A plea for freedom

last updated 8 January 2015

Moscow

A motley assortment of political parties joined together last week to urge President Vladimir Putin to quit censoring state radio and television. Just about every opposition group, from the hard-left Communists to the nationalist Motherland Party to the Party of Pensioners, joined in a declaration demanding press freedom. Some criticism of the Kremlin can be found in newspapers, but those reach only the elite. Television and radio outlets, where most people get their information, have essentially been taken over by Putin’s government in the past three years and now air only pro-Kremlin news. “There is a list of ‘closed’ topics,” said Yevgeniya Dillendorf, press secretary for the liberal Yabloko Party. “And there is a list of people who are not supposed to be invited to appear in the media.”