COMMENTARY
Comment on Kathy Lally, “In Russia, freedom of speech belongs to the state,” Washington Post, 10 December 2010
By Gordon M. Hahn
In a recent Washington Post (WP) article, journalist Kathy Lally makes the exaggerated claim the in Russia “the government controls the media.” To be sure, the Russian government controls much of the media but from all. However, the statement is misleading, as it gives the impression that the government controls all or almost all media. In fact, the Russian government has no control over the Internet, which is becoming the main source of news for young Russians and a large minority source for the overall population. Within a few years, the majority of Russians will be getting most of their news via the Internet or from other independent sources via cable television. There are small, independent radio and cable television companies. The state-owned radio station ‘Ekho Moskvy’ gives airtime to all of the regime’s political opponents. There are numerous independent newspapers, including Novaya gazeta, which is the article’s central focus.
The article notes: “The state does not offer such an admiring audience for crusading journalists such as Dmitri Muratov, the editor of Novaya Gazeta and recipient of the warning for promoting extremist views.” This sentence is an opinion, not news reporting, and it is one that does not stand up the light of data and facts. Muratov was invited to the Kremlin along with Novaya gazeta co-owner, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, to meet with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev as a gesture of support after the February 2009 killing of lawyer Stanislav Markelov and Novaya gazeta journalist Anastasia Barburova. Medvedev promised the murders’ perpetrators would be found, arrested, and tried. Two members of a neo-fascist group, Russkii Obraz (Russian Image), have been indicted and await trial. Muratov is also an occasional guest on the popular radio station Ekho Moskvy, which is owned by state-owned gas company GazProm. These key facts were omitted from the article to avoid complicating the article’s black and white picture; a picture that would better apply to countries like China, North Korea, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, and many others, which the WP and the rest of the U.S. mainstream media to which the WP devotes much less attention.
The WP writes: “Novaya Gazeta published the second part of a series this week on the slayings of four children and eight adults in a village in the southern region of Krasnodar, accusing high-level officials of tolerating years of gang terrorism. That evening, TV news broadcast theories about a plane crash two days earlier that had killed two people, reports on Medvedev visiting Poland and on Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in the Far East, scolding officials on the high price of airline tickets.”
But television, state or independent, has no obligation to cover on any given day what a newspaper decides to write about in one of its three issues per week. Indeed, the Kushchevskaya murders in the Krasnodar region occurred earlier and were well covered by state television. For example, the ‘Duel’ talk show carried on state television channel ‘Rossiya 1’, broadcast a debate and discussion of the November 5th Kushchevskaya murders and crime syndicate. They lambasted police corruption and criminality as the cause of the organized crime group’s ability to terrorize Kushevskaya and the country for years (BBC Monitoring
“Russian state TV show slams authorities over criminalization of police,” Rossiya 1, 18 November 2010 summarized in BBC Monitoring, 18 November 2010 posted on Johnson’s Russia List, 18 November 2010).
Lally in the WP writes: “Kremlin property department officials recently won a libel judgment after the paper published allegations of corruption in Kremlin-financed construction projects. The suit appeared at odds with the president's frequent complaints about endemic corruption - President Dmitry Medvedev even mentioned millions stolen in state purchasing transactions during his state of the nation speech last week. Andrei Richter, director of the Media Law and Policy Institute, said the government dislikes Novaya Gazeta but needs it, as well as outspoken radio station Ekho Moskvy, as evidence of freedom of speech for visiting dignitaries.”
The author and WP use Richter to offer their own point of view to avoid exposing their practice of editorializing in ‘news reports’. But there are other possible interpretations for the Kremlin’s willingness to allow some space for free speech. First, it makes it easier to co-opt opposition-inclined members of the elite. Offering them palatable employment and siphoning them away from opposition activity. Second, it preserves the potential for a more easy re-democratization should the regime opt for such a policy. Third, the disparity between state and free media, between action against those who allege Kremlin construction-project corruption and Medvedev’s same allegations is explained by the divisions within the state between conservatives and co-opted or covert liberals. These divisions are now growing as a result of Medvedev’s thaw and more liberal statements, and the ensuing power struggle produces contradictory policy lines and actions by state authorities.
One can understand journalists wanting to help embattled fellow journalists, but there is no reason why this has to be done at the expense of accuracy and truth in reporting. If the WP is interested in informing readers rather than propagandizing its own point of view, then it would provide to its dwindling number of readers, not just its own agenda, but a full picture of Russia that would include the country’s great complexities and all the likely (and even some unlikely) interpretations of events. But alas, we are talking about the WP and the dinosaur U.S. mainstream media that are about to become extinct.
ARTICLE IN QUESTION:
Washington Post
December 10, 2010
In Russia, freedom of speech belongs to the state
By Kathy Lally
Washington Post Staff Writer
MOSCOW - Here's what the world looks like in a country where the government controls the media:
One evening, the main television channel uses prime time to broadcast a concert across vast Russia, paying tribute to the much-feared tax collectors. Another day, media overseers charge a respected newspaper with extremism - for straightforward reporting on neo-Nazi groups.
The late-November concert in honor of the 20th anniversary of the tax inspectorate is a merry affair. Famous entertainers joke and sing. A chorus of tax collectors joins in, glowing in stage lights, gold braid dripping from the shoulders of their military-style uniforms, a song of money on their lips - hardly the intimidating agents capable of bringing down a suddenly inconvenient billionaire or ruining a small-business man without the right friends.
