Journalists at a Russian radio news network say they have quit their jobs after a new editor stopped them reporting on anti-Kremlin demonstrations.
Russia's independent media complain they are being silenced under President Vladimir Putin. Since he became president in 2000 most major broadcast media have fallen under Kremlin control.
Now staff at the Russian News Service - which feeds news to the country's most popular radio stations - have walked out.
"The new editor presented a new policy which seemed to me to make it impossible for a journalist to work independently," one of the reporters, Artem Khan, told Reuters.
The 33-year-old said he had worked for the station for two years but quit last week.
"Before the new editor arrived this had been an independent news agency and an independent radio station," Khan said. "That has all changed now."
Three other correspondents had also walked out, he said, leaving just one still at work.
"There were a few examples when I was not allowed to report independently," Khan said. "One of these was the march of the dissenters which I went to but we did not broadcast."
The anti-Kremlin opposition has organised a series of demonstrations entitled The March of the Dissenters. They accuse Putin of trampling on democracy.
Last month authorities snuffed out two anti-Kremlin demonstrations including one in Saint Petersburg, where police hit protesters with batons.
The new general director of the Russian News Service, Alexander Shkolnik, used to work at Channel One, a state-funded TV channel which has a reputation for strongly pro-Putin coverage.
On Friday he defended himself against an accusation of bias towards the Kremlin.
"It's a lie," he told RIA Novosti news agency. "In the last broadcast we didn't present, as some media report, only United Russia and the public chamber but also the Liberal Democratic Party, the Communist Party and the Union of Right Forces."
United Russia is staunchly pro-Putin, the Liberal Democratic Party is ultra-nationalist and the Union of Right Forces is a marginal liberal party. None is in the main Other Russia opposition coalition.
Putin denies restricting the media but free-speech campaigners say media independence has been eroded.
Private television station NTV was once known for its dogged reporting but has become more deferential since state gas monopoly Gazprom bought it.
The Gazprom-owned Izvestia newspaper fired its editor in 2004 after his coverage of the Beslan school siege during which more than 330 people died, more than half of them children.
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