Putin Continues to Suppress Journalism in Russia

BIANNA GOLODRYGA: And, from your perspective, given that this happened to Meduza as well — they have been labeled a foreign agent — how much further, how much worse can things get?

ALEXEY KOVALEV, INVESTIGATIONS EDITOR, MEDUZA: Oh, they can get much, much worse. I mean, look at Belarus. I mean, we’re not there yet. We’re probably a few months behind. But I’m really — most of us are really past the point of being afraid. It’s — right now, it’s just incredibly tiring. Every morning, I’m waking up and checking my phone to see if there are any ongoing raids, just first to make sure that the police are not ramming down my door or the doors of my parents. Next, I’m checking if there are ongoing raids on my colleagues. And if not, so I’m thinking, so what am I going to do today? Am I going to do any actual public service journalism? Or am I going to document the demise of my own industry? And it’s just — it’s just really frustrating. I was just talking with a colleague who also — who had to shut down kind of preemptively before being declared a foreign agent, because they heard through the grapevine that that’s probably what’s going to happen in the nearest future, and they shut down their media organization. And we were discussing this. And we were — we both thought just it’s really frustrating to be spending the best years, the most productive years of our professional lives on this, because it’s not just the — being afraid of those raids. These laws, these foreign agent law — and one organization was even declared an undesirable organization, like Proekt, another investigative outlet And they just really had to evacuate their employees out of the country, because it’s now simply illegal for anyone to work with them or even post links to the Web site.

(CROSSTALK)

KOVALEV: Yes.

GOLODRYGA: Well, I was going to say, the one commonality seems to be that they are at times critical and objective when it comes to reporting on domestic affairs, specifically the Kremlin. Can you give our viewers an indication of what it means to be labeled a foreign agent, an undesirable? I follow your Web site. And perhaps many people don’t. They should. But it does come with many warnings now that just really are an eyesore.

KOVALEV: Well, it’s designed to be so. I mean, and it’s also a legal mine field. So, after I check my phone for any ongoing raids in the homes of my colleagues, during the day, I will have to check every story I file and upload on the Web site to make sure that I really put all those ugly legal disclaimers on the names of all those other organizations that have been declared undesirable or extremist, to make sure that I’m not fined for omitting this disclaimer.