out a donation.
“Together, you have worked a miracle”, commented the newspaper addressing its readers.
The road, however, is still full of obstacles. With inclusion in the Kremlin black list, Meduza will, for example, be subjected to stricter administrative controls and – as he points out Reporters Without Borders – if it is deemed to be in default, it will risk high fines or even having the site blocked.
But what other threats hang over Meduza after she’s been labeled a foreign agent? And why does this blow come right now? We asked Meduza’s journalist Aleksey Kovalyov, whom we interviewed in a Moscow bar a few days ago.
Read the interview
Russia and the gag for the press
In Reporters Without Borders’ world press freedom ranking, Russia is quite low: relegated to 150th place out of 180 (2020 World Press Freedom Index). After the anti-Putin protests of 2011 and 2012, the Kremlin has tightened its grip on dissent and pressure on the media and journalists, and lately, according to many observers, things are only getting worse. The government mainly uses television channels to spread its point of view and sing the praises of Putin and his allies. Newspapers and journalists who have a critical attitude towards the Kremlin risk instead of becoming “foreign agents”, that is, of being labeled with a derogatory brand that is so reminiscent of that of a “spy”. A 2012 law allows organizations that receive funds from abroad and are engaged in unspecified “political activities” to be branded as a “foreign agent”: a broad definition with indefinite contours, whose real objective seems to be to discredit and isolate the inconvenient entities for the Kremlin and which since last year also extends to the people. From 2017, newspapers can also be recognized as “foreign agents” on the basis of a law that Amnesty International did not hesitate to call “a serious blow to the already rather desperate situation of press freedom in Russia”.
Radio Liberty and The Voice of America, financed with American public money, immediately ended up on the Moscow blacklist. But now, as we have seen, there is also a de facto Russian newspaper like Meduza. After wiping out dissent from TV and reducing the upper limit of foreign quotas in newspapers to 20%, Putin has thus placed another dangerous sword of Damocles on the press in Russia, where opponents have practically no access to the mass media anymore. influential and TV is practically a propaganda tool almost exclusively in the hands of the Kremlin.