The spotlight was always on people who had some exemplary role to play in the ideological conflict of the day. Mandela was a figurehead of the anti-apartheid mo

The spotlight was always on people who had some exemplary role to play in the ideological conflict of the day. Mandela was a figurehead of the anti-apartheid movement, which drew both praise as well as condemnation. He was considered a terrorist and communist by a non-trivial amount of the US well into the 2000s after all, very exciting stuff. Navalny or flat out most dissidents today have no ideological relevance, and nobody cares about 'ordinary' dissidents, who vastly outnumber pivotal historical figures. It's not a converted effort that prevents the media from reporting about jailed journalists in Turkmenistan, it's that nobody reads it. Pussy Riot was popular for a minute because the media could put some hot naked women on the cover of their newspapers, but that's about it.