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Covering the Duma: Mikhail Poltoranin, former head of the now-abolished Federal Information Center, is Chair of the State Duma Information Policy and Communication Committee. This speech was given in mid-February. Poltoranin: I am submitting to you a draft resolution of the State Duma on the coverage of the activities of the State Duma and the Federal Assembly by the federal television and radio companies. . . . First of all, you do not see a provision on live broadcasting of the Duma sessions. We cannot have such a provision in our resolution because the Duma is not a co-founder of any television or radio company and if that provision were written in it would be in breach of the Mass Media Law. That is a constitutional norm. But personally I would like to say that we do not need live broadcasting because while our people are freezing in their apartments and worried about not getting their wages, watching our recriminations and attacking each other for wearing a red jacket or a blue jacket—I can assure you as a professional this would not earn us any points. We cannot dictate to television and radio companies the time slots (this is contrary to the Mass Media Law) and we faced the daunting task of negotiating approvals. Our committee sent letters to state television and radio companies to express their opinions. Then we had a meeting. I had negotiations with many officials and eventually with the heads of TV and radio companies Oleg Poptsov and Alexander Yakovlev. I believe this is the only realistic way to ensure that the Duma gets unbiased and constant coverage. We must return to the adoption of a law on procedures for coverage by the state-owned mass media of the work of governmental and state agencies of the Russian Federation. It is in that law that we will formulate regulations for state-owned TV and radio companies, stipulating how, when and on what scale they should cover the work of presidential structures, governmental agencies and structures of the Federal Assembly. It is also in that law, I think, and we reached agreement to this effect in the Committee on Information Policy, we should sort things out with our official newspapers. Today, as you know, the government keeps opening ever new governmental mass media. Out of the 24,000 independent papers which we managed to create across Russia, many are being taken over anew by the heads of administrations, placing them under official executive structures. I think we should institute a regulation, we are drafting it for the new law, to have no papers that would be founded by any branch of power. Papers must be independent, but they should work under contracts, and get state contracts from the Federal Assembly, from the government or from the presidential staff for the publication of laws, decrees or governmental resolutions, and also for the publication of comments. I think that in this way we will give journalists serious work and simultaneously give support to the press as a whole, and also secure a balance which we are lacking today, regrettably. The resolution also includes a regulation, or rather, an instruction to two committees, the Committee for the Organization of the Work of the State Duma and the Committee on Information Policy, to establish a press service for the State Duma. We have a press center, but we think that the press center should be an arm of the press service, and the press service, which could have a staff of 15-20, should assume the bulk of responsibility for coordinating, for example, the work of our committees and commissions, for giving access for all our structures, including factions, to the mass media. Today, incidentally, journalists say that so far the Duma has been very tight, that they do not know what the committees are doing, that they are being shut out of the factions, and for this reason their coverage is often negative not because they want it this way, but because people do not know the real nature of what is taking place. So, information is often negative not because it is intended to be negative, but because people do not know the substance. The press service should see to it that there is pluralism of opinion among the factions and among the deputies and that it should be reflected on television and radio channels. This is what we are doing now and this is what is a constant concern of the deputies. I must tell you that while the different branches of government are quarreling over air time and publications the whole system of our mass media is running to seed. A kind of dry rot has set in. You remember the instance when 60 percent of Russians were left without television and radio. And there is a danger that we will lose our federal national television. The possibility is knocking on our doors. Today more than 2 trillion rubles are needed to keep our federal television going and the Finance Ministry, like all government structures does want this money to sit on the budget. Many people are thinking in terms of removing it from the budget and have the media privatized or converted into joint stock companies. But it is my conviction that Russia must maintain at least two state companies. Because if we break up the common information space, and if we saddle local budgets with supporting regional TV and radio companies we would thereby edge closer to the dismemberment of Russia. |
Last Updated: 11/20/99 |
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© 1999 Post-Soviet Media Law &
Policy Newsletter |
