Muratov and Novaya Gazeta: Russia’s unbiased media stalwarts

Newspaper Novaya Gazeta, whose editor-in-chief Dmitry Muratov gained the Nobel Peace Prize, is a bastion of unbiased media in Russia with a dedication to free speech that has value a few of its journalists their lives.

© Viken KANTARCI
The Nobel Committee in Oslo publicizes the recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize for 2021 as Filipino-American journalist Maria Ressa and Russian journalist and newspaper editor Dmitry Muratov

© Dimitar DILKOFF
Dmitry Muratov was amongst a gaggle of journalists who based Novaya Gazeta in 1993 after the autumn of the Soviet Union

Muratov, who was amongst a gaggle of journalists who based Novaya Gazeta in 1993 after the autumn of the Soviet Union, devoted the award to the paper’s murdered journalists and jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny.

© Natalia KOLESNIKOVA
Whereas the Kremlin congratulated Muratov on successful the prize, Putin warned the editor to not use it as “a defend” to interrupt Russian legal guidelines

It got here amid a historic crackdown on the opposition and unbiased media in Russia. 

Numerous retailers had been compelled to shut this yr and a number of other outstanding journalists fled the nation. Navalny, 45, was jailed in February and his organisations had been subsequently outlawed.

Novaya Gazeta has paid a heavy value for its unbiased stance and investigative protection.

Since 2000, six of its journalists and contributors have been killed in reference to their work, together with prime investigative reporter Anna Politkovskaya. Their black-and-white portraits now hold within the newspaper’s places of work in central Moscow.

Nobel Peace Prize goes to journalists Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov

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Politkovskaya, a critic of President Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin’s wars in Chechnya, was shot lifeless on October 7, 2006, within the entrance corridor of her condo constructing.

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In an interview with AFP in March, Muratov mentioned the newspaper’s reporters knew their work put their lives in danger, however that in contrast to another Kremlin critics they might not go into exile.

“This newspaper is harmful for individuals’s lives,” Muratov mentioned. “We’re not going wherever.”

– Putin’s warning –

Gray-bearded and round-faced, Muratov has been considered one of Russia’s most outstanding unbiased journalists for many years.

He and Novaya Gazeta’s different founders had been impressed by the newfound freedoms that adopted the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

A key early supporter was former Soviet chief Mikhail Gorbachev, who donated a part of his 1990 Nobel Peace Prize cash to purchase the brand new publication its first computer systems — considered one of them nonetheless on show of their workplace.

The heady optimism of these early days is lengthy gone. Within the years since Putin got here to energy in 1999, crucial voices have been more and more pushed to the sidelines.

Novaya Gazeta has develop into one of many few remaining unbiased voices in a gray media panorama.

Kremlin critics say authorities are waging a marketing campaign in opposition to unbiased and demanding media, with many branded “international brokers” and others compelled to close down.

Novaya Gazeta is without doubt one of the few outstanding unbiased retailers that also don’t carry the “international agent” tag, a standing paying homage to the Soviet-era time period “enemy of the individuals”.

Whereas the Kremlin congratulated Muratov on successful the prize, Putin warned the editor to not use it as “a defend” to interrupt Russian legal guidelines.

– Investigative journalism –

Novaya Gazeta, which is printed 3 times per week, focuses on deep-dive investigative reviews into corruption and rights abuses, and its journalists have lengthy confronted intimidation and violence.

In 2018, a funeral wreath and a severed ram’s head had been delivered to the newspaper’s places of work with a be aware addressed to considered one of its reporters who coated the shadowy Wagner mercenary group working within the Center East and Africa. 

The investigations had make clear Wagner’s operations overseas and on its alleged ties to a Kremlin-linked businessman, Yevgeny Prigozhin.

Earlier this yr, the paper was once more focused in what editors mentioned was an obvious chemical assault.

Regardless of the strain, the newspaper has refused to shrink back from robust investigations. It was one of many publications that dug by means of the trove of paperwork leaked within the Panama Papers scandal, exposing offshore wealth of Russian officers.

Muratov was born within the southwestern metropolis of Kuybyshev, now referred to as Samara, on October 30, 1961.

He labored early in his profession for the populist each day Komsomolskaya Pravda, however left with a number of of his colleagues who weren’t pleased with its editorial insurance policies. Collectively, they based Novaya Gazeta and Muratov has served a number of instances as its editor-in-chief since 1995. 

Novaya Gazeta has a print circulation of round 100,000 and, in response to the paper, had 18.4 million on-line views in November.

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