Russian Government Censorship of Chechnya Coverage - Beslan Hostage Crisis

Beslan Hostage Crisis

In several incidents reporters critical of the Russian government could not get to Beslan during the crisis. They included Andrey Babitsky, who was indicted on hooliganism after a brawl with two men who picked a fight with him in the Moscow Vnukovo Airport and sentenced to a 15-day arrest. The late Novaya Gazeta journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who had negotiated during the 2002 Moscow siege, was twice prevented by the authorities from boarding a flight. When she eventually succeeded, she fell into a coma after being poisoned aboard an airplane bound to Rostov-on-Don.

According to the report by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), several correspondents were detained in Beslan (including Russians Anna Gorbatova and Oksana Semyonova from Novye Izvestia, Madina Shavlokhova from Moskovskij Komsomolets, Elena Milashina from Novaya Gazeta, and Simon Ostrovskiy from The Moscow Times). Several foreign journalists were also briefly detained, including a group of foreign journalists from Polish Gazeta Wyborcza, French Libération and British The Guardian. The chief of the Moscow bureau of the Arab TV channel Al Jazeera was framed into the possession of a round of ammunition at the airfield in Mineralnye Vody.

Many foreign journalists were exposed to pressure from the security forces and the materials were confiscated from TV crews from ZDF and ARD (Germany), APTN (USA), and Rustavi 2 (Georgia). The crew of Rustavi 2 was arrested; the Georgian Minister of Health said that the correspondent Nana Lezhava, who had been kept for fives days in the Russian pre-trial detention centers, had been poisoned with dangerous psychotropic drugs (like Politkovskaya, Lezhava passed out after being given a cup of tea). The crew from another Georgian TV channel Mze was expelled from Beslan.

Raf Shakirov, chief editor of the Izvestia newspaper, was forced to resign after criticism by the major shareholders of both style and content of the September 4, 2004 issue. In contrast to the less emotional coverage by other Russian newspapers, Izvestia had featured large pictures of dead or injured hostages. It also expressed doubts about the government's version of events.

According to a poll by Levada Center conducted a week after Beslan crisis, 83% of polled Russians believed that the government was hiding at least a part of the truth about the Beslan events from them. According to the poll by Echo of Moscow radio station, 92% of the people polled said that Russian TV channels concealed parts of information.