Putin to Shut RIA Novosti in Overhaul of Russian State News Coverage
By Evgenia Pismennaya and Scott Rose - Dec 9, 2013
President Vladimir Putin unexpectedly revamped Russian state-controlled print and radio news media, abolishing the RIA Novosti wire service and naming an outspoken television presenter to lead its successor.
Dmitry Kiselyov, a deputy director of Russia’s state television and radio holding VGTRK and a host of a weekly news program on the Rossiya 1 television channel, will head the newly formed agency, called Rossiya Segodnya or Russia Today, according to a document signed by Putin and published on the Kremlin’s website today.
“Today attitudes in the world toward Russia aren’t fair,” Kiselyov said in televised remarks. “Restoring a fair attitude toward Russia” is the goal of the new agency, he said.
Putin’s decision to eliminate the news agency founded days after Nazi Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 clears the deck for Kiselyov, Putin’s vocal backer who has drawn criticism for comments about gays and Ukrainian anti-government protests. The consolidation in the industry follows billionaire Vladimir Potanin’s sale of his media business last month to an OAO Gazprombank-backed group.
Putin has been criticized for rolling back press freedoms by working to centralize power and increase state ownership of mass media and the country’s biggest companies. Russia was ranked 148th among 179 countries in a 2013 Press Freedom Index by Reporters Without Borders, a monitoring group based in Paris.
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-09/putin-to-shut-ria-in-overhaul-of-russian-state-news-coverage-1-.html
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