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Remembering A Slain Russian Journalist

By Vaughn Ververs

October 10, 2006 / 6:00 PM EDT / CBS News

(CBS)

CBS News Moscow Bureau Chief Beth Knobel has given us a look at how challenging it is to be a foreign reporter covering Russia, now she's helping us understand why it is so dangerous to be a Russian journalist. The recent murder of Anna Politkovskaya has raised concern at high levels and has many observers talking. In a dispatch from Moscow, Knobel writes:

She was one of Russia's most famous and courageous journalists. Now her killing has caused an international outcry.
Anna Politkovskaya was a reporter for one of Russia's few remaining independent newspapers, "Novaya Gazeta." She was an uncompromising critic of the Russian government. But her main subject was the bloody war in Chechnya.
Politkovskaya wrote about the murder of innocent civilians, the corruption of local officials in Chechnya's Moscow-backed government and war crimes by Russian forces stationed in Chechnya. She reportedly was investigating torture in Chechen prisons at the time of her death.
"She was hammering away at the Putin regime, and she had a lot of people respecting her for what she was doing here in Russia," said reporter Pavel Felgengauer, a friend of the late journalist.

In a side note, Politkovskaya had a special relationship with CBS News which is remembered by CBS News vice president Linda Mason here.