The Kremlin Launches A Full Court Charm Offensive As 1,500 Of The World’s Leading Newspaper Executives and Editors Descend on Moscow To Hear Vladimir Putin and Top Aides Talk About Press Freedom in Russia As Part of the World Association of Newspapers Congress

President Putin has now invited to the Kremlin some 1,500 of the world’s leading newspaper executives and top editors to a glittering opening ceremony Monday for their World Association of Newspapers (WAN) and World Editors Forum (WEF) Congress. Participants are hoping that Putin will seize the opportunity in his welcoming speech to amplify his thoughts on press freedom, Russian style.

The Kremlin has been getting a bad press lately since most independent Russian media has been swallowed up by various state entities, but if they can spin and charm these media leaders from 103 countries it will be a big plus before Putin hosts the G8 summit the following week in St. Petersburg. Certainly the Kremlin has gone out of its way to make top policy people available for the three day meeting to get across the Russian point of view.

Dmitry Medvedev, the First Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation and Chairman of the energy giant Gazprom that also has a few media holdings under its umbrella, will be a luncheon speaker on the Tuesday. Medvedev is considered to be the favored front runner to be Putin’s successor. He headed Putin’s presidential campaign office during the 2000 elections and he was appointed First Deputy Prime Minister last November. If that and Gazprom wasn’t enough to keep him busy, Putin just named him to chair a new state commission on the development of television and radio broadcasting.

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And even Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet Union President, will be the speaker Wednesday. Has Russia, and press freedom, turned out as he would have hoped?

At least 12 Russian journalists have lost their lives since Putin took office, according to the New York based Committee to Protect Journalists, but the government says these should not be seen as planned murders but rather random attacks – muggers and the like – and there have been no court convictions. Since Putin came to office one by one various independent media – newspapers and broadcast -- have been gobbled up by state entities. Although those companies say they have not interfered with editorial decisions there is a belief that self-censorship has become so rampant that when it comes to government reporting there is little difference between television news programs today and those under Soviet times.

A recent broadcast example: REN-TV, basically the last independent TV voice, last October came under control of a Russian oil company and steel company, both Kremlin connected, with German-based RTL also taking a 30% share (RTL is there for its leverage in getting international entertainment products, not for its news ability). In November one of REN’s renowned TV anchors was stopped by security guards from entering the building and to cut a long story short she eventually quit.

The station said her program had poor ratings but in Moscow journalistic circles they say her troubles emanated from her exclusive report in May that the son of a very senior government minister had killed an elderly woman in a traffic accident. The case against the driver was dismissed November 21 when no witnesses came forward and the anchor was barred from the studios four days later.

Two weeks after that and the station’s news editor quits claiming there was too much self-censorship for fear of upsetting the people who travel Moscow roads in long black limousines. For their part the REN-TV owners said they did not plan to change or interfere with the station’s editorial line.

A more recent example affected an online newspaper that was closed down for what it called “harmless satire” whereas a prosecutor labeled it “criminal libel”. Putin in his state of the nation address to Parliament said one of the country’s most serious problems was the declining birth rate. The online newspaper then discussed Putin in terms referring to the male sexual organ and that “insult to authorities” was just plain unacceptable, the prosecutor said. Bad taste? Probably? Should publications be closed down for bad taste and where is the line? Because in Russia there is no easy answer to that it’s more reason for strict self-censorship.

The relationship between Presidents Bush and Putin is said to have soured somewhat over Bush’s pronouncements on how he sees Russia’s freedom of the press. It would seem that the Kremlin has now chosen its audience to return the fire.

But the WAN and WEF conferences are not, by any means, just about freedom of the press in Russia. You can’t have a decent media conference these days without discussing the value and dangers of citizen journalism or whether cartoons that can enrage entire religions should be printed, and those subjects get a full hearing.

What might be one of the more interesting sessions will see executives from Google, Yahoo, AFP and Reuters discussing the impact of new media competitors on newspapers. Of particular note is that AFP sued Google in US federal court last year for distributing AFP news on its news portal without permission although AFP had asked it several times to stop. Google said it would stop access to any news supplier upon their request but only after the lawsuit was filed did Google stop access to AFP stories.

And if the success of Internet news isn’t enough to give publishers shudders then talk of a new free newspaper opening in town will certainly do it. Pelle Tornberg, executive director of Metro International, is known for saying exactly what is on his mind – such as his belief that free newspapers will eventually replace about 95% of all paid-for newspapers except on weekends—and he will give a spin to publishers they may not relish (although it is the smart publisher that has already started his own free newspaper as well).

Mathias Dopfner, CEO and Chairman of Axel Springer, Germany’s largest publishing company, will discuss strategies to converge print and online and how to launch new newspapers in difficult environments, but will he tell us the true circulation numbers for Welt Kompakt separate from Die Welt? The longer he continues to hide Welt Kompakt’s circulation within Die Welt’s the more people will become convinced that either Die Welt’s circulation has gone south or that Welt Kompakt is not doing too well. Enquiring minds want to know!

And how about some tips from the man who runs the newspaper having the world’s highest readership? Sanjay Gupta, editor and CEO of Dainak Jagran the newspaper that has 21 million readers daily will provide his newspaper’s strategies for circulation, marketing, branding, revenue models and competition.

But what is usually the biggest WAN newsmaker is its annual report on press trends which will be announced by Timothy Balding, WAN’s CEO. Last year’s report said that global newspaper circulation rose and that was the headline many chose to go with, but a closer look at the numbers showed that while circulation in Asia, particularly India and China was showing strong growth, for Europe and North America it was a very different picture. Circulation was dropping as the Internet continued its popularity for being a news venue

Will that trend continue in this year’s report, has the circulation drop in Europe and America been stopped? Most national associations are still reporting circulation declines. Is Asia still the powerhouse? There were reports from China in particular that the web was becoming ever more popular at the expense of newspapers.