The arrest of Ivan Golunov under drug trafficking charges on June 6 triggered a flurry of emotion in the Russian media and social scene. Many see in the case a manipulation to intimidate or punish an independent-minded journalist and its employer, the Riga-based online publication Meduza, whose investigations often target behind-the-scene interests in the Russian elite or mafia groups. Golunov rarely wrote about the tech sector; however, one and a half year ago, he produced an in-depth article about Internet censorship. East-West Digital News is presenting this material with Meduza’s permission.
A lot is illegal when you’re a mass media outlet in Russia. You can’t talk about the ways people kill themselves, you can’t disseminate extremist materials, you can’t promote illegal drug use, and so on. To enforce all these prohibitions, Moscow has a special state enterprise that reports to Roskomnadzor: the Main Radio Frequency Center “GRChTs” federal state unitary enterprise.
The outfit employs hundreds of people to scan the Internet every day, analyzing hundreds of websites with pornography, obscenities, and other illegal content, which is flagged by a special automated system that also monitors the country’s print media.
In a 2017 article, Ivan Golunov took a closer look at this facet of Russia’s online censorship and speaks to some of the people directly engaged in this work.
How federal censors monitor and punish Russia’s mass mediaRead More
