Media News - Wednesday, July 02, 2008

Dagestani newspaper founder in rare probe

Investigators in Dagestan have opened an unprecedented criminal investigation into allegations that the founder of a local newspaper was interfering in the work of his own journalists. Prosecutors suspect Rizvan Rizvanov, founder of the Nastoyashoye Vremya weekly, of illegally influencing newspaper policy, and he faces up to two years in prison if charged and convicted, a local investigator said Tuesday. One of the country's main organizations monitoring press freedoms said that while owners of media outlets often interfere with editorial policy, they don't end up being investigated. 'From October to March, Rizvanov forced journalists to publish information that he preferred and to remove from publication information that displeased him,' said Murad Aligalbatsev, a senior investigator in the Kirovsky district of the republic's capital, Makhachkala. In one concrete instance in October, Rizvanov gave editors a list of regional journalists whose articles he did not want in the paper, said Sergei Rasulov, a former editor at Nastoyashoye Vremya. The journalists finally took their complaints to regional investigators in early April, and the criminal investigation against Rizvanov was opened on June 16, investigator Aligalbatsev said. Oleg Panfilov, director of the Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations, called Rizvanov's case 'unique.' He said 'journalists often complain' of interference by the media outlet founders into the editors' policy, but 'they are not able to prove anything.' Panfilov said the media in Dagestan are controlled by a number of powerful ethnic clans, which present alternative perspectives of news, as opposed to other Russian regions where the regional administration often controls most media outlets. (Moscow Times)

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