Step-by-Step Erosion of Russia’s Free Press Under Putin After the Soviet collapse, a fragile Russian free press briefly flourished before Putin extinguished it through a pincer strategy: harassing journalists and programs on one side while coercing media owners and their businesses on the other. The campaign began with targets that seemed trivial—a popular satirical puppet show—justified by vague appeals to “public interest” and fights against “misinformation.” Economic pressure forced sales and cancellations that were later portrayed as voluntary, a narrative many abroad accepted. Formal charges were rare; a few conspicuous attacks set the tone while detentions crept from days to years, even for a tweet. Step by step over roughly three years, the space for independent media vanished without tanks in the streets.
Democratic Immunity Requires Vigilance and First Amendment Resolve America retains a democratic immune system, but only if citizens act; the Constitution is a foundation, not a self-executing shield. Recent threats to revoke a public broadcaster’s license and moves to crack down on what is labeled “hate speech” test core First Amendment limits, which past rulings—from Hustler v. Falwell to the Supreme Court’s rebuke of New York’s coercion of the NRA—have strongly defended. The greater danger is normalization, as Trump turns once-unthinkable conduct into the new baseline, shrinking outrage the way Watergate might scarcely register today. When officials display fealty to a single leader over the Constitution, elections can remain formally free yet fundamentally altered. Vigilant pushback is the only antidote to the slow slide that once erased Russia’s free press.