The Soviet Union’s state news agency TASS was once so closely identified with the Kremlin that it reserved a special phrase to use whenever it related official news to the Soviet people.

The phrase was «TASS is authorized to announce,» and it prefaced the Kremlin’s statements on everything from Cold War diplomatic crises to the progress of economic five-year plans. By stressing the agency’s special authorization, TASS — an acronym for the Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union — maintained that whatever other accounts the Soviet audience might hear or read, this was the only approved, and therefore, accurate one.

Its signature phrase fell out of use when, after the collapse of communism, the state news agency changed its name to ITAR-TASS — ITAR being an acronym for Information Telegraph Agency of Russia. In the spirit of the changing times, the agency was seeking to emphasize the independence of its reporting, though it remained a state news agency.

But now, ITAR-TASS is again adopting its Soviet-era acronym of simply TASS in a step it says will strengthen its image. The name change is expected to be phased in through the end of the year.

Announcing the change on the occasion of the agency’s 110th anniversary on September 1, Director-General Sergei Mikhailov told staff in Moscow that «the decision was made to return to the historic and globally recognized name of TASS.»

He did not say precisely why the change was necessary but argued that the current media market, with its huge quantity of information from varied sources, does not provide a full and accurate picture of events. He said providing an «accurate» picture would be the agency’s main task.

The back-to-the-future branding choice strikes some observers as odd.

Jefim Fistein, a Russian-Czech commentator and former director of RFE/RL’s Russian Service, says that in 1992 the acronym ITAR was coupled to TASS in an effort to win the public’s trust.

«The intention of changing the name was to bring a kind of credibility to the old name of the Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union, because the name was empty of any credibility,» he says.

TASS lost its credibility by being the mouthpiece for official Soviet versions of events that were patently contradicted by history, Fistein notes. That included announcing in 1968 that the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia was in response to a counter-revolution.

As ITAR-TASS now returns to its Soviet-era acronym, the real reasons behind the change may be less about the pros and cons of choosing a specific brand name than about the Kremlin’s own ongoing efforts to highlight Russia’s Soviet past.

The move echoes similar steps by Russian President Vladimir Putin, including bringing back the Soviet national anthem, reviving Soviet-style military parades, and restoring a Stalin-era labor award.

Fistein says Putin’s stoking of nostalgia for the Soviet era has had considerable success in helping isolate his Western-leaning opposition, encouraging him to go further.

«For many people now, the Soviet past, paradoxically, reflects the happy future of present-day Russia,» he observes. «They don’t expect a happy future to come in the form of modernization or in the form of approaching the Westernized world. For them, the future lies in the Soviet past of Russia.»

At the same time, rebranding the news agency is in line with steps by the Kremlin to bring other state-owned media assets more visibly under its control.

In December, Putin ordered the closure of the RIA Novosti news agency and Voice of Russia radio, with both to be absorbed into a new media conglomerate called Rossiya Segodnya.

Sergei Ivanov, the head of Russia’s presidential administration, said upon announcing the reorganization that Russia «must tell the truth and make it accessible to as any people as possible» as Russia holds «an independent policy and unwaveringly protects its national interests.»

The name change is just one of many ITAR-TASS has undergone over the course of its 110-year history, all of them reflecting the spirit of the times.

The agency dates back to 1904 when tsarist Russia was at war with Japan and needed rapid news from the battlefield. Its first name was the Saint Petersburg Telegraph Agency (SPTA).

However, it was soon renamed. Seized by the Bolsheviks at the start of the Russian Revolution, it became the Russian Telegraph Agency (ROSTA) in 1918 and, in 1925, the Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS). Then, in 1992, it acquired the additional acronym ITAR before losing it again this week.

At its height, TASS was known across the globe as the Soviet Union’s leading news agency, with bureaus in some 90 countries. Today it is smaller, with bureaus in 70 countries, but remains one of the world’s largest news agencies.

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Ukraine, once celebrated for its progressive media reforms, is currently considering legislation that could set the country back to Soviet-era levels of censorship.

Lawmakers in the Verkhovna Rada are set to meet on August 14 to review a sweeping draft law imposing sanctions on Russian companies and individuals. The legislation, meant to hamstring Russia amid intensifying violence in eastern Ukraine, also includes provisions to block media deemed a threat to Ukrainian security.

Supporters say the bill will give the Kyiv government essential tools to fight the onslaught of anti-Ukrainian propaganda and disinformation spread by Kremlin-friendly Russian media.

But critics worry the draft law — which proposes to skirt standard checks and balances by handing fast-track powers of implementation to President Petro Poroshenko and the National Security and Defense Council — could also be used to silence dissenting voices within Ukraine itself.

