Как там насчет свободы слова на родине?

Извините, что по-английски. Для тех, кто не понимает - смысл в том, что хотят распустить TV-6

NY Times
MOSCOW, Nov. 29 - A Moscow court decided this week to dissolve Russia's last independent national television network, leading to an outcry by journalists and human rights leaders who say the decision leaves Russians with little choice of news.

The network, TV-6, belongs to Boris A. Berezovsky, the self-exiled businessman, and Lukoil, a Russian oil company. Lukoil filed court documents this summer claiming that the network was in financial trouble and should be put out of business.

But the network, home to the journalists who resigned from the embattled station of the media tycoon Vladimir V. Gusinsky, says business is booming and the real source of the suit is a manipulative Kremlin. TV-6 is preparing an appeal.

One thing is clear: if the court rejects the appeal, one result will be virtual government control over national television.

That is what many here say they want to prevent. On Wednesday the Union of Russian Journalists called on colleagues and viewers to oppose the decision, calling it an abuse of "the well-known weakness of the Russian court system and its subservience to outside pressure."

"Of course this is political," said Lyudmila Alekseyeva, president of the Moscow Helsinki Group. "Our authorities remember financial errors only of those they want to catch. They took good television away from us. It just doesn't exist."


The decision, issued Monday, evoked the long battle over Mr. Gusinsky's NTV channel, in which the state-controlled gas company Gazprom took over NTV.

Both companies are being tried under a law that experts here say is antiquated and rarely used.

"This law was invoked only one other time," against Mr. Gusinsky's media company, said Anya Kachkaeva, a professor of journalism at Moscow State University. "If it was applied universally, many companies would be liquidated. That brings in politics. Why aren't they doing this to others? Why is there always a double standard?"

There are differences. Since coming to TV-6 from Mr. Gusinsky's channel in the spring, the journalists have doubled the network's rating, though the gains were mostly limited to the Moscow area. Advertising has increased and TV-6 - much less in debt than Mr. Gusinsky's network was - says it is now breaking even.

Mr. Gusinsky was known for his heavy hand in editorial policy, while TV-6 journalists say they do not feel constrained in the same way.

"It's outrageous," said Alim Yusupov, a former NTV correspondent who now works for TV-6. "With Gusinsky maybe there was some grounds for discussion. How did he get the loans? How legal were his actions? But with TV-6 the hidden motive is obvious. We had just started gaining popularity. We even surprised ourselves, and now they are trying to liquidate the company."

Despite talk of the network's fate among journalists, most Russians care little about what happens to the station. Exhausted from a decade of changing governments and political intrigues, people will not be willing to take action to protect the station, experts say. Rallies to protest the takeover of Mr. Gusinsky's channel came to nothing.

"If you had meetings to support NTV, there will be none for TV-6," said Floriana Fossato, a Moscow- based Russian media analyst. "Half of its audience is confused and afraid of what Russia might become, but the other half just wants some peace."