The Historical Trajectory of Foreign Journalism in and on Russia

The next session I’m attending here at Future of Journalism 2023 conference is on the Russian war on Ukraine, and starts with James Rodgers, who begins by noting the long history of censorship of foreign journalists in the Soviet Union, and links this to questions about the Russian war on Ukraine as a potential rekindling of Russia’s imperial ambitions. Such censorship increased in the Cold War period, with some brief periods of thawing relations and thus fewer restrictions towards foreign journalists at times; in the Putin era, conditions for foreign journalists have severely declined again.

Today, Russian state media are aggressively pushing back against Western reporting, and this now happens especially also through digital media; Russia is also punishing the domestic circulation of what it regards as ‘fake news’ about the Ukraine war with harsh penalties, and foreign journalists reporting on domestic protests are being harassed and detained by Russian police and intelligence services. Many of them have now left Russia, and are often based in countries surrounding Russia (Turkey, Armenia, and elsewhere); only a handful are left in Russia itself, and some foreign reporters like Evan Gershkovish are indeed detained in Russia. The last remaining somewhat critical media in Russia, like Ekho Moskvy, have also been shut down.

What is lost as foreign reporting is thus shut down is any deeper insight into what is going on in Russia; this disabled critical reporting but also prevents any understanding of Russian politics and culture. Any future rapprochement or engagement with Russia – after the end of the war, and the end of the Putin regime – is made considerably more difficult by this. Conversely, blocking Russian media in the EU and elsewhere may also reduce European understandings of Russia, and enable Russian media to portray themselves as victims of censorship.