From WNYC in New York, this is On the Media.

I'm Brooke Gladstone.

And I'm Bob Garfield.

The Russian media are doing some soul-searching this week.

In a new story with character, subplots, and subterfuge worthy of Tolstoy,

Russia's only independent television network, NTV, was taken over by the gas company.

After defaulting on a massive loan, Vladimir Gazzinski seems to have lost control of his media-most empire.

It is in the hands of the receivers, the receivers in this case being the state-run Gazprom.

Journalists at the station staged a sit-in for 11 days to protest the new owner.

By the time Gazprom's private security forces entered the offices, many of the journalists had resigned and set up shop at a cable station, also principally owned by Gazzinski.

Michael Wines is in the New York Times Bureau in Moscow, and he joins us on the line.

Welcome to On the Media, Michael.

My pleasure.

Is there any chance that Gazprom will come in and actually be an honest broker here

and let NTV be a Western-style broadcast station that asks tough questions of political leaders?

Well, Gazprom has been running NTV for the last, what, four days,

and I think the consensus is that so far they've been fairly objective.

They haven't gone out and beaten the world with stories critical of the Kremlin,

but neither have they kowt out to it.

There's an American who's running the station now named Boris Jordan, who has made a

public pledge that the station will be immune from political or shareholder influence. And so far,

that seems to be true. I think the big question is what happens when Mr. Jordan leaves, as he must.

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