Several Western media outlets decided on Friday to suspend their journalistic operations in Russia as a result of a new brutal crackdown on news and freedom of speech by President Vladimir Putin’s government.
Bloomberg News and the BBC said their Russian correspondents could no longer report freely because of a new censorship law signed by Mr Putin on Friday, which effectively criminalized independent journalism for invading Ukraine. Under legislation that could take effect as early as Saturday, journalists who simply describe the war as a “war” could be sentenced to prison.
“The change in the penal code, which appears to be designed to turn any independent reporter into a criminal by association only, makes it impossible to continue any resemblance to normal journalism in the country,” Bloomberg editor-in-chief John Micheletwait wrote in a note.
CNN International, CNN’s global subsidiary, said it had stopped broadcasting in Russia, and ABC News said it would not broadcast from the country on Friday. “We will continue to assess the situation and determine what this means for the safety of our teams on the ground,” said a statement from ABC News, which is based in New York.
News organizations do not necessarily require their correspondents to leave Russia, at least not yet.
“We are not withdrawing BBC News journalists from Moscow,” said Jonathan Munro, interim director of BBC News. wrote on Twitter. “We can’t use their reporting yet, but they remain valuable members of our teams and we hope to bring them back to our results as soon as possible.”
He added: “Think about colleagues in Moscow whose voices cannot be silenced for long.
A spokeswoman for The New York Times did not comment immediately on Friday.
The censorship law is based on the Kremlin’s insistence that characterizing its attacks on Ukraine as a “war” or “invasion” rather than a “special military operation” is misinformation. Its adoption has prompted several independent Russian media outlets to close as well.
Several foreign news outlets said their journalists in Ukraine would continue to cover the Russian invasion. This week, the BBC said it would use shortwave to broadcast news in Kyiv and parts of Russia.
Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, accused the BBC of playing a “decisive role in undermining Russia’s stability and security”. Early Friday, the BBC reported that access to its website in Russia appears to be limited.
Mr Putin is destroying the last remnants of Russia’s free press. On Thursday, the pillars of Russia’s independent media collapsed under state pressure.
Echo of Moscow, the free radio station founded by Soviet dissidents in 1990 and symbolizing Russia’s new freedoms, was “liquidated” by its board. TV Rain, the youth independent television station that calls itself the “optimistic channel”, said it would cease operations indefinitely.
And Dmitry A. Muratov, the journalist who shared the Nobel Peace Prize last year, said his newspaper Novaya Gazeta, which survived the murders of six of its journalists, could also be on the verge of closure.