Russian Reporters—Between a Hammer and an Anvil

In 1995, the Forestry Committee of Leningrad Oblast—a region of Russia—sued a number of newspapers in defense of its reputation. According to the Committee, the newspapers Nevskoe vremya, Segodnya, Vecherny Peterburg, Reklama-Shans and Smena damaged the reputation of the Committee and its chairman, Andrei Gosudarev, by publishing the Russian Green Party’s charges that the transfer of protected state land to small farming plots was illegal.