|
|
|
Short-order Democracy There’s something striking—maybe even a bit hard to believe—about the amazing forced march to democracy now under way in Moscow: a kind of five year plan for remodeled democratic institutions rushed, Soviet-style, into a two month compass. When the people vote on December 12, the ink won’t be dry on the proposed new constitution, the timbers will still be green in the new Duma and Federal Council, the district lines and voting apparatus just put in place, and the political blocs newly minted. In the process of reinventing everything else, the last few weeks has seen an effort, at least on the surface, to revamp the relationship between political candidates, electoral blocs and the press, especially the electronic media. Quite properly, the legitimacy of the upcoming election has been questioned—from its very announcement—on the ground of the biases of state-controlled radio and television. Certainly, there was a troublesome backdrop: the so-called “tragic events of October” the gradual efforts to establish a free press and a less controlled radio and television sector seemed, for a moment, to dissolve in violence and censorship. It is in this context that an elaborate scaffolding of fairness has been constructed. We cannot say whether the new laws, commissions and tribunals—the bureaucratic face of fairness—ought to quell the skepticism as to whether heavily subsidized newspapers and state-controlled broadcasting are adequately free from government influence. That will require the analysis of other hands, of which there are many: already, Vsevolod Vilchek, a Moscow sociologist, is directing a comprehensive program to monitor news and public affairs broadcasts in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kazan, Voronezh, Stavropol, Kemerovo and elsewhere for the Commission on Radio and Television Policy. Lisa Schillinger and her consultants at the Russian-American Press and Information Center are gathering data for a complementary study. And the hotel lobbies are beginning to fill with international observers. At the least, some new sources of much-needed hard currency will be produced by those viewing and trying to understand these elections. |
Last Updated: 11/20/99 |
|
© 1999 Post-Soviet Media Law &
Policy Newsletter |
