A few years ago Peter Pomeranzev, an Anglo-Russian journalist, found himself in a Moscow taxi where the radio was playing Radio Liberty, the U.S.-financed station that transmits uncensored broadcasts in Russian. As a boy Mr. Pomeranzev had been taken to hear his father, a Russian poet in London, deliver regular broadcasts to a closed Soviet Union. But that was another era. Why, in 2009, would a Moscow taxi driver listen to Radio Liberty?
The driver replied that he had listened to Radio Liberty throughout the Cold War. After 1991 he switched to easy listening. Now Vladimir Putin was snuffing out media freedom.
The driver concluded: "I've got to start listening to it again."
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