The crackdown on Russian media is a familiar story. Certainly, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and particularly the Washington Post are quick to hurl charges of authoritarianism, autocracy, even Stalinism at the Kremlin and Putin whenever free speech in Russia is threatened. So why haven't all those influential mainstream newspapers reported on the silencing of Moscow's English-language alt-newspaper The eXile?

The eXile was forced to shut down June 11 after a surprise on-site audit by the Russian authorities. There are different theories as to why those authorities moved against the paper at this time. Some believe the crackdown was connected to the newspaper's regular columnist, Eduard Limonov, a radical opposition leader, or to an ongoing clan war in the Kremlin that the paper had been reporting on. But the explanation is less important than the silence of the American media.

Launched in 1997, the tabloid rocked Moscow's expat community with a mix of gonzo-style journalism, meticulous reporting, hard-hitting political analysis, quirky columns and sophomoric, often scatological humor. There was also a seriousness of purpose. Co-founders Matt Taibbi, now a correspondent for Rolling Stone, and Mark Ames scrutinized and exposed what they saw as inaccurate and ideologically slanted reporting by US correspondents in Moscow, especially their apologias for the misery caused by the US-backed shock-therapy reforms in the Boris Yeltsin years. The eXile's annual "Worst Foreign Correspondent in Moscow" contest was dreaded by many--and cheered by a few, including this magazine. (For an example of their keen press criticism, see Taibbi and Ames's "The Journal's Russia Scandal" in the October 4, 1999, issue of The Nation.) The eXile was an equal-opportunity critic, contemptuous as well of US academics who took the same line.

Could the reason for the strange silence of the US press about The eXile's fate be that the Moscow paper relentlessly attacked many of these same outlets for adhering to Washington's line after the end of the Soviet Union? The outcry in other countries is telling. For more than a week, The eXile's closing has been a prominent story in Germany's Der Spiegel, in a leading Dutch magazine and paper, and in one of Hungary's daily papers. It has even been reported in Russia's "unfree" media.

I asked Ames, The eXile's chief editor in recent years, why he thinks the US mainstream media did not respond quickly. "It doesn't fit their simple propaganda," Ames told me. "Putin is an oppressor--except when he oppresses something that the American mainstream media doesn't approve of either. Americans have proven that it's not oppression or censorship they oppose--it's opposition to America that they oppose. We've angered most of the Western press corps for eleven straight years by constantly calling them on their hypocrisy and idiocy, so the last thing they want to do is give us an honorable send-off, despite all their pieties about 'supporting free speech that you disagree with.' It's censorship by silence, the most lethal of all, and it really sickens all of us to see it."

The day we went to press, the Wall Street Journal finally ran a story about The eXile's closing. Meanwhile, abandoned by almost all of their fellow American journalists, the eXile editors have launched a fundraiser on their website in an effort to keep an online edition afloat.

Comments (15)

1. Well, they've made great economic strides and can we say from our subjective perspective that...

   "nothing short of democratization qualifies as 'meaningful' change in (Russia)."...."We may wish for democracy for (Russia), but to deny that lesser improvements are meaningful is a profound failure of analysis and compassion".

   Posted by Mask at 06/19/2008 @ 3:19pm

2. The day you went to press, the Wall Street Journal FINALLY ran a story? Interesting description.

   Posted by Benchrest at 06/19/2008 @ 3:44pm

3. Damn! thought I was first.

   Posted by william.harry13 at 06/19/2008 @ 3:45pm

4. Thanks to the Web and outlets like the Nation, we can know this important information.

   Won't be long before the nazis shut down the internet. it will start with taxes and justifications for a "commonality" in news reporting. Before we know it the truth is in prison.

   But we'll still be able to download all the pictures of Paris Hilton we need, 24/7.

   Truth... RIP

   Posted by ginza00 at 06/19/2008 @ 3:55pm

5. Won't be long before the nazis shut down the internet.

   Posted by ginza00 at 06/19/2008

   RESE Jr.?

   Posted by Benchrest at 06/19/2008 @ 4:02pm

6. RESE Jr.?

   Posted by Benchrest at 06/19/2008

   Nah his posts aren't novels. Like Rese's

   Posted by Cccomfo1 at 06/19/2008 @ 4:06pm

7. Huh? I don't even like peanut butter!

   Posted by ginza00 at 06/19/2008 @ 4:17pm

8. If you people are all weirded out about me saying nazi, i meant repugs. Chill.

   And peanuts are a legueme, not a nut, if youre trying to call me nutty by comparing me to a rese. Losers.

   Posted by ginza00 at 06/19/2008 @ 5:16pm

9. Posted by ginza00 at 06/19/2008

   It was a comparison to a nut, but not the candy kind.

   A conspiracy theorists by the nick of "RESE".

   Not applicable to you though, despite what BENCH said. Have to go a loooooooong way to be as wacky as RESE.

   Posted by Mask at 06/19/2008 @ 7:43pm

10. "The eXile needs you to donate money right away so that we can pay our system administrator and find a new server somewhere overseas, and maybe throw the War Nard a few Milk Duds. Click the button below to donate through PayPal and make yourself feel good in 2 E-Z steps. "

    http://exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=19253&IBLOCK_ID=35

    Posted by frosty zoom at 06/19/2008 @ 9:15pm

11. The Great Iraq Swindle How Bush Allowed an Army of For-Profit Contractors to Invade the U.S. Treasury

    MATT TAIBBI

    Posted Sep 06, 2007 8:51 AM

    http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/16076312/the_great_iraq_swind le

    • see where your greatgrandkids money has gone.......

    Posted by frosty zoom at 06/19/2008 @ 9:17pm

12. • see where your greatgrandkids money has gone.......

    Posted by frosty zoom at 06/19/2008

    Har ... more like where our (and if you look really close, there's a hand in your pocket too :-) greatgreatgreatrandkids money has gone.

    Hey Frosty nice to see you're still here ...

    Posted by V at 06/19/2008 @ 9:42pm

13. Vster!

    welcome to the "newcoke" nation website.

    oh, you're right.

    i'm paying, too. everytime i fill up the pollution machine or have the nerve to buy food.

    plus, i'm paying for that gas pipeline in afghanistan....

    Posted by frosty zoom at 06/19/2008 @ 10:44pm

14. greatgreatgreatrandkids money has gone.

    Posted by V at 06/19/2008

    trankids.........

    they change so fast.

    Posted by frosty zoom at 06/19/2008 @ 10:46pm

15. Unibroue Maudite.

    aahhhh....

    Posted by Benchrest at 06/19/2008 @ 11:29pm