ABSTRACT
In order to understand and appreciate the current Russian media scene, it is important to briefly discuss the system that prevailed in the former Soviet Union. News in Russia has gone a long way from an item in a handwritten newspaper to today’s commercial product, distributed in a mass and exciting form that expresses views, beliefs, and interests of various social groups. According to Vladimir Dal, one of the most prominent Russian-language researchers, “News is a quality, a feature of all that is new, a piece of information about a happening, an adventure, the first information about something” (Dal 1989, 549).
