Russian Federation

Razvan Sibii

The story of Russian news media is closely linked to the country's political trajectory. Virtually every Russian leader in modern history—from the last Tsars to the Soviet heads of state from 1917 to 1990, to the post-1991 Russian Presidents—have realized the importance of controlling national media in their battles for political and ideological supremacy. As a result, for most of its life so far, Soviet/Russian print and later broadcast news media have been subject to state censorship and used as political and sometimes propaganda weapons. Nevertheless, millions of Russian citizens (as well as many others) have read newspapers such as Pravda and Izvestia for almost a century, making them some of the world's most successful (if deeply flawed) publications. The sober Soviet anchors presenting the news on the extremely popular TV news show Vremya has now given way to a myriad of talking heads. Most of them, however, are The ...

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