RBC's offices, Moscow. (c) Aleksei Fillipov / RIA Novosti. All rights reserved.Two weeks ago, Russia’s media community was shaken by scandal after a meeting between the new management of a leading business media and its journalists was leaked word-for-word online. Indeed, the reaction has been fiercely polarising, with journalists debating the fine print of professional ethics in public for all to see.
The strength of this reaction is easy to explain: the transcript exposed a taboo — every Russian journalist has an implicit understanding of what you can and can’t publish, but they don’t discuss this in public. The exact content of the discussion over this leak, however, reveals the divisions inside Russia’s journalist community.
Reputations built and broken
Over the past three years, business media RBC has built a solid reputation as a leading source of investigative journalism in Russia — breaking the identity of Putin’s daughter after an investigation into university expansion in Moscow, exposing details of corruption at state infrastructure projects and inside the Russian Orthodox Church.
