Leonid Parfyonov

Leonid Gennadyevich Parfyonov (Леонид Геннадьевич Парфёнов, born January 26, 1960) is a Russian journalist, news presenter, TV producer and author of many documentary TV shows.

Parfyonov is known for his studio work and productions for the NTV (of which he was Producer General between 1997 and 1999).

From December 3, 2004, until December 20, 2007, he was an editor-in-chief of Russky Newsweek, Russian edition of Newsweek.

In November 2010 Parfyonov became the first recipient of the Listyev Prize, in honour of Vladislav Listyev, a Russian TV journalist who was murdered in 1995.

On the live-broadcast ceremony for the prize, Parfyonov made an unexpected and emotional speech damning Russian TV community for dependence on the authorities, saying “journalists are not journalists at all but bureaucrats, following the logic of service and submission”.

This became a contradiction to the past, when Parfyonov had refrained from making political statements, saying "I am a professional journalist, not a professional revolutionary. My job is to report, not to climb the barricades".

From 2012 until 2018, Parfyonov was a member of Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights.

As the author and narrator of the daily culture news TV show Namedni on NTV, Parfyonov produced the line of popular history TV documentaries which he narrated and hosted on-site of almost each event portrayed.

The series achieved great success and were repeatedly broadcast for years after premiere.

In February 2018, Parfyonov created a YouTube channel named Parfenon, where he publishes his documentaries and runs a weekly blog on "what has happened [to Parfyonov] during the week, what [he] saw, and what [he] thought about" as written in his channel's description.

He later revived his TV show Namedni and started discussing the latest news.

As of April 2020, his channel has 760 thousand subscribers and almost 50 million views.