Nobel Belongs To Journalists Who Were Killed At Work

Interview Dmitry Muratov, Editor-in-chief, Novaya Gazeta

- Ajish P. Joy

Six of your colleagues were murdered for their work. The Nobel Prize announcement came just a day after the 15th anniversary of your colleague Anna Politkovskaya’s assassination.

A/ The Nobel Prize is not awarded posthumously. I think that this prize should belong to those who risked their lives and were killed doing their jobs. Their life and death are the real fight for freedom of speech. I am not the beneficiary of this prize, but my outstanding colleagues are.

Q/ After Politkovskaya’s murder, you said you wanted to close down the Novaya Gazeta, and that no story was worth dying for.

A/ I did want to close down the newspaper, because I failed to protect my employees. I put Anna at risk, but this is a joint guilt. Yet, I am not the only one who runs the newspaper—we have an editorial board, which makes the decisions.

We argued a lot, we quarrelled, but nobody supported me. Our journalists said that we had no right to close down the newspaper. So, now we must conduct the investigation on our own and continue doing what Anna did—help people for whom the Novaya Gazeta is the last hope.

Q/ Do you remember the initial days of the Novaya Gazeta? What about the support you got from Mikhail Gorbachev and Aleksandr Lebedev?

A/ I met with Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev in 1989, when I was working at Komsomolskaya Pravda, the largest circulated newspaper in the Soviet Union. I had gone to interview him. Our friendship began there.