RUSSIAN TV FAILS TO REPORT ON MOSCOW TERRORIST ATTACKS

Russia’s primary television stations virtually ignored the terrorist attacks on Moscow Monday morning that killed 39 people and shut down part of the city’s subway system, the New York Times reported today (Wednesday). Channel 1 briefly mentioned the attacks at 8:30 a.m. but said nothing about them again until noon, the Times said. A spokeswoman explained that updates were unnecessary because “there was no new information” and that during the morning hours “the majority of people who watch TV are housewives.” Several newspapers, including the 91-year-old Moskovsky Komsomolets, criticized the TV channels, Arina Borodina, the TV writer for the Kommersant newspaper said, “There was no need to show bloody bodies or anything, just give information — traffic updates, that people died, which routes to take, whom to call. In its report, the Times observed that Russian critics “accuse the Kremlin of turning the channels into little more than official mouthpieces that hesitate to cover events, like emergency situations, that may reflect badly on the authorities.”