RUSSIA: Russia's beleaguered journalists celebrated a rare legal victory yesterday, when the country's top court relaxed a law which could have been used to shut down media outlets for criticising politicians.
A week before campaigning starts for the December 7th parliamentary elections, Russia's constitutional court threw out amendments to a law which banned media organisations from supporting a particular candidate or reporting on anything other than his election activity.
Some 100 journalists and parliamentary deputies - from all the main parties except the pro-Kremlin United Russia - appealed against the law, saying it made election reporting impossible since almost any coverage could be interpreted as politically biased.
Several regional news outlets have already fallen foul of the law, most being censured for criticising local power-brokers, while apparently serious violations by leading politicians have gone unpunished.
President Vladimir Putin openly supported Ms Valentina Matviyenko's successful run for the governorship of St Petersburg last month and made a speech at the conference of the United Russia party. These were in blatant breach of election regulations governing the Kremlin's supposed neutrality in such matters.
In both cases Russia's feeble Central Elections Committee - essentially a rubber stamp for the Kremlin - blustered embarrassedly and did nothing.
Surprised journalists rejoiced yesterday at what many hailed as a victory over the Kremlin, where analysts say a fierce battle for power is raging between liberals from the old Boris Yeltsin administration and security service hardliners who followed Mr Putin from the KGB.
The battle broke into the open after Mr Mikhail Khodorkovsky, an oil baron and Russia's richest man, was arrested on Saturday by special agents and charged with massive fraud and tax-evasion.
Prosecutors yesterday froze a major tranche of Mr Khodorkovsky's shares in his oil firm, Yukos, sending share prices plunging on an already rattled Russian stock market.
Many reporters say the crackdown on Mr Khodorkovsky, who funds parties preparing to run against the Kremlin in December's election, is the latest move towards authoritarianism by a Putin regime which has overseen the closure or state takeover of all Russia's independent television channels.
Later yesterday President Putin signed an order relieving his chief of staff, Mr Alexander Voloshin, of duty, Kremlin sources said.
The court ruled that expressing "a negative or positive opinion" about a candidate was not unlawful, neither was "expressing a preference" for a candidate, as long as such an opinion was presented separately from the main news report.
In annulling amendments which could "lead to violations of freedom of speech", the court chairman, Mr Valery Zorkin, said journalists would also be allowed to report on a candidate's past or non-political activities.
"Elections can only be free when freedom of information and the citizens' free expression of their will are assured," he said.
Supporters of the amendments said they would have helped prevent parties and candidates "buying" favourable election coverage.
Critics of the law said news organisations could be prosecuted for giving more coverage to one candidate than another.
The changes to the law were passed in June, days after TVS, Russia's last independent national television channel, was taken off air amid alleged financial difficulties.