Notebook

TV Sense, or?

Popular journalist ousted

As this issue was going to press, NTV’s weekly program, Namedni, was shut down and its host/director, Leonid Parfyonov, one of Russia’s most talented TV journalists, was fired. Management said Parfyonov failed to comply with the terms of his contract, which bound him “to support the line of the channel’s leadership.” The news of the sacking came two days after Namedni was forced to pull an interview with Malika Yandarbieva, widow of Chechen separatist leader Zelimkhan Yandarbiev. The interview, shown in a version of Namedni broadcast to the Russian Far East, contained allegations that Russian secret services were involved in the February assassination of Yandarbiev in Qatar. Parfyonov had released an internal NTV document to Kommersant, ordering him to pull the interview.