Poll shows third of Russians link journalist attacks to people they write about
Moscow, 13 January: Attacks on journalists are advantageous, first of all, to those against whom they (the journalists) have found compromising material or about whom they have written something objectionable, almost a third of Russians (28 per cent) believe. Such are the results of a poll conducted by VTsIOM (All-Russian Public Opinion Research Centre) on 8-9 January in 46 Russian regions.
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According to the sociologists' data, respondents are inclined to attribute responsibility for such incidents to political forces: deputies and politicians (10 per cent), the authorities as a whole (6 per cent), state structures (3 per cent) or officials (2 per cent).
Thirteen per cent believe that criminal structures are behind murders and beatings of representatives of this profession, oligarchs - 8 per cent, corrupt officials and criminal structures - 5 per cent each (as received), businessmen - 4 per cent and terrorists - 2 per cent.
The poll showed that, among the incidents of attacks on journalists, the murder of Anna Politkovskaya (57 per cent) and the beating of Oleg Kashin at the end of last year (50 per cent) drew the widest response.
The murders of Paul Khlebnikov (34 per cent) and Anastasiya Baburova (25 per cent) and the beating of Mikahil Beketov (27 per cent) attracted slightly less attention. For Russians, the least known incident of journalists' victimization was the murder of Natalya Estemirova: only 15 per cent of those polled had heard about it. (Passage omitted: details of attacks on journalists)
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