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MISHAL HUSAIN: So, what makes you so sure that the person who's on trial now, for the murder of the second editor, isn't the right person?
ANN COOPER: Well, I can't say absolutely he's not the right person. Anything is possible. But, look at the story here. He's a laborer. He leaves his apartment at night, goes around the corner to buy a bottle of vodka. The editor comes home. Meanwhile, and as the laborer is returning back to his house, he encounters the editor. They're total strangers; never met before. The laborer asks the editor to have a drink with him. And the editor refuses and they supposedly get into a fight, and the laborer pulls out an ice pick and stabs him more than a dozen times. I mean, how plausible does that sound? At a bare minimum, that story has got to be subjected to some very severe skepticism, and that simply was not done in this case. There seemed to be a real rush to get somebody, anybody on trial for this murder.
MISHAL HUSAIN: So would you suspect that this is a cover-up?
ANN COOPER: There are certainly many people who believe this is a cover up. Two murders of two top editors at one newspaper in 18 months? People think that smells like a story. They think that whoever was behind these killings did not understand that the second murder was going to get a lot of attention. A lot of international attention. And so, there was pressure. Something has to be done. We have to look like we're bringing someone to justice. That we're solving this murder. And so, someone was grabbed. That's the theory of many people there.
MISHAL HUSAIN: Now, you followed this whole chain of events very closely. What have you learned about the editors -- the two men at the center of what happened in Togliatti? Why are they people whose stories we should care about?
ANN COOPER: You know, these are two men who were teenagers in the last years of the Soviet Union. It was a time of great change, enormous change, and of a lot of optimism. People were finally given freedom to express themselves. The world seemed, probably, full of many possibilities for these two extremely bright, dynamic, young men. And they created a newspaper. And that newspaper made a big difference in their city. There was a reporter who went around after the murders interviewing people about what kind of stories this newspaper did? And a lot of people just said, "They printed the truth." That's it. They printed the truth. And to people, that was so important because they hadn't had that before. And now, that truth is being silenced because of these very, very chilling murders. And it sends a message to people about that time of possibilities, of opening up, of greater freedom of expression. That time seems to be closing down now.
MISHAL HUSAIN: How much interest, do you think, we should take in the Western world in the state of press freedom in Russia? Is it something, for instance, that the United States should be more critical about?
ANN COOPER: The Committee to Protect Journalists believes that the United States and other Western governments should very much be putting pressure on Russia and other states that deny freedom of the press, that try to control critical voices out there. Unfortunately, there is not much said about Russia. And what often happens is that a government's decision to speak out, or not speak out, about a human-rights issue is not based so much on pure human rights, but on geopolitics. You know, what's the strategic importance of this country?
MISHAL HUSAIN: There were concerns especially around the time of the presidential elections this year. Colin Powell, for instance, when he went to Russia, did do exactly that, criticize the press freedom.
ANN COOPER: Right, and that's something. That's a message that needs to be heard loud and clear. And it needs to be heard repeatedly. Because, you know, Russia may be more stable than it has been, or than it was throughout much of the 1990s, but it's not really going to achieve a stable democracy if it doesn't have a free press. And that's a message that, I think, the United States and other Western governments need to deliver very strongly and very loudly to the Russian government.
MISHAL HUSAIN: Doesn't criticism like that hurt Russia's image in the rest of world? Reflect badly, personally, on President Putin?
ANN COOPER: Well, I think it's important for Western governments to say that these issues -- human rights issues, press freedom issues -- these are very important to us, and if you want to be a key player in the international community, there are certain standards that need to be met. And, you know, here's where we find you falling down.
MISHAL HUSAIN: So how does the state of media freedom in Russia compare to the reality of other parts of the world?
ANN COOPER: Well, in May of this year, when we put together our annual listing of the ten worst places to be a journalist, Russia was on our list. Along with Iraq, Cuba, China, Bangladesh, Turkmenistan -- some pretty awful company on that list. Some of those countries have, literally, dozens of journalists imprisoned because of their work. The Russian government, Putin's Kremlin, has not really needed to rely on that. There have been some cases of jailings of journalists, but the real issues here are the impunity and the murders of journalists. In the last four and a half years, 13 journalists have been killed because of their work. Several of those in Chechnya, in conflict situations. But the others were murdered, hunted down because of their journalism. So, it's a deadly place for journalists. Particularly provincial journalists. And the other thing that we see in Russia is a more subtle form of control. You know, we don't have lots of journalists being thrown in prison because of their work, but administrative pressures on newspapers. The local governments can use control of advertising, control of news print -- use these as levers to pressure a newspaper that they think is, maybe, getting a little too independent or feisty in what it's writing.
MISHAL HUSAIN: What are your fears, then, for democracy in Russia, for Russia's future, if this strong, independent media is not something that's going to be celebrated?
ANN COOPER: Well, I just don't think that you can have a strong democracy anywhere in the world if you don't have a strong, independent, free press. Because that press is your check on government, on elected governments. It's what keeps politicians honest once they get into office. You know, it keeps an eye on corruption. It reports to the public about their performance, gives them a report card on how they did. What did they do that was good? What was bad? Now, you, the voter, decided you want to keep this person in office, or do you want to choose an alternative? If you don't have a free press, the public isn't going to get that information, and that choice is taken away from them.
MISHAL HUSAIN: Well, did you feel any kind of danger while you were on this trip to Togliatti, after everything that's happened?
ANN COOPER: We didn't feel in any personal danger while we were there. Our profile was pretty high, we did have some official meetings. People knew exactly why we were there. We met with the families of the murdered journalists. We met with other journalists. We had a press conference to talk about our concerns, and to renew our calls for justice in these terrible cases. And the press conference almost turned into a therapy session with the journalists who were mighty discouraged -- and not just those from that newspaper.
MISHAL HUSAIN: I think in the film you see Sidorov's wife -- obviously, you know she's lost her husband through all of it, but I think she says something like, "You know, it just wasn't worth it."
ANN COOPER: It wasn't worth it, yeah.
MISHAL HUSAIN: It's a tragic state of affairs.
ANN COOPER: On one level, you have the families questioning. We've lost our family member, and, you know, was that worth it? So it's a very human loss. But, there's also this sort of intangible loss for the entire city. And that is what we've been talking about. That ability to criticize, to speak out, you know? If you see this happen to these two editors, what do you think about the next time you want to say something critical?
MISHAL HUSAIN: Has it been followed in Moscow, and, you know, elsewhere? Did it become a big national issue?
ANN COOPER: I don't have the impression that it has particularly. There's only a handful of papers that are still somewhat national in scope, and pretty muckraking: NOVAYA GAZETA, which Anna Politkovskaya works for, KOMMERSANT, MOSCOW NEWS. We heard that KOMMERSANT was supposed to have a big article on the case last Monday, but we couldn't find KOMMERSANT in Togliatti. I don't know that they kept it out of the city on that day, but people said, "It's hard to get those newspapers in Togliatti." Very few copies come. If you don't line up early in the day, you're not going to find it. And I didn't hear anything about national TV doing stories. It doesn't mean to say they haven't been there, but they're certainly not down there covering this trial.
MISHAL HUSAIN: Ann Cooper, thanks for being on WIDE ANGLE.
ANN COOPER: Thank you very much.
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Ann Cooper, Executive Director of the Committee to Protect Journalists
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