Western Media under Strong Government Pressure, Says Kremlin

"In some states, as we know, including in Western countries, media outlets are sometimes under very strong pressure from their owners and the governments of those countries," the Russian presidential spokesman pointed out, TASS reported.

"We see how various fake news stories are injected into a whole number of Western media outlets," Peskov said.

Many media outlets in the West "rush for hot stuff, without verifying data and fall victim to actions by their governments that use the media as a channel for delivering false information," the Kremlin spokesman pointed out.

"This can cause nothing else but regret, unfortunately," he said.

Responding to a request to specify whether there was the freedom of expression in the West, in his opinion, Peskov emphasized that the freedom of the press was "an absolutely philosophical" issue.

"The freedom of the press is, primarily, financial independence and only few media outlets in the world, including in our country, can report that they are financially independent and that their work is commercially viable," the Kremlin spokesman pointed out.

News outlets always belong to someone, someone gives them money and subsidizes them, and that is why they "should reflect the viewpoint of their owner in one way or another," Peskov said.

As a whole, all media outlets operate largely using a similar scheme: they earn money on news. In this process, as the Kremlin spokesman specified, those media outlets that act quicker and present news in a more talented way earn more than others.

"In this regard, the algorithm of work by media outlets in the West and in our country is fairly the same," the Russian presidential spokesman said.