8 Russian journalists quit jobs over pro-Kremlin management

MOSCOW — Eight correspondents have resigned from a Russian broadcast-news agency to protest the pro-Kremlin management's decision to withhold stories in line with a new policy that half its coverage must portray the government in a "positive" light, journalists said.

The reported policy by the Russian News Service, which provides news broadcasts to Russia's most popular radio network and runs its own station, heightens concerns over President Vladimir Putin's moves to increasingly bring mass media under state control or influence.

In another case highlighting the concerns, the Russian Union of Journalists is protesting an order that it vacate its offices in a building that houses state media operations.

The union said it received the order from the state property agency to make space for Russia Today, an English-language satellite TV channel that critics see as little more than a Kremlin propaganda tool. The union said the order was dated April 18; it was delivered Tuesday.

As Russia heads into a parliamentary election in December and presidential elections in March, government influence over the media appears to be at its strongest since the Soviet era ended.

Analytical programs on Russia's main TV channels are increasingly infrequent and less likely to express criticism of the Kremlin. The state runs one of the country's three major TV networks and has a direct controlling stake in another, along with owning the two of the largest radio networks.

NTV television, the third major TV network once noted for its criticism of the Kremlin and independent reporting on the war in Chechnya, has been taken over by the state-controlled natural gas monopoly Gazprom, which also owns the newspaper Izvestia.

Artyom Khan said Friday he was one of eight correspondents to leave or submit their resignations since the new management took over at the Russian News Service, which provides news for its own station as well as others, including Russian Radio — the nation's biggest radio broadcaster, with an audience of 7.4 million daily.

Khan said his news editors told him that his report last month on pro-Kremlin protests outside the Estonian Embassy in Moscow had a "pro-Estonian accent" and was "unprofessional." The protests were held over Estonia's decision to move a Soviet war memorial from the capital's downtown area to a cemetery, angering many Russians in the country.

Editors also refused to air material on a Moscow march by the Kremlin's political foes in April, which was broken up by club-wielding riot police, Khan said.

The Russian Union of Journalists, meanwhile, decried the government's decision to remove it from its offices.

The property agency "is throwing out into the street an organization with a 90-year history, counting more than 100,000 journalists in its ranks and making, we may assert, a definite contribution to the construction of a democratic society," the union said in a statement.