Are Putin's Censors Stricter Than the Soviets?
Thirty years after Gorbachev and glasnost, the Moscow Times says, late Soviet censorship is back with a vengeance—and a twist
Vladimir Putin in Belgrade, Serbia, in October.
Photographer: OLIVER BUNICThis article is for subscribers only.
A bold, 6,500-word opinion piece published this week in the Moscow Times details what it calls a "new censorship" imposed on the Russian news media by President Vladimir Putin and his allies, enforced by political power and Kremlin-friendly commercial interests.
Written by Vasily Gatov, a journalist and media critic, the piece charges the Kremlin with manipulation of the nation's news media that, "like a cancerous tumor ... supplants everything of value or vitality with diseased tissue." The headline is "How the Kremlin and the Media Ended Up in Bed Together." An editors' note at the top says the Russian news media "have turned into creators of the Matrix-like artificial reality."