Russian journalist Valery Panyushkin writes in the New York Times about how the government makes its displeasure known to journalists—your licence plate is removed from your car, and after that, any number of fates may await—and wonders what may have been the trigger for him. But it’s the conclusion here, of the journey from typed samizdat to irrelevance, that’s chilling. When there’s no media freedom, it becomes of paramount importance. When we have all the freedoms, as we do here, investigative journalism is threatened because it’s not commercially valuable, or people’s lives aren’t bad enough to make them care (look, cats on keyboards!). Russia has managed though to both curtail press freedom and yet still make journalism irrelevant.
Congrats, I think?
