Press Freedom Is Under Siege. What It Costs Us

To be an investigative journalist is a hard job. To be an investigative journalist in Russia requires nerves of tensile steel, boundless reserves of courage and a granite-hard dedication to the truth. Dmitry Muratov, the editor-in-chief of the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta, is one such person.

As the editor of one of the few remaining independent news services in Russia, Muratov was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021, along with Filipino American journalist and press freedom advocate Maria Ressa.

The 2023 documentary The Price of Truth follows Muratov’s work, life and pursuit of press freedom in a society that relentlessly places it under threat. The film, currently making the rounds on the festival circuit, is the closing-night presentation for the annual KDocs Film Festival in Vancouver next week.

It is a critical reminder of how a fully functional and robust independent media is necessary to democracy. The screening of the film comes at a curious moment, as newsrooms across North America continue to close in the name of cost-cutting measures. The cumulative effect of news deserts takes on a noticeable and increasingly ominous toll, as misinformation sprouts like mushrooms and close-checked, hard-fought fact vanishes.

The most recent layoffs at the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post and even the august New Yorker magazine in a U.S. election year are shocking in their extremity.

Here in Canada, a similar situation is unfolding.

In the last decade, the number of newspapers and magazines that ceased publication in Vancouver alone is remarkable. The Vancouver Courier and the Westender both ceased publication after decades in print in 2020 and 2017, respectively.

In spring 2023, the Vancouver Sun shuttered its newsroom and sent its remaining staff to work from home. The previous fall, Overstory Media Group purchased the long-standing local alt weekly the Georgia Straight, firing many of its senior staff. Last week Bell Media slashed more than 4,800 jobs, adding another level of clear cutting to an already decimated landscape.

A friend recently remarked to me that when people look back upon this period of time, searching for articles, reviews or coverage of events, they will find only a void, a place where there was once something and now there is nothing, a blank spot in the record.

Worse is that in rural communities, people who rely on local news for critical information on natural disasters like forest fires or major floods will be left with no means to access potentially life-saving facts.

In Russia, a relentless war on journalists

Nowhere is the war on journalists more apparent than in Russia, where the ongoing erasure of independent media is both deliberate and brutal. Since Vladimir Putin came to power on Dec. 31, 1999, the number of missing and murdered reporters has soared.

The Price of Truth documents this reality from the viewpoint of Muratov and his team of reporters. Muratov, affectionately known as Dimur, is a bear of a man, seemingly born with a lack of fear. He started his career in journalism when former Russian president Mikhail Gorbachev was in power. Gorbachev was also awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in 1990 and used the money from his award to help found Novaya Gazeta in 1993. The friendship between the two men lasted until Gorbachev’s death in the summer of 2022.

The documentary begins before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but the stakes get vertiginously high as anyone who protests the war is imprisoned or worse. Photographic portraits of reporters who were killed while doing their job are on a wall overlooking the paper’s editorial meetings, a grim reminder of the price of holding truth to power.

In April 2022, Muratov himself was attacked when he planned travel by train to visit his mother for her birthday. His assailant doused him with red paint, laced with acetone, that damaged the journalist’s eyes. Immediately following the attack, Muratov chased the man through the train station. But even when a police officer was present, there was no arrest. It is clear whose side the authorities are on.

As the paper and its reporters came under increasing threat, different strategies were employed to keep it operational, including running a separate newsroom in Riga, Latvia, launching a magazine and playing any number of semantic games in order to publish the truth without incurring the full wrath of the Kremlin.

Director Patrick Forbes, a longtime friend of Muratov, came to the story in the context of dealing with Russian oligarchs in the early 2000s while filming a BBC series. During the course of making The Price of Freedom, Forbes regularly tried, with no success, to persuade the journalist not to return to Russia.

But as he says of his friend, “Muratov is Russia.” It is this profound sense of identity, and arguably equally deep love for his country, that keeps the journalist doggedly pursuing the cause of freedom and truth.

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Muratov helped to organize getting more than 40 journalists out of the country. But he was committed to staying, supporting the remaining newspaper staff and trying to continue publishing stories.

In a deliberate move to make his antiwar stance even clearer, Muratov decided to auction off his Nobel Prize medal in order to support UNICEF’s humanitarian work for Ukrainian families. The winning bid, some $103.5 million, stunned even the usually unflappable Muratov. But despite these actions, the relentless war on the free press in Russia continued. Novaya Gazeta ceased operations in March 2022 and was stripped of its licence the following September.

‘Appalling consequences for the world’

In an interview with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, Forbes described the process of making the film, as well as the implication that the end of the free press in Russia has for the rest of the world:

It is incredibly corrosive. I think the standard that has been set in Russia and followed elsewhere is one of the worst, if not the most frightening trend of the last 20 years. The creation of strong man governments following Putin’s regime has had appalling consequences for the world. Because of the creation of those governments, dotted across the globe, journalists’ freedom, and the ability to say the truth, has never been more tenuous.

Following Dmitry’s lead, I think it’s only by speaking truth to power that you can stop terrible things. If there is no freedom to point out abuses in society, then those abuses will persist and regimes will do terrible things, including going to war when they should not.

The film doesn’t have a happy ending. There’s no tidy resolution or triumph of justice. The pursuit of press freedom remains a dogged, ongoing fight. But the idea that lingers is that there will always be journalists like Muratov who refuse to be silenced, who will find a way through wit, tenacity or sheer bloody-mindedness to keep the beacon lights lit.

In other parts of the world, authorities have succeeded in quashing a free press through brute intimidation. In Canada, journalists aren’t usually killed while doing their jobs.

But if they have no jobs to go to, the end result is the same.

‘The Price of Truth’ plays at VIFF’s Vancity Theatre on Feb. 25.