The motto of this year's World Russian Forum in Washington was "Towards Economic, Political and Military Alliance". And as a Russian participant in the forum, I would like to share my impressions.

I was most struck by the atmosphere of respect and enthusiasm for Russia. The businessmen present gave high marks to the measures taken and planned by the Russian government to create a civilized market. They spoke of the improving investment climate in the country and called on the US government to take a leaf out of Russia's book on tax reform.

US officials hailed Russia's turn to the West. And rare was the legislator who neglected to mention that President Vladimir Putin was the first world leader to offer condolences and aid to the United States after the terrorist attacks in New York last September.

It's a shame that the articles on the upheavals in Russian-US relations that have filled the Russian and foreign press in the run-up to this week's Putin-Bush summit give no indication of this, because to my mind this positive atmosphere is what really matters. And after all, even the closest of families has its share of spats.

On the other hand, when people at the forum — who had just finished singing the praises of Russia's transformation — learned that I worked in the mass media, their faces fell and they expressed their condolences at the stifling of the free press in Russia. Somehow they managed to keep their enthusiasm for certain changes in Russia entirely separate from their pessimism about the fate of the Russian press.

I tried to combine these two issues in my speech. I said that the forum had formed a realistic assessment of the problems of post-Soviet economic development — corruption, the lack of transparency in all aspects of life, poor corporate governance, etc. These sins are perhaps more endemic to the mass media business than to others, because most of our media companies cannot survive other than as leeches on the back of our deformed economic system.

Our mass media suffers more than most from the rationalisation and liberalisation of the economy. And it opposes reforms where it can by complaining about threats to freedom of speech.

Freedom of speech Yeltsin-style

The battle for "freedom of speech Yeltsin-style" is essentially an attempt to make the death agonies drag on forever. The government's economic policy, for all its faults, offers an opportunity for the press to restructure itself. There is a difference, after all, between growing pains and deathbed convulsions.

The audience seemed relieved to hear this take on the subject. "So that means the president's actions weren't directed against the journalists of NTV and TV6 , but against Gusinsky and Berezovsky!" said one high-ranking State Department official with evident delight.

Unfortunately, I'm just one person, while the champions of free speech are legion. Our media community has fallen hostage to a sense of its own special status in society. We have a law on the mass media that has become an empty suitcase with no handle: It's awkward to carry around, but it would be a shame to get rid of it.

We were "given" our own ministry — but why do we need Mikhail Lesin when we already have German Gref? We're constantly asking for special concessions. Our info-bandits enjoy reliable protection in the foreign press, Western governments and international organisations. We have turned into a ghetto where decent people are afraid to venture.

What will come of all this? When foreign investors inject serious money into the Russian media market (which they will do inevitably), that money will flow not to established Russian outlets, but into the creation of new media companies from the ground up. This is what Russian media companies need to focus on now. Get to it!

ALEXEI PANKIN is the editor of Sreda

, a magazine for media professionals