«We do acknowledge that Russian aggression, Russian hate speech, and Russian propaganda remain a core problem in shaping public opinion,» says Tetiana Semiletko, a lawyer with the Kyiv-based Media Law Institute. «Russia Today, Life News — these are all threats to our national security. But we also see that our own media might be banned or shut down or restricted, with nothing more than a decision by the security council and a presidential decree.»

Trump Card?

The draft law, which passed by a small majority in a first reading on August 12, provides for sanctions against 172 individuals and 65 entities in Russia and other countries for the support and financing of separatism in Ukraine.

Targets include behemoths like energy giant Gazprom, which currently relies on Ukraine to pipe nearly half of its gas supplies to Europe. Ukrainian economists have eagerly suggested Moscow could lose as much as $150 billion in revenue if the sanctions are imposed.

Press advocates are concerned that such heady projections may trump objections about the legislation’s media provisions, which would allow for the prohibition of individual print, broadcast, and Internet outlets outside and inside Ukraine, as well as limiting access to public telecommunications networks.

International watchdogs have condemned the proposals as a profound rollback in Ukraine’s commitment to free speech, considered one of the strongest in the post-Soviet space.

Dunja Mijatovic, the representative on media freedom for the Organization for Security and Cooperation In Europe (OSCE), called on Rada lawmakers to drop the disputed provisions of the sanctions bill, saying the legislation «effectively reverses much of Ukraine’s progress in media freedom.»

David Kramer, the president of Freedom House — which this year demoted Ukraine from «partly free» to «not free» in its annual press freedom report — said the draft law «does not strike the right balance between security and human rights.»

Semiletko agrees, noting that the proposed law was submitted by Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk with no input from outside advisers, and was made available to the public only after it had passed its first reading.

«The draft law contains provisions that might be used to abuse the rights of citizens — the rights of the media and civil society organizations,» she says. «People have been appalled by the fact that those who put forward this draft law didn’t involve civil society at any stage to hold consultations and take their opinions into account.»

‘We Can Do Better’

Some Rada deputies have betrayed growing discomfort about the sanctions bill, which has been squeezed into a busy agenda that includes equally controversial draft laws on lustration and election reform.

Lesya Orobets, an independent lawmaker, expressed exasperation with the drive to speed through complicated legislation, writing on Facebook, «Just one day to change the electoral system, introduce tax and budget reforms, lustration, and sanctions? No, I think we can do better.»

Deputies from UDAR, the party led by ex-boxer and current Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko, have described the legislation as hastily written and called for the legislation to be heavily amended before the second reading.

Serhiy Kaplin, an UDAR lawmaker, suggested on August 13 that the draft law had been altered to remove the provision that sanctions could be applied against Ukrainian citizens.

After months of Euromaidan protests calling for an end to government corruption and the embrace of European values, many Ukrainians remain skeptical of the official intent behind the sanctions bill.

Dmytro Tymchuk, a Ukrainian military expert whose daily blogs remain one of the most valuable sources of information about the country’s military campaign, bemoaned the spirit of the bill in a Facebook post. «If we’re fighting for the title of a democratic power,» he wrote, «let’s play by the rules.»

http://www.rferl.org/content/ukraine-sanctions-russia-free-press/26529268.html

«Iranian Women’s Stealthy Freedom,» the brainchild of exiled journalist Masih Alinejad, has garnered more than 400,000 «likes» and received extensive media coverage since the exiled journalist started the page on May 3.

It also got the attention of hard-line blogs and news sites, including the semi-official Fars news agency close to the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), who have accused Alinejad of working with foreign intelligence services and promoting immorality and promiscuity in Iran.

The latest attack came over the weekend by Iran’s state-controlled television, which accused Alinejad of moral corruption and said that she was trying to deceive Iranian girls and women.

State television claimed Alinejad had been raped in London after using drugs and undressing in public. The report said the alleged rape, by three men, took place in front of Alinejad’s son in the London Underground.

But the Afghan-Australian family behind the Moby Group, which produces some of Afghanistan’s most popular television shows, says it’s eyeing the withdrawal of foreign forces from the country not with trepidation but with plans to expand.

In the space of a decade, the Mohseni family has built the Moby Group into a media empire that owns three of Afghanistan’s most-watched television channels — including the Tolo TV network — several radio stations, a magazine, a music label, a film-production company, and a mobile-phone broadcast service.

