``While Soviet-era state censorship over the press is gone, new media owners frequently behave like the worst censors,'' Yeltsin said, adding ``They openly interfere in editorial policy, determining what can be written or said and what cannot. As a result, the people's right to objective, accurate information is jeopardized.''

The Russian media started to develop an independent voice after the 1991 Soviet collapse, but the turbulent times saw an end to state subsidies to the media and a fall in newspaper sales. Many publications have turned for support to corporate owners with deep pockets. The new owners have on several occasions clashed with news staff over editorial independence.

Yeltsin addressed the 47th general assembly of the International Press Institute, which brought 467 journalists from93 countries to a three-day conference in Moscow.

Drawing attention to the hall where the press institute was meeting the same place where Soviet-era communist leaders regularly convened Yeltsin balanced his criticism with praise for the progress Russia has made toward media freedom.

``Even ten years ago, for many here in the Kremlin, and in this very hall, it was simply frightening to think that citizens may establish their own newspaper, form their own television company,'' he said.

But that progress was imperiled by contract killings of investigative reporters, believed to have been organized mostly by organized crime, and the persistent attempts by some state officials to control news coverage, Yeltsin said.

``In the Russian government, there are people who can't leave behind the illusion that journalists must serve the authorities, that the press must be commanded,'' he said.

IPI director Johann P Fritz said that several dozen journalists had been killed during the past few years in Russia.``There is no censorship anymore in Russia, but the ultimate form of censorship still exists: the killing of journalists,'' Fritz said.