On 12 October 2010, President Dmitry Medvedev appointed Mikhail Fedotov as his Adviser and Chairman of the Presidential Council for Civil Society Institutions Development and Human Rights.

Fedotov is the Secretary of the Union of Journalists. He has also represented Russia at UNESCO and holds the diplomatic rank of Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary. He is one of the authors of the first Media Law of the Russian Federation. In 1992 Mikhail Fedotov became the Minister of Press and Information. He resigned from that post however in 1993 in protest to the adoption of amendments to the Law. Fedotov received a Fulbright scholarship in 2004 to conduct research at the Kennan Institute.