An anchor with Russia's last big television station openly critical of President Vladimir Putin has been ordered off the air. REN TV anchor Olga Romanova said on Friday that security guards blocked her way when she arrived for work on Thursday night.
Romanova, one of Russia's best known television news anchors who won an award last year for her analytical news coverage, said managers had earlier stopped her broadcasting an item about a fatal road accident involving the defence minister's son.
"Legal experts and I are preparing documents to be submitted to court, as [the actions of the channel's management] hinder [my] professional work," she said, according to a Novosti news agency report. Romanova said that on Thursday evening, security guards of the Yevraziya agency did not let her into the studio, where she was supposed to anchor two nightly newscasts.
She said she has still not been allowed to enter the studio. "The studio has been put under guard. The Yevraziya guards say the management, (REN TV director-general Alexander Ordzhonikidze] instructed them not to let me in," Romanova said.
Romanova said that the security agency "[had] nothing to do with REN TV security." She said she had been unable to talk to anyone in the management since Thursday. Romanova said Ordzhonikidze had told her to go to a doctor and take sick leave. "He said he did not want me to anchor the programme," she added. REN TV was known for its incisive news coverage and documentaries.
In a chat show on Ekho Moskvy, one of Russia's most liberal radio stations, Romanova claimed earlier she had been forced to drop two news items for political reasons. The first concerned the closure of an investigation into a hit-and-run incident involving the defence minister's son, and the second about the construction in central Moscow of a $15m chapel by Zurab Tsereteli, a Kremlin-backed sculptor loathed by the general public.
The pressing reason for Romanova being sidelined was apparently a report that prosecutors had dropped charges against the son of defence minister, Sergei B Ivanov. An elderly pedestrian was killed when the car Alexander Ivanov was driving hit her. "I said on air that (this) was an important story that people had a right to hear," Romanova told Reuters. "Soon after this I was told they did not want me on air."
Ordzhonikidze said on Ekho Moskvy Thursday that the cancellation of Romanova's newscasts did not mean she had been banned from anchoring all programmes. He said the channel's news programmes had low ratings and that the management had decided to test other anchors for the newscasts. "Besides, it's hard for one person to anchor all the nightly newscasts every weekday. The person may just feel bad," Ordzhonikidze said.
"Olga Romanova's treatment is a clarion call that tells us that we have lost the last station which kept even a little independence and objectivity in its coverage," Interfax news agency quoted former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev as saying.
Fredrick Yakovenko, of the Russian Union of Journalists, called the incident evidence of censorship. "They have closed off the last air hole for nationwide political broadcast. This has a completely obvious political character," he said. "I think national broadcasts are now completely encased in concrete. National mass media are, it appears, now basically finished," Yakovenko was quoted in the Independent.
Founder of REN TV Irena Lesnevskaya expressed her bewilderment in an interview with Interfax. "It is possible to punish someone before or after a live show – anything can happen in a company – but a live show is sacred," she said.
REN TV was founded and run by Lesnevskaya and her son Dmitry who jealously guarded the station's editorial independence. They sold their stake as part of a takeover deal sealed in October with oil producer Surgutneftegaz, German television network RTL and industrial congomolerate Severstal. Both Surgutneftegaz and Severstal are said to have close links with the Kremlin. The station's new owners had poromised there would be no change in editorial policy.
The deal has strengthened the Kremlin's grip on Russia's media and could make coverage more compliant in the build-up to a presidential election in 2008 when Putin, limited by law to two terms, must step down. All Russia's national television stations are either state-owned or owned by state-run companies.
REN TV only broadcasts directly to Moscow and the surrounding region, though it reaches some viewers elsewhere through local affiliates. REN TV claims it reaches 97 million of Russia's 144 million population.