Moby has become a crucial part of the media landscape in Afghanistan, where independent media have been key in fostering unity in a divided country still at war. Media independence has been particularly important because some outlets are controlled by powerful former warlords and influenced by neighboring countries like Iran and Pakistan.

Moby is owned and managed by four siblings — brothers Saad, Zaid, and Jahid Mohseni, and their sister Wajma. The four left Australia, their adopted country, to return to their birthplace soon after the U.S.-led invasion in 2001 that toppled the Taliban.

«It seemed to us like an important calling. Afghanistan really needed us and our skillset,» says Zaid Mohseni, who heads Moby’s technology and legal divisions.

Mohseni, who was a partner at a Melbourne-based law firm, says the media scene in those early years was extremely limited. There was only one state television and radio channel that broadcast several hours a day.

Zaid Mohseni

«In a war zone, all of those things you take for granted disappear and in Afghanistan all that was left was destruction,» says Mohseni, whose second floor office at Tolo TV’s headquarters in Kabul is flanked by a dozen small, muted, flat-screen TVs.

Mohseni, who speaks with a distinct Australian accent, is a tall, sharply dressed man. As he sits behind his desk, he fidgets with his two mobile phones, while his eyes wander at a laptop screen.

Under the Taliban, all forms of music and television were banned, as was independently reported news. There was only state-owned radio, the Taliban’s Voice of Sharia, which was dominated by calls to prayer and religious teachings.

In 2003, Moby won a broadcast license and started Arman FM, the first privately owned radio station in the country. They received around $2.2 million from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to help with start-up costs. USAID and the U.S. State Department have spent tens of millions of dollars supporting independent media in Afghanistan.

Over the years the Mohsenis have also invested several million dollars of their own money. After Arman took off, Moby moved into television and soon after Tolo TV was launched.

Breaking Taboos

In a deeply religious and conservative country, the content of Moby’s channels has been groundbreaking. Tolo TV initially broadcast Indian soap operas, Turkish serials, and reruns of American programs like «24.» It still does, but it has also produced its own content.

It created one of the country’s first soap operas, an Afghan version of «The Office,» a phone-in program for women, children’s shows, and its biggest success, «Afghan Star,» a singing contest not unlike «American Idol,» where people send text messages to vote for their favorites performers. Last year, Moby also launched the hugely successful Afghan Premier League, a national soccer competition.

Moby, strongly associated with the pro-Western development effort in Afghanistan, has come under constant attack and pressure from religious leaders, ex-warlords, and even the government itself.

It has been condemned as «un-Islamic» by conservatives for letting women appear alongside men on its radio and television programs. Similarly, it has been criticized by some for showing foreign soap operas that feature unveiled women as well as allowing female contestants on its singing contests.

Moby’s journalists have been arrested and received death threats because of critical reports about sensitive issues such as government corruption and electoral fraud. In Iran, Moby’s leadership have been labelled Zionists and slammed for corrupting moral values, while in Afghanistan they have been accused of being Iranian sympathizers.

Moby’s staunch opposition to the Taliban and other insurgent groups has also led to accusations that it is a U.S. agent. Meanwhile, Pakistani officials have been infuriated by reporting by Moby’s journalists alleging Islamabad’s interference in Afghanistan.

What The People Want

«We don’t actually set out to be controversial,» says 44-year-old Zaid Mohseni. «However, sometimes controversy surrounds us because we have such a large and diverse viewership.» He says the company has to cater to the needs and wants of its core audience — youth and women — otherwise it would lose them.

At the same time, Mohseni says Moby’s channels are «fitted within what is acceptable in Afghanistan.» That includes self-censorship, meaning no nudity or coarse language, and violence is toned down.

The controversy over Moby’s programs has not dented its popularity. According to Mohseni, Moby’s channels reach two-thirds of the television audience in Afghanistan, where half of the estimated 30 million population has access to television.

With the majority of foreign combat troops preparing to leave Afghanistan at the end of the year and a political transition under way, there have been concerns that the media could be vulnerable to any return of the Taliban to power or the rise of a more conservative government.

In a report released just days before World Press Freedom Day on May 3, Freedom House said Afghan journalists face physical threats and a lack of security. It cited numerous murders of journalists in the country in the last 12 months. Afghanistan is ranked 147th in its press-freedom index.

But Mohseni says the scheduled pullout does not hold fear for Moby. In fact, the company is looking to expand.

«For us, the 2014 deadline is just a date. Our plan is to continue our broadcasts and continue serving our audience,» he says. «We plan to expand our production and build the capacity of our Afghan staff. We really want to take it to the next level.»

Moby employs more than 1,000 people, most of them in Kabul. Its headquarters is in Dubai, and its aim to expand in the region, adding over a dozen offices in six countries.

