Sun 8 Oct 2006 18:19:08 BST By Oleg Shchedrov http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/CrisesArticle.aspx?storyId=L08129734&WTm dLoc=World-R5-Alertnet-4
MOSCOW, Oct 8 (Reuters) - The murder of Anna Politkovskaya, a prominent Russian journalist and fierce critic of President Vladimir Putin, has raised fears among liberals of intense pressure on remaining outposts of press freedom in the country.
Investigators are still looking for clues to the shooting on Saturday of the 48-year-old journalist, found dead in her Moscow home. Her colleagues believe she paid the price for her vigorous opposition to the authorities on sensitive issues.
"The murder of Anna Politkovskaya is a new attack on democracy, freedom of speech and openness in Russia," the Moscow Union of Journalists said in a statement.
The tight control over the media once exercised by the ruling Communist Party collapsed after the end of the Soviet era, but Putin has halted and reversed the trend to greater press freedom.
While tightening controls on the media, especially the main television stations, the Kremlin has also helped its United Russia party to dominate parliament, crushed the political ambitions of some Russian business leaders and brought others under its command.
Its drive to achieve what critics call a "managed democracy" has fuelled Western concern that Russia under Putin is entering a new period of authoritarian rule.
Politkovskaya, who worked for the past few years for a small liberal newspaper, was an uncompromising media warrior, who stood guard against what she saw as the Kremlin's stifling of press and personal freedoms.
If her book "Putin's Russia", full of personal attacks, had come out before the ex-KGB officer became president in 2000, it would been one among many similar works. But by 2004, when it went on sale in the West, it had no chance of being published at home.
Putin's presidency began with a Kremlin-orchestrated campaign in which media magnate Vladimir Gusinsky was forced to flee Russia and the jewel of his media holding -- NTV television -- ended up in the hands of the state-owned giant Gazprom.
Since then many media outlets critical of the Kremlin have come under the control of Gazprom or loyal businessmen, who allowed carefully measured attacks on the government but barred criticism of Putin, his entourage and his policies.
Last week the new owner of the leading daily Kommersant, Alisher Usmanov, sacked its editor-in-chief after he allowed an article to appear that named top officials's children who were given top jobs in companies close to the government.
Life became harder for Russian journalists after Chechen rebel raids on a Moscow theatre in 2002 and on a school in the southern town of Beslan in which more than 450 people died.
After the attacks the Kremlin initiated changes in media laws which strictly limited the right of reporters to cover war and terrorist attacks, including operations in the Caucasus where the government is struggling to end a Muslim insurgency.
Russian media criticism of the first Russian war in the Caucasus region of Chechnya in 1994-96 played a crucial role in forcing the Kremlin to strike a peace deal with separatists.
During the second Chechnya campaign launched by Putin in 1999, which brought the region back under Moscow's control, the Kremlin used the takeover of NTV to silence the media.
Putin, who is due to step down in 2008, has said he neither can nor wants to curb media freedom. "Even if I wished I could not have put all media under control, and I do not want this," he said last year.
Top aides have spoken of press freedom in different terms . "We will strive to achieve a balance between freedom and order," Putin's close aide Dmitry Surkov said last month. "Freedom is when you have (a car) to ride and things to buy."
Analysts say there is no need to control all the media.
All three top national television channels are now state-controlled, and opinion polls show the dozens of remaining liberal outlets, like Politkovskaya's Novaya Gazeta or popular Moscow radio Ekho Moskvy, have little influence.
Research carried out by the respected pollster VTSIOM earlier this month showed that 1st Channel, Rossiya and NTV are the main source of news for 85 percent of Russians.
More state-controlled television channels are expected to appear before the 2008 presidential polls, in which rival Kremlin clans will compete to succeed Putin.
The St Petersburg channel TV5 has won the right to broadcast nationwide. Analysts link the channel to Dmitry Medvedev, a first deputy prime minister and potential Putin successor.
Later this year army television Zvezda (Star), controlled by another potential successor, Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov, is expected to win similar status, analysts say.