Putin and the Media

Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject Politics - Region: Russia, grade: 1, University of Tartu, language: English, abstract: Among the first attacked oligarchs were two men who owned media empires. Vladimir Gusinsky and Boris Berezovsky were pressured to give up or close their Kremlin-critical television stations. For this reason the essay on hand deals with the argument that Putin’s crackdown on the oligarchs has worsen the press freedom in Russia. Firstly a short overview of the media development under president Boris Yeltsin is given to point out that the Russian media was not completely free compared to Western standards. Then the necessary facts of the Gusinsky and Berezosky case are described and afterwards the short-term and long-term results concerning press freedom are analysed. The topic of the essay will show that the actions against the oligarchs had strong negative effects on the media because press freedom is an initial feature of democracy.