Among the five TV journalists interviewing Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, the odd one out was easy to spot.
Mikhail Zygar’s questions were sharper than those of the others, who headed back to spacious television studios while Zygar broadcast his piece from a Moscow living room.
The Dozhd news channel, whose editor-in-chief Zygar was given a Committee to Protect Journalists award last month, rose to prominence in 2011 with its coverage of the mass protests against President Vladimir Putin which state-owned television largely ignored.
As other Russian television channels have grown increasingly subservient this year, providing propaganda backing for the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula and Russia’s aggressive policy toward Ukraine, Dozhd didn’t follow the lead and is now paying for it.
Putin’s Government has been careful not to order the channel to shut down, but a Kremlin-instigated smear campaign has driven this rare independent broadcaster to the brink of demise.
Past strollers and bicycles in the hall, a Soviet-era apartment in central Moscow now houses the studio of Dozhd, whose combined online and TV audience is about 12 million.