"Echo" will sound like an echo - Newspaper Kommersant No. 181 (7382) of 09/30/2022
The Ekho Moskvy radio station, closed in March, will be relaunched as a website and social networks. This was announced on Thursday by journalist Maxim Kournikov, who became the head of the new Echo media network. Journalist Alexei Venediktov, who headed Ekho Moskvy for 24 years (included by the Ministry of Justice in the register of foreign agents after the radio station was closed), will continue to create the Living Nail program for the new platform. “This will be a digest of what Echo journalists do, scattered around the world, the Echo universe, united by the common idea of professional journalism,” Alexei Venediktov described the idea of the project to Kommersant.
Alexei Kournikov, former deputy editor-in-chief of Ekho Moskvy, told Dozhd (included in the register of foreign agents) on Thursday about the launch of the new media Echo. This will be the actual restart of the radio station closed in the spring, Mr. Kournikov explained: “There will be an application and a website, which was the site of Ekho Moskvy before. We try to combine all Echo members into one audio stream (including podcasts and broadcasts on YouTube.— "b")". The new media is already being tested, the launch is scheduled for Monday, and it plans to exist on donations from subscribers.
Recall that on March 1, the website of "Echo of Moscow" blocked Roskomnadzor at the request of the Prosecutor General's Office. On March 2, the RKN stated that Ekho Moskvy "purposefully and systematically" posted "false information regarding the nature of the special military operation on the territory of Ukraine." The media, according to the agency, published "calls for the organization of mass (public) events" in the Russian Federation.
A Kommersant source in the presidential administration noted at the time that the pressure was connected with the reaction of the authorities to the appearance on the air of Echo of “Ukrainian nationalists who called for the bombing of Moscow.”
At the same time, Ekho Moskvy was blocked in the European Union as affiliated with the state corporation Gazprom. On March 3, the court fined Ekho Moskvy for 30,000 rubles. for the Ukrainian language in a program about Ukrainian culture “What do they have there”. On March 5, the board of directors of Ekho Moskvy closed the radio station, which had been operating since 1990.
In April, Ekho Moskvy lost a lawsuit with the RKN and the Prosecutor General's Office to block the site. Nevertheless, representatives of departments in court “under the protocol stated that they did not demand to close the radio station,” Alexei Venediktov told Kommersant: “Now this is one of our arguments when appealing against the court decision (of first instance.— "b")".
Mr. Venediktov also said that within the framework of the new Echo media, a news service and a telegram channel will begin to operate: “The same requirements will be imposed on the news service as on any other, first of all, this is verification of facts and reliability of information. Let me remind you that Echo's information service was one of the best, so a telegram channel is being created. It's being tested right now by the guys who do it."
Both Mr. Kournikov and Mr. Venediktov note that the new media “will not be an editorial office or a media outlet,” but should become a single platform for all content created in one way or another by former employees of Ekho Moskvy.
“This will be a digest of what Echo journalists do scattered around the world. The universe of Echo, united by the common idea of professional journalism,” says Alexei Venediktov.
It should be noted that since February 24 (then the RF SVO began in Ukraine and the RKN appealed to the media “when preparing materials and publications related to the conduct of a special operation in connection with the situation in the LPR and DPR, they (the media and information resources.— "b") are obliged to use information and data obtained by them only from official Russian sources”) by May 5, more than 3,000 websites were blocked in Russia. Groups of Russian human rights activists twice reported this to the UN and the OSCE. Simultaneously with Ekho Moskvy on March 1 (for the same reasons) was blocked Dozhd TV website. A few days later, the channel announced its closure and relaunched on YouTube in July. Novaya Gazeta, after a series of reports by journalist Elena Kostyuchenko about what is happening on the territory of Ukraine, immediately received two warnings from Roskomnadzor about the absence of “foreign agency” markings. The editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta and Nobel Prize winner Dmitry Muratov suggested that the court limit itself to a fine, since the publication itself suspended its activities for a year. Edition restarted in two new projects - "Novaya Gazeta Europe" and "New Story-Gazeta". Both sites were blocked by Roskomnadzor at the request of the Prosecutor General's Office. On September 15, the Supreme Court revoked the license of the electronic media from the Novaya Gazeta website.
