April 2016: journalists at a Moscow newspaper watch "Direct Line with Vladimir Putin". (с) Aleksandr Vilf / VisualRIAN. All rights reserved.The idea of conducting a survey of Russian journalists came to me after seeing something similar in New York magazine, which earlier this year polled 113 people working in the US media on the problems and challenges they face. I thought it’d be interesting to compare the responses of journalists working on opposite sides of the Atlantic. On the one hand, you have the experience of a country where every schoolchild feels pride in the First Amendment, which forbids Congress to pass any legislation limiting freedom of speech and the press, and, on the other, experience from a country where censorship was officially banned only 26 years ago.
My survey of Russian journalists showed that 72% of respondents had encountered instances of censorship in their work; 87% agreed that it exists in Russia and 92% that the majority of Russian mass media outlets were biased. Eighty two percent see the post-2012 period as the worst for Russia’s media (and another 11% see Vladimir Putin’s first two terms in the same light), while 73% of respondents saw Boris Yeltsin’s presidency as the most positive for their work. Almost a quarter of respondents believe that there is no one to help them assert their rights.
Who are these people?
I invited potential respondents to participate on Facebook — most of the people who got back to me were journalists working for the quality press and media.
