‘Echo Moskvy’ founder resigns amid ‘malicious’ posts from station’s employees

Sergey Korzun, the founder and first editor-in-chief of Russia’s leading news and talk show radio station Echo Moskvy, has announced he will be leaving the station. He accused the station’s management of betraying their audiences and said he refuses to “support the new course of the captain, aimed at keeping up rankings to the detriment of core values.”

According to Korzun, Echo Moskvy’s “body is still working, but its brain is already dead.”

Korzun says resignation was triggered by posts published on the station’s official website by Lesya Ryabtseva, the outspoken personal assistant of editor-in-chief Alexei Venediktov. She wrote, for instance, that the opposition consists of “merciless, and at the same time spineless and self-deceiving morons.” In her posts, she also complained that “at work we are surrounded by jackasses who don’t understand anything and don’t know anything.”

Korzun said that the lack of commentary on the statements from the editor-in-chief Alexei Venediktov signals his silent agreement with his personal assistant.

In response to Korzun’s departure from the radio station, Venediktov tweeted: “He came and went. There’s no reason behind it, you can tell from the text.” In response to questions about Lesya Ryabtseva, Venediktov said that he is not going to “make announcements about every blog post or tweet made by employees.”

Unprofessional, arrogant, malicious and simply offensive judgments have migrated from the comment section to the posts [on the Echo Moskvy website] themselves, and open trolling from the side of some of the anchors towards some of the guests has made it into the programs.

Sergey Korzun

• Ekho Moskvy is a Russian radio station based in Moscow, broadcasting all over Russia through partnerships with regional radio stations and through the Internet. The station focuses on news and talk shows discussing social and political issues, presenting different points of view. Many prominent critics of the Kremlin host talk shows on the station or are invited as talk show guests.
• Sergei Korzun worked at Ekho Moskvy since it first began broadcasting in 1990. He was the editor-in-chief of the station until 1996, and continued to host talk shows until his resignation.