press freedoms -- on media distribution

[Andrey Shcherbenok]

Michele A Berdy wrote:

> May I remind people that Russia is an enormous country, and the various
points of view in newspapers, internet, and radio are only accessible to a
small percentage of it?  The newspapers you cite are available in Moscow,
St. Petersburg, and -- to a much more limited degree -- the other major
cities.  Ekho Moskvy reaches about a half million listeners.  If you go to
Magadan or Ukhta or Vladikavkaz, you will not find Kommersant or Novaya
gazeta or even Itogi (or if you do find them, they are out of date and
expensive).  Only a small percentage of the country has access to internet.
So -- really only about 20 million people out of 145 have access to any of
this.  
That is, about 87 percent of the population only has access to TV, which is
not a free medium.
----------------------------------

This is simply incorrect in every point.

The coverage of Echo Moskvy is 46 835 000 people -- here is the link to
their own website with the list of covered cities
http://www.echo.msk.ru/about/regions/index.html
How many people actually listen to it or any other radio is their own
choice.

Kommersant has its own local editions in 11 (!) cities outside Moscow,
including Khabarovsk and Perm and is obviously sold in many more.
http://www.kommersant.ru/region/regions.html

Keep in mind, that while Russia is a huge country, it is highly urbanized:
3/4 of its population live in cities, 1/3 of the population -- in the 13
largest cities with the population over 1 million people. Statistics is
easily available online.

There are a lot of smaller cities closely connected to Moscow and St.
Petersburg economically (like Yaroslavl or Novgorod), which often have the
same newspaper stands with the same assortment as the megapolises. I am not
mentioning highly populated Moscow Region and St. Petersburg Region, which
are practically parts of the cities in terms of the information
distribution.

There are also 24 000 000 internet users in Russia.
http://www.internetworldstats.com/top20.htm
not too many, but hardly "a small percentage", and it is growing fast.

So, how many people get their information from something besides TV is more
the question of choice rather than availability of resources.



-----Original Message-----
From: Slavic & East European Languages and Literature list
[mailto:SEELANGS at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU] On Behalf Of Michele A Berdy
Sent: Friday, February 02, 2007 3:38 PM
To: SEELANGS at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU
Subject: [SEELANGS] press freedoms

May I remind people that Russia is an enormous country, and the various 
points of view in newspapers, internet, and radio are only accessible to a 
small percentage of it?  The newspapers you cite are available in Moscow, 
St. Petersburg, and -- to a much more limited degree -- the other major 
cities.  Ekho Moskvy reaches about a half million listeners.  If you go to 
Magadan or Ukhta or Vladikavkaz, you will not find Kommersant or Novaya 
gazeta or even Itogi (or if you do find them, they are out of date and 
expensive).  Only a small percentage of the country has access to 
internet.  So -- really only about 20 million people out of 145 have 
access to any of this.  

That is, about 87 percent of the population only has access to TV, which 
is not a free medium.  

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