Public Chamber proposes freedom-of-speech index to rate governors.

MOSCOW, February 20 (Itar-Tass) -- Russia's Public Chamber has come up
with the idea of including what it called "the freedom of speech in the
regional mass media" parameter in the list of criteria used to rate the
performance of governors, the head of the Chamber's commission for
communications, information policies and the freedom of speech, Pavel
Gusev said this week.
He declared that the Public Chamber was already in the process of
monitoring the freedom of speech in a number of regions and "there is an
agreement with the presidential staff on that score already."
"We shall submit a memorandum to the presidential office with a
request for including the freedom-of-speech rating into the list of
parameters used to rate governors' performance. He is certain that "this
would give journalists far greater freedom in covering topical problems.
Gusev said the Public Chamber planned to create "an objective basis of
ratings with reliance on social services and journalists' associations,
which would help evaluate the freedom of speech situation."
Also, he said that in 2010 the commission would try to find out how
much the federal government spends on the mass media.
He believes that grants should be disbursed to the regional mass media
not by the authorities, but by public structures, like the grants for
non-commercial organizations.
"The mass media will know they are not on the authorities' payroll,"
Gusev said.

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