The “Russia – Conflicts in the Media” website is the continuation of the Impunity Project started by an international partnership of journalists’ unions and media organizations in 2007. The two phases have involved the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ, Brussels), its member organization the Russian Union of Journalists (Moscow), and Russia’s own two leading media monitors – the Glasnost Defence Foundation and the Centre for Journalism in Extreme Situations, both based in Moscow.

The new database “Conflicts in the Media” and the other resources assembled on this website (articles by monitors, overview of legislation, annual survey of media freedom and violations) complement the earlier “Deaths and Disappearances of Journalists in Russia since 1993” database. The latter was launched in June 2009 together with thePartial Justice report (see http://journalists-in-russia.org). The pioneering work in modelling and refining online versions of the two databases has been carried out under the supervision of Damian Counsell, with the assistance of Tim Almond.

The purpose of the “Deaths and Disappearances” database was to pinpoint the targeted killing of journalists in Russia since 1993, and monitor the level of impunity for such violence. The new database has a wider and more pro-active role. By documenting instances of assault, criminal prosecution, threats, dismissal, censorship and arrest, the “Conflicts in the Media” database offers a broad picture of the changing situation in different parts of the Russian Federation. More specifically, it provides an early warning of the emergence of particular threats, whether directed against the media of a region or against an individual journalist.

We are indebted to the Open Society Institute (London) which, through the IFJ, has funded both stages of the ongoing Impunity Project and has taken an active interest in its creation and further development. We also wish to thank the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media for enabling us, in the nearest future, to add past years’ records to this database.

Contacts for this project

John Crowfoot, IFJ analyst (London) – crowfoot@uwclub.net

Boris Timoshenko, GDF head of monitoring (Moscow) – boris@gdf.ru