Opposition activists have sued Russian television station\u00a0NTV\u00a0after the channel aired the documentary\u00a0\u201cAnatomy of Protest\u201d, which claimed people were paid to participate in recent mass protest rallies.<\/p>\n
Eleven years ago thousands of people gathered in Moscow in support of Russian private NTV channel, protesting against state-owned Gazprom\u2019s subsidiary — Gazprom Media Holding — buying it from media tycoon Vladimir Gusinsky. He had faced pressure from Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin to sell NTV (as well as \u201cEcho of Moscow<\/a>\u201d radio station). That rally didn\u2019t influence the transaction; NTV was passed into the hands of Gazprom-Media, which later fell under control of Yury Kovalchuk who is considered a close friend of Putin.<\/p>\n Eleven years have passed and Vladimir Putin has\u00a0returned to power<\/a>, ignoring\u00a0mass protests <\/a>against his third presidential run. Now NTV is the focus of another rally. This time some 300 people<\/a> gathered near Ostankino TV tower on Sunday, protesting against NTV policy and particularly the documentary, which was aired twice last week suggesting people received money and cookies for protesting against Vladimir Putin.<\/p>\n Many of the protesters held placards reading \u201cNTV lies\u201d, flowers and old broken televisions \u201cto mark NTV\u2019s funeral as mass media\u201d. Dozens of people were arrested, including opposition leaders Sergey Udaltsov and Boris Nemtsov. All were released by the following morning.<\/p>\n The arrests angered many, with complaints on NTV\u2019s Facebook page, and \u201cNTV Lies\u201d hashtag trending on Twitter.<\/p>\n The Democratic Choice opposition movement has filed two lawsuits against NTV. One is for libel — the movement is demanding NTV withdraw statements in the documentary about opposition leaders hiring people to attend rallies and aiming to arrange provocations and bloody revolution in Russia.<\/p>\n The other lawsuit relates to Democratic Choice authors\u2019 rights — the documentary included a video showing citizens of Kenya attending a rally in support of Vladimir Putin, who didn\u2019t seem to understand the Russian language and could not explain at all why they supported Putin.<\/p>\n \u201cDemocratic Choice\u201d activists claim the video was shot by them to show that Putin\u2019s assessments of how many people actually supported him on rallies were controversial. The NTV documentary claimed that the Kenyans interviewed might have been hired by opposition activists.<\/p>\n A libel lawsuit against NTV was filed by politician Boris Nadezhdin, and opposition leader Boris Nemtsov has called for a \u00a0boycott of all NTV programmes. Bloggers have called on advertisers including Pro\u0441ter & Gamble<\/a>\u00a0to pull the plug on the company. The company responded, saying it respects freedom of expression, but prefers to stay out of politics and doesn\u2019t see itself as a party in this conflict.<\/p>\n