Its expansion is well under way. In 2009, Moby partnered with Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation to create the Farsi1 satellite network. Entertainment programs are packaged in Dubai and beamed from Britain into Iran. Moby also does television production in Yemen. Later this year, the company plans to launch an entertainment television channel in Iraq.

«We’re looking to expand in similar markets like Afghanistan which are underdeveloped and underserviced,» Mohseni says.

Frud Bezhan

Romanenko’s March 4 letter, which he posted on his Facebook page, has already earned him two interrogations by prosecutors, who are mulling pressing extremism charges against him.

The door of his apartment has been daubed with a swastika and leaflets have been stuffed in his neighbors’ letterboxes branding him a «scum» and a «Ukrainian Jew.»

Now, the medical charity that he runs is under threat.

On April 4, exactly one month after Romanenko penned his ill-fated letter, inspectors launched a spot check on the group, saying they suspected it of embezzlement and money laundering.

«We undergo mandatory audits and we’ve never received any complaints,» he told RFE/RL. «I believe these actions aim to damage the group’s reputation, because people think that if it’s being inspected then there must be grounds for suspicion.»

Romanenko’s charity, «Good People,» cares for critically ill patients in the Vologda region.

The Plight Of Russia’s Terminally Ill

He says the organization fills a vital healthcare gap and fears its closure will deprive many patients of life-saving financial and moral support.

«There are many bed-ridden patients, including cancer patients, who are completely alone with their diseases,» he says. «People still contact us, and we are continuing to pay for medicine or treatment. But I’m very concerned about the group’s future.»

Anti-Corruption Crusader

Romanenko suspects regional governor Oleg Kuvshinnikov, the man who ordered the probe against him, of using the letter as a pretext to settle old scores.

The journalist, who has not balked at denouncing official corruption in his newspaper, «Premier,» has long targeted the governor and his entourage.

«We’ve had a long-standing conflict, ever since we published several articles about how regional authorities spend money,» says Romanenko. «Although the Vologda region is severely strapped for cash, officials save money on everyone but themselves. After we wrote about them renovating and buying new furniture for their administrations I was told I’m now the governor’s enemy.»

Despite its playful tone, Romanenko’s plea to Putin, too, paints a damning picture of authorities in Vologda.

«Everyone here is a Russian speaker and our rights are severely violated,» the letter said.

«Our sick cannot get the medicine and treatment they need, the level of our education is decreasing every year, children’s clubs and interest groups are closing, agriculture has virtually been destroyed.»

Romanenko also asked that the money earmarked for Crimea be instead spent on medicine and education in the Vologda region.

The instant popularity of his letter, which went viral on the Russian Internet and has since generated similar jokes in a string of cities, suggests many Vologda residents share his view.

«We are suffering a lot,» Romanenko wrote to Putin.

«But the occupiers, who have seized power with the help of dishonest elections,» he added, «are not doing anything for the conquered people.»

Natalya Dzhanpoladova reported from Moscow. Claire Bigg reported and wrote from Prague

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That is due to a new rule, made public at the start of April that sets new rules for publishing or broadcasting information after a state of emergency has been declared in Kazakhstan.

The new rules obligate owners of media outlets — print, radio, or television — to hand over texts of their reports to the local «komendatura,» the officials in charge of preserving order during a state of emergency, 24 hours before the reports are published or broadcast.

If those local authorities find problems in any reports they can halt the airing or publication of the report.

If the report is disseminated without approval and is found to be unsuitable, the komendatura can order the “offending” media outlet to suspend its activities.

It effectively gives state media a monopoly on the dissemination of information during an emergency situation.

Tamara Kaleeva, the head of Kazakhstan’s independent media rights organization Adil Soz, told Azattyq one reason for the new regulations provide a legal basis for preventing information from getting out about unrest in Kazakhstan.

She pointed out during the violence in the western Kazakh city of Zhanaozen in December 2011 that left 17 people dead, authorities had to justify shutting down media, suspending Internet access, and cutting off mobile phone service.

Kaleeva also said the new rules are a response to recent events in Ukraine, where three months of protests led to the ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych.

Learning The Wrong Lessons

That is the classic reaction of Central Asian governments to unrest nearby, certainly to social upheaval in the CIS.

When neighboring governments experience social unrest, Central Asian governments traditionally do not look at the roots of the problems — social inequality, unemployment, state corruption — and seek to cure these deficiencies in their own countries.

Instead, the Central Asian governments try to determine which legislative gaps and security slip-ups allowed social unrest to start. Then they take measures to ensure the same “mistakes” cannot be repeated in their countries.

