For daring to publish a report about President Putin’s personal life, the Russian tabloid ‘Moskovski Korrespondent’ had to shut its doors on last Saturday.
The tabloid had published of a possible romance between the President, aged 55 with Ms.Kabaeva, a gymnast and current Member of Parliament, half of his age and also linking this to a possible estrangement of him with his wife Mrs.Ludmilla. The source of the information was from a party planner. The Editor took a stand that by publishing the report he merely attempted to break a taboo prevalent in the Russian Media which do not delve into the private lives of politicians, but, for this he had paid a heavy price.
May be in any other country where there is a free press even assuming that the news is baseless an apology would have put matters to rest. But, it is not so with Kremlin. Subsequent to the threat of Ms.Kabeava to sue the paper if an apology was not published, the Paper did publish an apology,but, apparently this is not sufficient to satisfy Mr.Putin The fact that Mr.Putin is extremely protective about his private life is brought out by the fact that the public has not seen his daughter since he came to power eight years ago. It is also during his presidency, the Kremlin has brought all the television channels under its control.
Under the circumstances, few would believe the claim of the owner of the Newspaper, Mr.Alexander Lebedev that it ceased publication because of costs and disagreement with editors and it has nothing to do with this incident. If that be the case, the closure does not happen the way it was reported. According to the editor, the Director of the paper came to the newsroom on Saturday and ordered the instant shut down.
The moral of the story is ‘behave as a Russian in Russia ‘and do not follow the Western Media.
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