Media Bias and Failure on the Decline of Democracy in Russia

Master's Thesis from the year 2010 in the subject Communications - Media and Politics Politic Communications grade: A City University of New York Brooklyn College course: Analysis of media information in Russia and the West language: English abstract: There is a common view among Western scholars politicians and media professionals that Russia continues to be an authoritarian state due to its history and that it has recently begun to stray away from democratic processes or even slide back into moderate totalitarianism. Even worse The Freedom House report (2009) ranked Russia one of the world's most repressive societies putting it next to Rwanda. However this and other reports present a distorted picture of democratic development in Russia which reflects conflicting views between the Western and Russian understanding and measurement of democratic and non-democratic media systems press pluralism ownership structures relative autonomy from the state negative and positive control of press content the role of ideology and the legal frame that protects freedom of speech.