Novaya Gazeta was charged with the old – Gazeta Kommersant No. 163 (7364) of 09/06/2022
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The Basmanny District Court of Moscow, at the request of Roskomnadzor, annulled the license of the print media Novaya Gazeta. At the same time, the department is seeking in the Supreme Court to cancel the registration of the Novaya website as an electronic media. The publication is known for socially significant investigations and reports, and its editor-in-chief Dmitry Muratov received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021, which he called an award to the entire team. The editors call Roskomnadzor’s claims pressure on the freedom of the media, and the court’s decision is an “attempted murder” of the newspaper.
Lawsuit demanding to invalidate the registration of Novaya Gazeta Roskomnadzor filed to the Basmanny District Court of Moscow on July 26. The department’s claims related to “failure to submit the editorial charter within the time limits established by the media law.” Representatives of Novaya Gazeta explained in court that the publication received registration in 2002 and then submitted all the necessary documents. But in 2006, the editorial board changed a number of founders. According to Roskomnadzor, the publication had to resubmit the documents.
However, Novaya Gazeta considered that the change of founders did not mean the emergence of a new media outlet. In addition, the obligation of the media to submit a copy of the charter to state bodies appeared in the legislation only in 2018.
However, the judge of the Basmanny District Court of Moscow, Olga Lipkina, took the side of Roskomnadzor in this matter and invalidated the license of Novaya Gazeta as a print media outlet.
Novaya Gazeta was founded in 1993 by former Komsomolskaya Pravda employees Sergei Kozheurov, Sergei Kushnerev, Pavel Voshchanov, Akram Murtazaev, Dmitry Sabov, Dmitry Muratov and others. The first eight computers were bought for the editorial office by ex-president of the USSR Mikhail Gorbachev, using the funds of his Nobel Prize. Until March 2022, it was published three times a week with a circulation of 108.1 thousand copies. Novaya Gazeta is known for a number of publicly significant investigations, including those on corruption, torture, and election fraud. During the operation of the publication, six of its journalists were killed. In 2019, the editor-in-chief of the newspaper, Dmitry Muratov, reported that the publication was financed, among other things, by businessman Sergei Adoniev; a controlling stake in the publication belongs to the collective. In 2021, Mr. Muratov became winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for “efforts to protect freedom of expression” (he donated 40.2 million rubles of bonus money to charity).
Note that the newspaper suspended work in March 2022 against the background of the Russian military operation in Ukraine. After a series of reports by journalist Elena Kostyuchenko about what is happening on the territory of Ukraine, the publication immediately received two warnings from Roskomnadzor about the absence of “foreign agency” markings. The team launched two new projects: Novaya Gazeta Evropa and Novaya rasskaz-gazeta. Both sites were blocked Roskomnadzor at the request of the Prosecutor General’s Office.
Dmitry Muratov told TASS that the publication, “of course, will file an appeal” against the decision of the Basmanny Court.
The head of the press service of the publication, Nadezhda Prusenkova, clarified in an interview with Kommersant that the decision would be appealed to the Moscow City Court, and then, if necessary, the publication intends to reach the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation. “We do not agree, we consider the decision egregious, inconsistent with the law and common sense,” she added. In a special statement by Novaya Gazeta, the court’s decision is called “attempted murder” of the publication and “deprivation of the right to receive information” by readers. “Today, our colleagues who have already been killed by this state for the performance of their professional duty were killed again,” the statement said, listing the names of the six dead newspaper employees.
Dmitry Gorbunov, a partner at the law firm Rustam Kurmaev & Partners, explained earlier that two warnings issued by Roskomnadzor to Novaya Gazeta could be grounds for canceling the electronic media registration certificate. According to him, the relevant court decision may be challenged, or Novaya Gazeta may register a new media outlet.
We add that in parallel Roskomnadzor is trying to deprive the Novaya Gazeta website of the certificate of registration of the electronic media. To do this, the department sent a lawsuit to the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation. The basis was the warnings received by the publication on March 24 and 28, 2022, due to the absence of foreign agent markings in two materials on the Novaya website. In one case, the publication did not agree with the claim of the department, filing a counterclaim against Roskomnadzor in the Tagansky District Court of Moscow. The editors indicate that the material mentioned the Humanitarian Action Foundation recognized as a foreign agent, which at the time of publication did not yet have such a status, Ms. Prusenkova explained to Kommersant.
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