Russia Doctored Photos in Shooting Down of Airliner, Report Finds

[Igel]

36. It's a very Russian point of view.

After all, for most of the lifespan of most Russians the media was the mouthpiece of the government and to a large extent is so heavily filtered that in many ways it is again.

The original deal under Putin was that if you left politics and the economy to the government what happened in the social and cultural sphere was going to be left alone. That's how the media reported it: If they opined on matters political or had a decided non-approved economic stance they were harrassed. The greater the deviation from official policy, the greater the harrassment.

That's changed in the last few years. Authoritarians are seldom content with limits, even self-imposed limits.