‘Minute-to-Minute Triage’: Weighing News Against Safety in Russia

Inside Ukraine, journalists are dealing with extra direct — and doubtlessly deadly — dangers. Brent Renaud, an American documentary filmmaker, was fatally shot within the head on Sunday in a suburb of Kyiv. On Monday, a Fox Information correspondent, Benjamin Corridor, was hospitalized after he was injured exterior Kyiv.

Days earlier, Ms. Ward described by way of phone how she and her CNN crew work from 9 a.m. to 4 a.m. every day, beginning by assessing whether or not it’s secure to journey exterior their resort. Typically, spotty mobile service and safety considerations power them to improvise: A 15-minute reside dispatch from a subway station, the place a whole lot of Ukrainians had been sheltering from a bombardment, was filmed on a producer’s cellphone.

For now, in Russia, the menace to journalism is statutory, however nonetheless dire: Underneath the brand new legislation, many correspondents there face the prospect of yearslong jail phrases for doing their jobs. That has led to a surprising disintegration of Russia’s impartial media, and left worldwide information shops racked with uncertainty.

Amnesty Worldwide stated on Thursday that 150 journalists had fled the nation to keep away from the brand new legislation, which Marie Struthers, the group’s director for Jap Europe and Central Asia, known as “a scorched-earth technique that has turned Russia’s media panorama right into a wasteland.”

Amid the strangled circulate of out of doors information, some have gone to nice lengths to disrupt the data blackout inside Russia. On Monday, a state tv worker burst onto the reside broadcast of Russia’s most-watched information present, yelling, “Cease the struggle!” and holding up an indication that stated, “They’re mendacity to you right here.” The worker, Marina Ovsyannikova, was detained after the protest.

A invoice launched final week would create a register of anybody concerned, presently or up to now, with media shops or different organizations that Russia has deemed a “overseas agent.”