Parfyonov’s public stand is a rare display of integrity. For the most part, Russia’s media are partners in their own suppression. Many journalists censor themselves in anticipation of what the government wants–a skill honed in Soviet times. Less well-known is the system of zakazukha, where companies pay publications or individual journalists for positive coverage–or no coverage at all. Media expert Aleksey Pankin, editor of the Sreda trade magazine, estimates that of the country’s 7,500 newspaper, TV and radio outlets, only about 200 don’t take money on the side.

This week a Moscow court will hear the case of Yulia Pelekhova, editor of an obscure muckraking Web site who is charged with taking a $40,000 payment in blackmail money. Police investigators say Pelekhova was trying to shake down a businessman: pay $100,000 or find yourself the target of an expose. The editor’s lawyer argues that Pelekhova was accepting money for “journalistic services.” Mikhail Afanasyev, a reporter at the Web site dosi.ru, claims the police “lured her into this. But it’s because of her greed that we’re all on the spot.” The irony is that Pelekhova’s specialty is exposing corruption.

In Moscow, journalistic “deals” have become almost standard. Companies can buy a one-month “blocking package” from one major daily newspaper, for instance, for $20,000, according to journalists familiar with the practice. That means editors will block any negative mention of the firm for that period. The oil giant Yukos paid “at least $100,000” to another mass-circulation Moscow broadsheet to forestall any negative coverage of the company or its favorite political party between July and October, says a frustrated journalist at the paper. Yukos spokesman Alexander Shadrin denies the accusations, saying the company never pays money to influence coverage.

Pankin chalks up the phenomenon partly to history. Russia’s press grew out of the old Soviet propaganda machine, with little tradition of objectivity or genuine independence. Second, most Russian media outlets operate at a loss, and therefore need money. Getting paid for “news” is one path to solvency. And if money fails to win influence, powerful businessmen can go to the courts. Last year Kompromat, a muckraking magazine, devoted a mostly negative issue to the then head of Yukos oil, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Russia’s richest man, currently on trial for tax evasion and fraud. Hoping to stifle the magazine, a Yukos executive offered the editors $35,000 to buy all 10,000 copies, according to Kompromat editor Kirill Belyaninov. Aleksey Kondaurov, the executive, now a Communist member of Parliament, acknowledges making the offer but says it was to cover the magazine’s production costs and stop “the spread of mud.” The editors refused the offer. The next day a local judge acceded to Yukos’s request to confiscate the entire press run. Kompromat’s editors were also slapped with an $8 million civil suit for tarnishing the “honor and dignity” of eight Yukos executives. The case is still in the courts. A Yukos spokesman declined to comment, citing the legal proceedings.

Such conflicts of interest can turn especially ugly in the provinces. In the Russian industrial city of Ryazan last November, two young men attacked a local investigative journalist for the Novaya Gazeta, sending him to the hospital with head injuries. In the weeks before the attack, the journalist, Mikhail Komarov, had published a series of articles alleging that a fitness club owned by businessman Sergei Kuznetsov was performing cosmetic surgery without a license. Komarov says he believes Kuznetsov ordered the attack. The businessman adamantly denies the charge and is suing for libel. The case is complicated by the fact, acknowledged by both men, that Komarov initially took money from Kuznetsov to write a favorable article about the businessman. Komarov says that he also accepted a 30 percent discount at Kuznetsov’s club for an operation on his nose, broken in 1998 by a man enraged by one of his articles. “There are no white knights here,” Komarov says, acknowledging that he augments his $120 monthly salary with about $70 each month in outside payments for writing news articles “to order.”

Small wonder, says the sacked TV newsman Parfyonov, that growing numbers of Russians no longer rely on newspapers and have turned to TV and the Internet for news. “The system is falling apart and starting to change.” It’s about time.