The state does not offer such an admiring audience for crusading journalists such as Dmitri Muratov, the editor of Novaya Gazeta and recipient of the warning for promoting extremist views. One more such warning, and the paper can be shut down.
The offending article was a follow-up to a January 2009 double slaying. Anastasia Baburova, a 25-year-old intern for the paper who had been writing about youthful fascist movements, was shot in the back of the head after she left a news conference and headed to a busy subway station with Stanislav Markelov, a human rights lawyer and journalist. He took the first shot. Both died.
Earlier this year, Novaya Gazeta examined the organization, membership and pronouncements of neo-Nazi groups, mostly quoting from their Web sites. Muratov thought the article - conventional by Western standards - would set off a government investigation of fascists. "Instead, we got a warning against extremism," he said.
The paper recently lost its appeal of the warning, which had arrived in March. Muratov is preparing another appeal, to Russia's Constitutional Court, and even the European Court of Human Rights.
"If we don't write about neo-Nazis and corruption, then what will we write about?" he asked. "A star who has had another facelift?"
The thought is clearly ludicrous for Muratov, a burly push-up-the-sleeves-of-a-well-worn-sweater editor who supervises 60 journalists impatient to shed light in dark corners, even though something of a standing death threat hangs over them. Six Novaya journalists have been killed or died under unexplained circumstances. The most well known, Anna Politkovskaya, a war correspon
The air of intimidation creates a deficiency of free speech, said Alexander Lebedev, a billionaire former KGB agent who owns 49 percent of Novaya Gazeta along with Mikhail Gorbachev.
"Novaya Gazeta takes the place of public opinion," Lebedev said. And the three-day-a-week paper excels, he said, because of Muratov. "He's a great man, he's very honest, he's very brave, and he's a very talented editor."
Sending a message
Lebedev is a banker who wants to be seen as a publisher and investigative journalist - he owns both the Evening Standard and the Independent in London. Despite his past, he said, he never liked restrictions on his travel and speech.
His National Reserve Bank in Moscow was raided early last month by about 100 commandos carrying semiautomatic weapons and wearing black ski masks. The raid came just after Novaya Gazeta had published a long, exclusive interview with Mikhail Khodorkovsky, an oil tycoon who ran afoul of the government and has been in jail on tax and fraud charges since 2003.
"It was about intimidation, and nothing else," said Lebedev, who said the raid was ostensibly connected to the Russian Capital Bank, which the NRB took over in 2008 after it failed and handed back to the government after discovering that $200 million was missing. Documents were seized, he said, even though he had freely offered access. The raid has frightened customers, he said, and cost him $100 million in deposits.
"It's definitely a message," he said, "but from whom? Could it be a message from corrupt officials working on their own, or someone else?"
Muratov wonders the same. Kremlin property department officials recently won a libel judgment after the paper published allegations of corruption in Kremlin-financed construction projects. The suit appeared at odds with the president's frequent complaints about endemic corruption - President Dmitry Medvedev even mentioned millions stolen in state purchasing transactions during his state of the nation speech last week.
Andrei Richter, director of the Media Law and Policy Institute, said the government dislikes Novaya Gazeta but needs it, as well as outspoken radio station Ekho Moskvy, as evidence of freedom of speech for visiting dignitaries.
"Closing it would be quite a scandal," he said, "but the government doesn't mind warning the newspaper. It's a cold shower."
A loyal following Muratov speaks of his newspaper's battles with the patience acquired by Russians during centuries in the embrace of indifferent if not hostile authorities. He begins to lose that patience when he talks about television, where most Russians get their news and where state oversight is particularly vigilant.
A TV journalist he admires, Leonid Parfyonov, disappeared from news programs as the state tightened its control, relegating Parfyonov to making historical documentaries.
The night before its paean to the tax police, Channel One presented Parfyonov with the Vladislav Listyev award for excellence, named for a TV journalist slain in 1995.
In his acceptance, Parfyonov did the unthinkable, calling television a public relations agency for the state. Russian leaders are like the dead, he said. If journalists cannot speak well of them, they can say nothing at all. His remarks were not broadcast but were published on the Web site.
"They talk about a market economy," Muratov said, referring to Russian officials, his voice rising with emotion. "Go to hell. We'll have a market economy when we have TV ratings and give people what they want to see."
Novaya Gazeta published the second part of a series this week on the slayings of four children and eight adults in a village in the southern region of Krasnodar, accusing high-level officials of tolerating years of gang terrorism. That evening, TV news broadcast theories about a plane crash two days earlier that had killed two people, reports on Medvedev visiting Poland and on Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in the Far East, scolding officials on the high price of airline tickets. Novaya Gazeta is tiny compared with the national television audience. It says it has 350,000 subscribers and 1.5 million readers. But it attracts a loyal and idealistic following.
Nikita Girin, 20, an intern about to be employed full time, remembers seeing Novaya Gazeta for the first time at age 16 in his home town of Ryazan.
"When I opened it and started reading," he said, "I realized I knew nothing about my country. After that, I knew I wanted to change things, if only in people's heads."
Danger has hardly scared him off. "I know I might be beaten, but I can't use that as an excuse - that would make me passive. If you are going to work honestly, you have to be ready to be beaten up."
Muratov works on. Behind him stands a photo of Anna Politkovskaya, looking over his shoulder, smiling and determined.
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