SUNDAY: An award for dead journalists

Novaya Gazeta Editor-in-Chief Dmitri Muratov believes in investigative journalism, even though his staff are murdered for their work

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By Jussi Konttinen
     
      An award for dead journalists.
      That's what it is in essence, when the Russian opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta today [Sunday] collects the International Press Institute's 2009 Free Media Pioneer Award at the IPI World Congress and General Assembly, currently being arranged in Helsinki.
      “We will place the award in front of the photographs of our murdered journalists, for it is to a great extent a posthumous recognition for them and their work", says the newspaper's editor-in-chief Dmitri Muratov.
     
Four or five of the opposition paper's journalists have met an untimely end.
      The most famous murder victim was Anna Politkovskaya, killed in October 2006, and the most recent incident took place in Moscow in January of this year, when freelance journalist and human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov and freelance journalist Anastasia Baburova were shot and killed while leaving a press conference.
      How does an editor feel when his editorial staff are murdered?
      “After the Politkovskaya murder, I suggested to the desk that we fold up the newspaper. The journalists were of a very different view. We work with a high level of risk, which we try to minimise as best we can.”
     
Muratov has declared one area off-limits.
      The biweekly newspaper no longer writes about matters in Chechnya and the North Caucasus region.
      “I'm responsible for people, and I cannot protect staff there. Our journalists' lives are more important than that one subject”, says Muratov.
     
Novaya Gazeta was set up in 1993 by a breakaway group of reporters from the tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda.
      Today it is one of the few Russian publications that carries on critical investigative journalism.
      For example, in March of this year the paper revealed how executives in the state-owned aircraft industry had salted away hundreds of millions of euros into their own pockets.
     
According to one theory, the newspaper is under special protection from above. When the leadership of the Russian Federation wants to tell the world about its press freedom and freedom of expression, it can always point to Novaya Gazeta.
      "There is some truth in that. I have personally heard one of our ministers declaring in Berlin that 'Of course, we have Novaya Gazeta'. On the other hand, what kind of protection is it when our regional offices are shut down, our journalists are followed and bugged, and we have something like forty court actions raised against us every year?" asks Muratov.
     
Dmitri Muratov is regarded as a careful man, who has to weave a course through the buffeting cross-winds of fearless journalists, the newspaper's owners, and the Russian authorities.
      Novaya Gazeta was formerly owned by the editorial staff, but in 2006 nearly half of the stock was sold to the billionaire oligarch Alexander Lebedev and the former President of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev. Lebedev has been suspected in public of being a minion of the Kremlin.
      "The owners of the paper do not interfere in editorial matters", says Muratov vehemently. "If they disagree with the newspaper's line, they have the right to make their differences known on our pages. Lebedev has often done so."
     
According to Muratov, he and the owners have a clear difference of view on Russian politics.
      "In the opinion of Lebedev and Gorbachev, the bureaucracy and the effective one-party system prevent [Prime Minister] Vladimir Putin from modernising the country. To me, on the other hand, Putin has created both the bureaucracy and the one-party system."
     
Wealthy owners with deep pockets are needed, as the newspaper makes a loss.
      The economic crisis has not treated the opposition paper kindly. Journalists have been made redundant, and in May there were news reports of unpaid salaries.
      Muratov admits that salaries are lower than those paid in other national newspapers.
      "The bonus we can give to our reporters is that they can write freely. That is why they work for us."
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 7.6.2009
     


Links:
  IPI World Congress and General Assembly, Helsinki 6.-9.6.2009
  International Press Institute
  Novaya Gazeta (Wikipedia)
  Free Media Pioneer Award 2009

JUSSI KONTTINEN / Helsingin Sanomat
jussi.konttinen@hs.fi