- Bookkeeping - 15th July 2026
- China crisis - 15th July 2026
- Burned out again - 14th July 2026
As today’s Easter Monday read, we again emphasise the importance of a free and independent media which is essential for a functioning democracy, and is often underlined by our Editor, Welshman Phil Parry, although it does not exist in many states around the world, and this is now once more put centre stage by disturbing news coming out of Russia today.
Nosey journalists like me are rarely in favour with the authorities.
We bring to public notice things they would rather keep hidden, and report events which are opposed to the narrative they are trying to convey.
Perhaps these issues are behind a recent internet blackout in the two largest Russian cities.
We are told that the official reason for this is ‘security’ (which has long been an obsession for Vladimir Putin), but maybe the real facts behind this are more sinister – that he doesn’t want certain information getting out.
This has made it incredibly difficult for people like me to find out what is actually going on, and perhaps this means for Mr Putin that it has been successful.
Over the past few weeks the security services have begun blocking mobile internet services in Moscow and St Petersburg, plunging them into a digital black hole.
The blocking in Moscow began on March 6 – apparently on the orders of the FSB – and lasted for almost three weeks before being only partly reversed because there was so much opposition.
Most Muscovites assumed that a new firewall system was being tested to disconnect Russia from the global internet and allow access only to approved sites.
Such blackouts have been common in the provinces, but not in Moscow or St Petersburg.
This follows a denigration, and blocking, of the most popular messenger platform used in Russia: Telegram.
The Kremlin has now turned on Telegram, perhaps because it is so popular (people in Mr Putin’s government use it and complained).
Even Dmitry Peskov, Mr Putin’s press secretary, said that its blocking made it harder to do his job.
“We are fast losing the instruments of our propaganda work abroad, particularly in our near abroad. How are we supposed to convey the meanings?” he declared at a recent conference.
Telegram has a monthly reach of 94 million people.
It was the creation of Pavel Durov, a Russian tech entrepreneur based in Dubai who long refused to grant access for the Russian security services.
A month ago Russia’s state newspapers reported that Mr Durov was being investigated for “terrorist activity”.
Mr Putin, who famously does not use the internet, sanctioned the blocking of Telegram, which he sees as a hostile communication tool.
Also under attack is Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) which are widely used to circumvent official barriers.
All of this is meant to push Russian internet users towards ‘Max’, an official messenger app with an inbuilt surveillance function, proclaims Mr Durov.
However the coercion has made many Russians resentful of their government, and there are other reasons to believe it may not work in the long run.
“Eight years ago Iran tried the same strategy and failed. It banned Telegram on made-up pretexts, trying to force people onto a state-run alternative. Despite the ban, most Iranians still use Telegram”, Mr Durov says.
But this is all another nail in the coffin of media freedom.
If only we could report what governments want us to. Not.
The memories of Phil’s astounding, decades long award-winning career in journalism (when investigations exposed huge wrong-doing, but abuse invariably followed) as he was gripped by the rare neurological disabling condition Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in a major book ‘A Good Story’. Order it now.
Tomorrow – furious people demanding to know why Huw Edwards was not put behind bars for possessing disgusting pornographic pictures of young boys, once again highlights how there have been numerous controversies at the BBC, although executives REFUSE to answer The Eye’s questions about them.
