Of course, there are no illusions regarding the garbage spouted out by the state media in Russia and even if, RT did for a time offer a platform for some excellent journalists, like Abby Martin, it was only when they were reporting on anything that had nothing to do with Russia, or at least anything that didn’t conflict with the official view. Independent newspapers in Russia were a different matter and they did write on topics that were a thorn in the eye for the Kremlin. Moreover, on a personal level, the “Novaya Gazeta” in particular has offered a sort of refuge from the numerous versions of the same main stream drivel that we are bombarded with in the West. The assumption has to be that In Putin’s Russia it offered even more.
Today it is reported that the Novay Gazeta, whose editor-in-chief, Dmitry Muratov, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021, is to suspend operations until after the war following a second warning from state censors for contravening Moscow’s “foreign agent” law. On pasting the articles from the paper, which I have been doing regularly for the last couple of weeks, into Google Translator, I became privy to the Novaya Gazeta Editorial Board’s statement that after receiving another warning from Roskomnadzor (the state censor) the publication of the newspaper on the website, in the networks and on paper are all suspended until the end of the “special operation on the territory of Ukraine”. Indeed, the evidence would appear to suggest that putting the words “special operation” into inverted commas alone might have been enough to ensure the paper’s demise in Putin’s Russia.
Still, we shouldn’t be too smug in our world where twenty variations of the same theme, along with hypocricy, hubris, hysteria, and hallucinations, all overcome our senses and make any real cognitive processing well nigh impossible. Almost hopeless, perhaps, but not quite and if it is becoming difficult to find good objective reporting on the war in the Ukraine, we can at least seek solace in the fact that after just one month some of our shit media is already more interested in Kate and Willie in Jamaica, Will Smth at the Oscars, and Kourtney Kardashian having her butt grabbed, by her fiancé of all people.
Yes, thank fuck for panem et circenses and “the almost hopeless, but not quite”, along with the bread and circuses, leaves me thinking that with Novaya Gazeta’s closure, and the closing of the window on the West, life for Russians is becoming just that little bit tougher, and rougher. Mind you, I am going to miss my daily read of ‘Novayya Gazeta’ which among other things was reporting on the effects sanctions were having on normal Russians.