The point is, Novaya will absolutely find a way to report about the rapidly declining situation in a manner barely acceptable by dumb censors. It's chief editor didn't get his peace Noble for nothing.

I am really sorry to say this but as of last midnight Novaya Gazeta have ceased their newsroom operation.

https://novayagazeta.ru/articles/2022/03/01/o-rabote-v-uslov...

Not so sure on “absolutely”. Echo Moscow was riding this sharp line through thick and thin for 30 years, and even they had to close up shop yesterday.

You go to jail for any reporting related to the war in Russia. No exceptions. One way to check is go to to a news aggregator, like news.Google.com, choose Russian region for Russian related news. Use a translate service to get a view what information is shared. I have done it out of a habit - and the level of control is extreme that no useful information is shared.

I know. But not reporting _anything_ is not unlawful, and seems more honest than playing along with government’s rules. At least then it’s clear that Russia has no independent media. The way I see it is a newspaper in Nazi Germany deciding to focus on the economy, because they can’t report on concentration camps. Better than nothing, maybe, but works great for distracting people from genocide. Again, I understand it’s people’s livelihoods, so I don’t want to judge them too harshly.

> one can argue some news is better than no news

The problem is that people expect (and rightly so) that the news is reporting what is important right now, so if one area is not being reported on it sends the message that it is not important. Censoring one story basically says that either it is not happening or that it is not important in the eyes of the journalists.