Nick Paton Walsh in Moscow Friday October 31, 2003 The Guardian
Russia's constitutional court has overturned media rules introduced by the Kremlin earlier this year which heavily restricted the reporting of election campaigns, making it illegal to analyse a candidate's policies or to suggest which candidate might win.
Yesterday's unexpected and liberal-minded decision came at an embarrassing time for the Kremlin, beset with accusations that authoritarian supporters of Vladimir Putin are forcing out liberal supporters of big business.
Just days ago prosecutors arrested Russia's richest man, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a funder of liberal opponents of President Putin.
It was seen as a politically motivated act, and aroused fear of a political crackdown on the nascent democratic and economic freedoms.
The court ruled that clauses of articles 45 and 48 of the election code quietly introduced in the summer had lead "to violation of the freedom of the media".
The regulations were promoted as an effort to end the "black PR" of previous electoral campaigns, during which journalists were paid by candidates to smear their competitors. They made it illegal to report on candidates' backgrounds, analyse their policies, or suggest who was going to win, unless the candidate in question directly paid for the article from his or her campaign budget.
They also required equal coverage of each of the dozens of candidates contesting each seat or post.
A group of journalists and MPs, enraged by the blanket restrictions and the scope for their selective use against opponents of those seeking re-election, asked the constitutional court to overturn them.
One of of the group, Konstantin Katanyan, from the newspaper Vremya MN, wrote an article about the election of a governor in the province of Mordoviya in which, he said, he had violated everything he could to test the law.
His article said the current governor might win, since there was no alternative, that he liked football, and that he had hired his relatives as staff.
The article theoretically broke the law three times, predicting the result and referring to a candidate's background twice.
The court said the amendments to the law too broadly defined the term "campaigning" and hence permitted their "arbitrary application" against journalists.
It introduced a new definition of the term to let journalists legally report more information about elections.
It also ruled that expressing a positive or negative opinion about a candidate could only be called "campaigning" if the journalist's intention to subjectively support one candidate could be proved in court.
The judges said voters could only make a proper decision about candidates if they were given information about their background, and "not only about their current service activities".
Many considered the regulations an example of the Kremlin's excessive pursuit of absolute power, given the tight control it already has on most television stations, many newspapers, parliament, and most political parties.
The most active opposition party, Yabloko, was deprived of its principle funder by Mr Khodorkovsky's arrest.
The press minister, Mikhail Lesin, said the ruling was "ideal", because it did not change the law in the middle of an election, yet confirmed "the priority ... of freedom of speech over restrictions on the work of the media during election campaigns".
But it should not "open the gates for mud-slinging".
Media law experts remained cautious. "The court really should have gone much further and redefined all the points to do with election law, Andrei Rikhter of the Media Law and Policy Institute said.
"Most of them have been written too vaguely, to allow too broad an interpretation."