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

I'm Bob Garfield.

And I'm Brooke Gladstone.

From the very beginning of Vladimir Putin's presidency, press freedom in Russia has been hanging by a thread.

Despite Putin's stated commitment to a democratic media, his Kremlin has imposed censorship in Chechnya,

orchestrated legal cases against powerful media barons, and granted sweeping powers of surveillance to the security services.

Recently, Russia's last politically independent TV station, TV6, was pushed to the brink of bankruptcy

due to a rarely invoked law that many see is an effort to silence

the station. Also recently, journalist Gregory Pasco was sentenced to four years in prison for reporting

that Russia had dumped nuclear waste in the Japan Sea. And these are just the latest episodes

in Putin's continuing campaign to control his nation's press.

Mike McFall is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

He says that the climate for press freedom was chilly under Putin's predecessor Boris Yeltsin,

but now it's headed into the deep freeze. Under the Yeltsin era, there were some harassment, Mr.eltsin, but now it's headed into the deep freeze.

Under the Yeltsin era, there was some harassment, and Mr. Posco was arrested, after all,

in the Yeltsin era. But there was a sense that the media was important.

Boris Yeltsin defended the media as a principle that it should be free and independent.

Under Putin, though, the rules have kind of changed. He speaks formally about we need a free press,

but his actions, particularly against Mr. Pascow, against NTV, the national television station

that was shut down earlier last year. He's demonstrated that he just

doesn't get it, in my opinion, what a real free and independent press is. And people are nervous

now. People are scared. You have self-censorship for the first time and a long time in Russia.

...