This transcript was typed from a recording of the program. The ABC cannot guarantee its complete accuracy because of the possibility of mishearing and occasional difficulty in identifying speakers.

Stephen Colbert: Unfortunately I know one person who didn't get the chance to sit down with his family and count his blessings. I'm talking about Vladimir Putin who is accused of killing a former spy. People around the world are pointing fingers at the Russian President for this, but I'm pointing more than my finger, I'm pointing my whole hand and then hitting it with my other hand; it's called applause, ladies and gentlemen. Now I'm not condoning murder here, just strong leadership. It's what we need, because while once again I am proposing Vladimir Putin for US President in 2008. There you go.

Antony Funnell: American comedian, Stephen Colbert, making light of the cold-war style rhetoric between Russian President, Vladimir Putin and Western leaders.

But if you're among Russia's remaining independent media there's very little to laugh about.

RUSSIAN NATIONAL ANTHEM

Antony Funnell: In the first year of Vladimir Putin's presidency, he reinstated the old Soviet National Anthem, and many people would argue that that was an omen of things to come.

Since 2000, President Putin has used both overt and covert means to wind back the independence of the Russian media. In the Russia of 2007, almost all media is controlled either directly or indirectly by the Kremlin.

But not content with limiting the operations of media practitioners, the Kremlin has now turned its attention to those who help train them.

Using a minor customs violation as their excuse, the Russian authorities are undertaking a criminal prosecution against Manana Aslamazyan, the President of the non-government organisation called Educated Media Foundation, or Internews Russia, as it's also known.

Manana is in no doubt that the legal action being pursued against her is political.

Manana Aslamazyan through a translator: This action that's been taken by the authorities in prosecuting me seems to me to be about the organisation that I work for, and making an example of Internews in order to make it more difficult for other non-governmental organisation to play the kind of role that Internews has played. And also to make a personal example of me to destroy my reputation, which has been built up by the work that I've done over the last 15 years in support of more independent and more professional media in Russia.

Antony Funnell: Now you've had a lot of support from journalists right across Russia, and there has been a petition, an open letter to President Putin, that's been signed by various leading journalists in Russia. How do you feel about the support that you've got from your colleagues?

Manana Aslamazyan through a translator: I fear that this is really the only nice that has come out of the whole experience because so many people have supported us, and it makes me realise how important Internews' work has been for a lot of people, especially journalists working in the regions. A lot of people have signed this petition, who normally wouldn't necessarily come together over any particular cause and that makes me realise how important our work has been over the last 15 years.

Manana Aslamazyan, President of the Moscow-based Educated Media Foundation.

Now the woman helping with that translation was British-born Gillian McCormack, who's the head of Internews Europe's Representative Office in Moscow. Gillian is also facing the same charges as Manana, and she explained to me the background behind the legal action.

Gillian McCormack: Well it's been very stressful of course. It's involved right from the beginning, essentially it seemed like a fairly small issue, we'd taken too much money into the country without filling in the proper form. Neither of us were aware that it was going to be blown all out of proportion in this way, or that indeed criminal proceedings would be brought against us, and the unpleasantness began with a television report on a crime program, that more or less right from the beginning, Manana and I were being portrayed as criminals by Russian television programs.

We've also felt under an enormous amount of pressure; we felt that we were not really able to work in the way that we were working before, that our reputation, the reputation of the organization we worked for was being damaged, possibly permanently, and there was very little that we could do about it.

Antony Funnell: And do you agree with Manana that you're being used as an example almost? That this is not only just about closing down the organisation in Russia, but using you as an example to other journalists?

Gillian McCormack: Well it's inevitable that we can only draw that conclusion, because Internews, to put it in context, is one of the biggest and most accessible media NGOs in Russia. And we have always been trying to work properly within the confines of the law; all of our tax inspections have gone very well, so if they can take down an organisation which has worked as professionally as Internews has, then it would be much easier to attack smaller, more vulnerable organisations, and because of the work that we do, in supporting media independence, especially in the regions, one has to draw the conclusion that that is not what somebody wants.

Antony Funnell: And is there any hope that Internews will operate again in Russia, given the fact that they've seized computers, files, all of that stuff, as well as the charges that are there against you and Manana?

Gillian McCormack: I think it's going to be very difficult to start up work again, because we've been so debilitated by the seizure of the servers, and all of our financial documents, and it's made it impossible to keep on the staff. We had 65 people working for us, but of course we're having to encourage them to look for work elsewhere. We hope that if the charges were dropped, we would be able to start work again fairly quickly but the longer this gets dragged out, and it seems that the tactic is delay, the more difficult it is for us to start doing what we were doing before.

Antony Funnell: And what about the Russian people themselves? Why don't they seem more interested in the fact that they are losing the vibrancy of their media sector? That it's returning to the sort of situation that existed in the old days of the Soviet Union?

Gillian McCormack: Well it's a very difficult question to answer, because you would have to have been living in Russia for the last 15 years to really understand why people are a little bit tired of the situation with the media. It was a very turbulent period in the 1990s and a lot of the private and commercial media were owned by special interests in business, and people felt that their media were being manipulated from all sides. So the idea of somebody coming in and forcing the media to take a particular line and not to be bombarding them with lots of conflicting information, you can understand why people felt that that was creating a kind of instability in society.

But I do think that there's lots of evidence to indicate that Russian people do want professional media, they do support local media news for example, provided by private and commercial television and radio stations and newspapers. They do want access to reliable information. They just don't want to be bombarded by information which they feel is biased from a lot of different angles.

Antony Funnell: And just a final question. With regard to the charges against you and Manana, what's your feeling about those? Do you have any chance of beating them?

Gillian McCormack: Well the fact is that the charges should never have been brought in the first place because we're being charged with a crime which we didn't commit. Normally, if you are charged with contraband or smuggling, it's because you have a hidden compartment in your suitcase, or you have sewn things into your clothes and deliberately hidden the fact that you have something on your person, which is absolutely not the case with Manana and I.

These things happen all of the time, and they're always treated as an administrative violation with a very small fine. So the very fact that there is a criminal prosecution for me is absolutely unjustified. Whether we can beat it in the Russian courts is really difficult to predict, because of course the courts are not completely independent, so we would have to hope that we managed to get a completely independent-minded judge, and so far in the hearings and the complaints that our lawyers have been running on our behalf, we haven't actually met one of those.

Guests

Gillian McCormack
The head of Internews Europe's Representative Office in Moscow

Manana Aslamazyan
President of the Moscow-based Educated Media Foundation

Further Information

Internews

Presenter

Antony Funnell

Producer

Andrew Davies