vigilant TV

The Press Ministry has closed down Russia’s last remaining independent television station, giving the government a monopoly on political broadcasts. The ministry claims the closure was due to the station’s financial problems. Critics point out that the proper court approval was not obtained, and say government officials have deliberately created the financial problems by overcharging for license fees.

TVS was the last private national channel, and its closure gives the Kremlin a monopoly on the airwaves ahead of December’s parliamentary elections and the March presidential vote.

“I have a feeling that somebody really needs what is happening,” TVS chief editor Yevgeny Kiselyov said by telephone. “I have a persistent feeling that the events are guided by somebody’s evil will.”

TVS’s demise follows the 2001 takeover of NTV television by government-connected parties and last year’s closure of Boris Berezovsky’s TV6. Following the NTV takeover, most of its prominent journalists, led by Kiselyov, fled to TV6, and after it was shut down, they formed TVS.

The Press Ministry said it ordered that TVS be closed because of is longtime financial problems. “In this situation it was necessary to make a decision aimed at protecting the viewers’ interests,” the ministry said in a statement.

Critics brushed off the explanation as hypocritical and said the closure was illegal. Under the law, a television channel can be shut down only by a court decision, not a Press Ministry order, said Oleg Panfilov, head of the Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations.

[...]

[TVS spokeswoman Tatyana Blinova] suggested that the shutdown was prompted by authorities’ fears that a nonstate channel might promote opposition views in the State Duma and presidential elections. “I can’t imagine that we were saying something so terribly deplorable,” she said. “But apparently we were or, worse still, might have.”

– Moscow Times, Press Ministry Pulls the Plug on TVS.

See also our previous stories about Russian government censorship.