Russia’s media battle heats up; U.S. concerned

Imagine the outcry in democratic America if industry controlled by the government seized the only national independent media outlets, including television, newspaper and a weekly magazine? That’s exactly what has happened in Russia, where many journalists say free speech is dead in a country that broke away from communism 10 years ago. HE STATE-RUN company is gas giant Gazprom. Itmounted a coup at a recent board meeting and installed Boris Jordan, an American of Russian descent, as the new general director of Russia’s only independent television network, NTV. The Bush administration criticized the move Wednesday. “We think that the Russian people have made very important gains in the last few years with regard to freedom of information and expression,” State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said. “We think that those gains are put in jeopardy by the actions that the Russian government has taken, including the use of political pressure and intimidation tactics.” NBC News met with Jordan, NTV’s new director, in his posh downtown Moscow office, where he seemed genuinely amazed that reporters didn’t want him. At that moment, those journalists had suspended programming at the NTV headquarters and replaced soap operas and movies with special news broadcasts claiming that at any moment government troops could storm the station. Jordan told NBC News, “The ex-management of the company is using the shield of freedom of speech to hide away from the real problems of the company, which are financial.” He said NTV was never profitable and that its holding company Media-Most, “has debts of over a billion dollars to various groups, from the Moscow government to Gazprom.”