The treatment of Russian Journalists in Comparative Perspective

by GORDON HAHN

The Western mainstream media focuses inordinately on the repression of journalists in Russia as compared to other countries with much worse records. Never mentioned are: (1) contract murders are notoriously hard to solve whether the jurisdiction is Moscow, Latin America or America; (2) the number of unsolved contract murders of journalists (not to mention businessmen and others) during Boris Yeltsin’s presidency outpaced those during Putin’s eight years; and (3) almost all contract murders in Russia, likely including Politkovskaya’s, are ordered by criminal groups and/or corrupt local officials (with criminal ties or improper business dealings) being investigated because of being accidentally, or intentionally, exposed by journalists.

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Comments

[f.kriukov]

I think there is too much reliance on CPJ data in the article, and too many of their unfounded assertions are taken at face value. E.g., they manage to classify the deaths of Schekochikhin, Maksimov, and Safronov as murders, when in fact there isn't a shred of evidence to support it. Thus the number of journalists known to have been killed in Russia in 2000-2008 should be 16, not 19. Impunity rate is not 93.3% either. First of all, it is a meaningless statistic for combat deaths. Therefore, Yefremov and Scott should not be counted for that purpose. That leaves 14 murders to consider. Of that number, the murders of Domnikov, Klebnikov, Vagisov, and Kochetkov have been solved (even if convictions were impossible in all cases, such as Vagisov's murderer being killed off). Which means the "impunity rate" was closer to 71%.

I wrote about this back in February: http://fkriuk.blogspot.com/2008/02/audit-of-committee-to-protect.html