Russian state television, long known for omitting coverage of political dissent in news broadcasts, moved recently into new territory when it covered the largest anti-government protests here for nearly two decades.
In light of that shift, which caught many by surprise, the question people are asking now, analysts say, is: Was that coverage a one-off event or might it signal an easing in government management of news broadcasting on state networks?
"Reaction among Russians would have been pretty much the same if they had shown aliens landing," Natalya Radulova, columnist with the well-known Ogonyok magazine and the Moscow-based Vzglyad newspaper, wrote in her blog this week.
"Who are they? Where are they from? Why didn't we hear about them before?" she said, suggesting that viewers without access to the internet, where the protest began to gather steam, were dumbfounded by the sudden change in television news.
Tens of thousands of people turned out in Moscow last Saturday to protest the results of legislative elections on December 4 won by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's United Russia party.
They charge that the elections were riddled with cheating and should be thoroughly reviewed or annulled and rerun. The government says reports of vote irregularities will be investigated but assert the election was fair overall and produced results reflecting the "real" sentiment in Russian society.
Breaking taboos
Smaller protests in Moscow earlier in the week against alleged vote fraud in favor United Russia were essentially ignored by the state networks, with some opting instead to show images of Kremlin supporters parading near Red Square - the fare state television news viewers have come to expect.
But then the main Channel One network led its Saturday evening news broadcast with a report on the mass demonstration in central Moscow that drew around 25,000 people, according to police, and around double that according to organizers.
Channel One, along with the NTV network which is controlled by state gas giant Gazprom and the Russia 1 channel, followed on their Sunday weekly news review shows by giving more airtime to the protest and public debate over the elections.
Breaking long-standing taboos further, the networks broadcast footage of hardline Putin opponents like Mikhail Kasyanov, a former prime minister, Boris Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister and even firebrand writer and activist Eduard Limonov - figures whose faces and anti-government protest activities have, as a rule, been considered for many years off-limits for state television news.
"Tens of thousands of people came out to register their disagreement with the results of recent parliamentary elections, which they said were rigged in favour of the United Russia party," NTV news anchor Pivovarov announced on his broadcast, reporting the facts of the day just as any independent news outlet would.
Pivovarov had threatened not to show up for work if NTV did not cover the Moscow protest, the Kommersant newspaper reported on the eve of the demonstration.
Contacted by RIA-Novosti, the state television networks declined to offer comment on the decision to cover the weekend protest.
Covered - but how?
Despite the bracing shift in state television news coverage of the mass demonstration last weekend, however, analysts said the networks really had little choice and cautioned last weekend's coverage did not signal a wider easing of state control over television news.
"There's no point in being under any illusions," television critic Irina Petrovskaya said on the liberal Echo Moscow radio station.
"This was done in a concrete situation when up to 100,000 people came out and the picture spoke for itself. The situation on television as a whole will not change," she predicted.
Pyotr Tolstoy, host of Channel One's weekly Sunday news analysis program, described the protests to viewers as "a normal sign of the development of a civil society." The Moscow rally, he went on, was less a "political" protest than a statement by civil society that "elections must be honest."
And while state television did report on the demonstration, its coverage tended toward the upbeat and minimized expressions of anger at the government - specifically at Putin himself - that were a salient feature of the demonstration itself.
"We're not here to fight," a smiling young woman was shown saying on the Channel One broadcast. "We just want to be heard."
Another interviewee, a large middle-aged man, was even vaguer: "I came here to see who else would turn up - and it turns out I'm not alone. Great!"
One report showed a group of young men who took part in the protest wearing Halloween-style paper face masks, with the voiceover explaining that they had done so because "it's more fun."
None of the broadcasts reported specifically on any of the numerous anti-Putin or anti-United Russia sentiments that anyone present at the demonstration heard clearly.
Putin himself, however, said on Thursday that he considered legal political demonstrations like the mass rally last weekend as "absolutely normal."
And in remarks likely to be studied closely by state television news managers as guidance for future coverage, Putin stated that he, too, was among the millions of Russians who watched and appreciated the television coverage of the protest.
"It is absolutely normal that people voice their views and discuss processes under way in the country, in the economy, in the social sphere, in political life, as long as they remain within the law," Putin said in his annual marathon live television question and answer session with people around the country.
He referred on several occasions to watching the television coverage of Saturday's protest himself, stating at one point: "I saw on the television screens that these were mainly young, active people with their own views which they expressed clearly."
A Kremlin plan?
The Gazeta.ru online newspaper quoted a Kremlin source as saying that the order to show the protests on state television had been given personally by President Dmitry Medvedev, often portrayed as the "liberal" partner in Russia's ruling tandem.
Some analysts however suggested that the surprising demonstration coverage was part of a larger "divide and rule" plan aimed at drawing some of the heat out of anti-government feeling in the country and paving the way for Putin's return to the Kremlin after presidential elections next March.
"Television coverage at the weekend is not a sign of the future democratization of state-run media," Alexander Morozov, head of the Center for Media Studies, a Moscow think tank, told RIA Novosti.
"It was a tactical ploy in Putin's greater plan to become president. By showing opposition leaders on TV, the Kremlin instigates competition and an eventual split between them. In the meantime, it confuses their followers," he added.
Another expert, Alexei Mukhin, head of the Center for Political Information, echoed that notion.
The decision was made to cover the Moscow protest on state television in order to "reach out to the protest electorate, to soften them a bit, to sow doubts among them and, eventually, to win some loyalty among those who now flatly and stubbornly" oppose Putin's leadership, Mukhin said.
Despite the spin and speculation, analysts agreed however that the very fact the Moscow protest was mentioned at all on state television - let alone given such prominent coverage - is noteworthy in itself. This coverage, they said, brought dissent into living rooms across Russia for the first time in many years.
"For more than ten years they've only been shown reports in support of Vladimir Putin's government," Ogonyok's Radulova said. "And now, out of nowhere, there are many thousands of people demonstrating against the elections results."
Organizers have announced plans to hold another demonstration against the elections in Moscow on December 24. Tens of thousands of people have said through Facebook sites and other social networks that they plan to attend that rally.
