This is presumptuous of me to ask, but have you ever talked with anyone who knows anything about Russian media?
You can rant and rave about about “American Corporate Media” and unhealthy relationships with government, but in the end you’re comparing a country with a relatively free media market to a autocratic regime lite.
Jesus Christ in a handbag. This is a country where a foreign business man worth millions of dollars can get killed-by-gulag for pissing off the wrong people. RT is a great news network, with some really smart, talented people, which incidentally happens to run their news past the Kremlin as a matter of course. It’s not about the leaks; any government / system has unauthorized information get out, elites dissenting, etc. But in Putin’s world those leaks become part of the script - his system is far much smarter and more resilient than that of the USSR.
And so you pull up the website of Pravoye Delo? How many paid reporters do they have on staff again? For those who don’t know, the Right Party (Right Cause? I hear different translations) is a small, pro-business and pro-western(ish) party with almost zero influence in Russia.
Aaaand then you link to the United Civil Front, another even more harmless opposition party’s website. That one, if memory serves, is the one Kaspoferov (sp?) started. Yes, the chess master.
Neither of your examples vaguely resemble opposition media. The FHI gave Russia a free press score of 81 out of a 100, 100 being the worst ever. It has been getting worse recently.
It seems like you often take the “the West is just as bad” defense, and is some cases I agree with you (sorry that I’m not as vocal then - it’s the way of the internet I suppose). But in this case you are spouting crazy levels of false equivalence. I have absolutely no problem believing Snowden has good intentions, and probably knows very well that the Kremlin is trying to use him. He’s probably trying to do the best that one person can do, when they’re in a foreign country whose language they don’t speak, with few resources or support, and reliant on the good grace of the resident spook-in-chief.
-edited in an attempt to be less of a dick-