Just look at any of the major unrest in Kyrgyzstan in the last 10 years and then look at the new amendments, rules, and regulations passed in Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan in the weeks that followed. New restrictions are placed on freedom of assembly, freedom of speech and more authority is given to law enforcement agencies, among other changes.

On that note, Kazakhstan is not the only Central Asian country to have acted in the wake of events in Ukraine.

RFE/RL’s Tajik Service, Radio Ozodi, reported at the start of March that a new rule went into effect in the Tajik capital Dushanbe.

Officials went in search of people who had spare tires at their homes (besides the one spare tire every car should have). Those possessing old spare tires, or a suspicious number of spare tires, were ordered to take the tires to an area 40 kilometers outside the capital and leave them there.

No Maidan bonfire in Dushanbe.

— Bruce Pannier. Kazis Toguzbaev and Assem Tokaeva of RFE/RL’s Kazakh Service and Salimjon Aioubov and Tohir Safarov of RFE/RL’s Tajik Service helped in the preparation of this report.

The report was issued on March 12 to coincide with World Day Against Cyber Censorship and seeks to draw attention to «government units and agencies that implement online censorship and surveillance.»

Antoine Hery, the head of RSF’s World Press Freedom Index, told RFE/RL that many chronic offenders remained on this year’s list.

«Belarus, of course, and Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan, etcetera — those countries are looking pretty much uniquely at the Russian model and the Russian model is absolutely terrible,» he said. «We have a feeling that those countries are getting worse and worse every year. But that’s not only related to their online activities or censorship of the Internet, it’s related to [the situation of the media] in general.»

Johann Bihr, the head of RSF’s European and Asian desk, noted that tactics used by different governments to block or control the Internet vary.

In the case of Turkmenistan, he said, the problem is basic.

«Turkmenistan remains a news and information black hole where online censorship begins before you connect to the Internet, thanks to prohibitive prices and a very poor quality,» he said. «So, only less than 10 percent of the population is connected —has access to the Internet.»

In Uzbekistan, where Internet access is better than in Turkmenistan, a special group has been established to monitor Internet use and screen suspect sites.

«Uzbekistan remains a digital tyranny where the Internet is tightly controlled by a commission called the Experts Commission on Information and Mass Communications,» said Bihr. «This is a structure which reports directly to the Council of Ministers and which ensures that all the independent and opposition sources of information are censored.»

Belarus exerts tight control over access to websites outside the country but also uses the Internet as a net to catch critics of the regime.

«Belarus now has ensured that the flow of information on the Internet is tightly controlled and more and more bloggers and netizens are arrested based on various pretexts for informing online,» said Bihr.

But in the Commonwealth of Independent States, it is Russia and the country’s security service that seem to have the tightest grip over the Internet.

«This year, we have included the Russian security service — the FSB [Federal Security Service]— among the Internet enemies,» said Bihr. «This is a token for the Russian surveillance system known as SORM [System of Operative-Investigative Measures], which allows the FSB to have direct access to the servers of the Internet access providers throughout the country.»

Benjamin Ismail of RSF’s Asia-Pacific desk says Pakistani authorities are not as technologically proficient in blocking or screening the Internet, but they still have their methods.

Notable Newcomers

«Pakistan is one [of the countries included in the latest report], not maybe because its censorship is the most sophisticated that we have encountered, but because the will of the authorities [to improve it] is very strong,» he said. «Last year, there was a public call for foreign technology companies to make a [bid] to the government in order for the government to implement a national filter system for the Internet in Pakistan.»

Gregoir Pouget, head of RSF’s new media desk, says that, despite a new president, Hassan Rohani, seen as a relative moderate, Iran remains mired in the same situation it has been in for a few years.

«We haven’t noticed any difference yet between 2013 and 2014,» he said. «I mean, Twitter is still blocked, Facebook is still blocked, YouTube is still blocked. There are many websites that are still blocked in Iran. [Also], Iran is still trying to create its own national Internet called the Halal Internet. So, at the moment, we haven’t noticed any difference [between the current and the previous administration].»

Hery also points out that this year’s list includes notable newcomers.

«The very new thing for this year’s edition of the ‘Enemies of the Internet’ report is the fact that we have included three main democracies that were not in the previous edition,» he said. «These would be the United Kingdom, India, and the United States, with its famous and very secretive NSA — the National Security Agency.»

The report says intelligence agencies in the three nations «are no better than their Chinese, Russian, Iranian, or Bahraini counterparts» in terms of trampling Internet freedoms.