An interesting opinion piece today by Vladimir Ryzhkov in the Moscow Times sees one of the last bastions of media freedom – Ren TV – looking like it may have to fight for its independence.  The increasingly popular station, the only one in Russia to offer a critical interpretation of the Sayano-Shushenskaya dam disaster and cover the Dissenter’s Marches in Moscow and St Petersburg, may be fettered by management ‘restructuring’.

Controlled by National Media Group, owned by Putin ally Yury Kovalchukm, Ren will have a new Director General and will find new lodgings alonside state-controlled RIA-Novosti and the tow-the-line RT.  Ryzhkov recollects Gazprom’s Media’s overhaul of NTV which followed similar lines: could this be another nail in the coffin of independent television?

Ren-TV is Russia’s last remaining national television channel that airs the critical views of members of the political opposition, who present facts and give opinions that are terribly “inconvenient” for the authorities. Not surprisingly, the station’s ratings have continued to grow over the past few years. Television viewers in search of objective and unbiased coverage regularly rate Ren-TV news and analytical programs as being some of the best in the country. Consistent with this, over the past several years the station’s news anchor, Mikhail Osokin, and the host of the weekly analytical show “Nedelya,” Marianna Maximovskaya, have regularly received the TEFI award, the most prestigious prize in the country’s television industry for journalistic quality and integrity. And it is precisely because these highly professional and talented journalists continue to investigate the abuses, weaknesses and ineffectiveness of government institutions and bureaucrats under Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev that Ren-TV may be forced to change its editorial position.