A free press may be a right of the people, but in many countries, it's a gift that the government bestows when it wants to. One such gift was unwrapped last month in Moscow, when Vladimir Putin's government gave a new television license to a most unlikely alliance of people; leading journalists, a former prime minister, and powerful businessmen. They won the frequency of what was, until it was shut down this January, the last independent station in Russia. Now, they claim, civil society is going back on the air. Times for the press have been tough under Putin; don't forget the Kursk submarine disaster or Chechnya. But then, again, freedom of the press in Russia never meant the same thing as does here in the USA.
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Marshall Goldman, professor of Russian Economics at Harvard University and Wellesley College
Svetlana Boym, professor of Comparative Literature at Harvard University
Yevgeny Kiselyov, Russian journalist and anchorman.
Svetlana Boym points out the disparity between government and press listen
Yevgeny Kiselyov gives a first hand account of what the news industry is like right now. listen
