This article on Russian media sounds like HERE! ("tiring to think")

3/The Moscow Times, Russia Monday, June 5, 2006. Issue 3425. Page 1.

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2006/06/05/002.html



TV PRESENTER AND REGIONAL PRESS SQUARE OFF


By Stephen Boykewich, Staff Writer



Russians are tired of all the facts in reports by non-state media and want a soothing, Soviet approach to the news, Nikolai Svanidze, a presenter on Rossia state television, said Sunday.

(SNIP)

Svanidze ignited the debate by saying that the range of viewpoints in mass media was shrinking because the public "has grown tired of pluralism."



"Our guests from the United States and European countries may not understand what I'm talking about, but the classic Soviet viewer is not used to alternatives," he said. "It's tiring to have a choice because you have to think."


Russian audiences "don't want either-or, they want to know exactly what's going on and what to do about it," he said.



Fellow panelist Yury Purgin, CEO of independent regional publisher Altapress, was one of numerous dissenters. "Our readers aren't tired by our offering them different opinions -- they thank us for it," Purgin said.



(SNIP)



Pyotr Godlevsky, director general of the newspaper Izvestia since 2005, said a lack of financial expertise was keeping many media organizations from being commercially independent, making editorial independence hard to maintain.

(SNIP)


U.S. media consultant William Dunkerly concurred, suggesting Izvestia was one of the more prominent casualties.



"I've seen how propaganda masquerading as news is so prominent here," Dunkerly said. "Natural resource monopolies directed by the presidential administration ... have conscripted newspapers to serve their own interests."


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