press freedoms

[Sergey Glebov]

I beg to disagree. In all of the cities you named you can get Kommersant,
Novaia Gazeta, and a number of local, sometimes VERY oppositional, media.
You can simply subscribe to them, after all, get them in newspaper kiosks,
they are all available in the libraries. If you want news different from the
one state tv pushes on you, you CAN get it. 
The problem is that views and opinions expressed in these media doesn't seem
to interest the public. 
The entire argument that Moscow and St Petersburg are the only places with
civilization in Russia simply doesn't stand. 
Just a quick example - a very local website in Yakutsk (ykt.ru) has 50
million (sic!) hits, and this is in a town of just over 200 000 people. By
the way, local press there can be extremely oppositional, with the range of
opinions including ultra-nationalist, communist, liberal, and so forth. 
Besides, I am not so sure how can Echo Moskvy reach half a million listeners
if in Moscow alone it is widely popular and accessible? Check out their
regional programs here:

http://www.echo.msk.ru/about/regions/index.html


Sergey


-----Original Message-----
From: Michele A Berdy [mailto:maberdy at ONLINE.RU] 
Sent: Friday, February 02, 2007 3:38 PM
Subject: 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gazeta or even Itogi (or if you do find them, they are out of date and 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.  

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription
  options, and more.  Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
                    http://seelangs.home.comcast.net/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription
  options, and more.  Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
                    http://seelangs.home.comcast.net/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------