Post-Soviet Media Law & Policy Newsletter

Issue 11     Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law     October 15, 1994 

Insights from Chairman Vengerov:
Russia’s Innovative Information Tribunal

    (The following are edited excerpts from Chairman Anatoly Vengerov’s press conference held September 6 at the Russian-American Press and Information Center in Moscow.)

The Chamber as Institution

    As of today, the Judicial Chamber is not a part of the judicial system, and we are not violating the Constitution in this respect.  Our apparatus—it is quite small, six people—is a part of the administration.  The chamber is an absolutely new branch.  We have special rules.  We have been operating under the President, helping him be a guarantor of observance of the Constitution.

    We are independent.  Even the President cannot interfere in our activities.  Many journalists and publications are wrong when they think that we can only issue recommendations.  This is not true.  Under the statute on the chamber (Article 12) our decisions are binding and are to be complied with by all the government agencies concerned within two weeks.  The Prosecutor’s Office, the Russian Press Committee have answered us on several occasions when we made certain decisions.  One of our successful actions was to restore 140 million rubles to our citizens who were conned out of their money by Dima Dibrov and company.  If this is not a real proof of our strength what is? Give back the money which you have wrongfully taken from people.

    We will seek to make our decisions even more binding on government mass media.  But in future it is not a secret: of course the Judicial Chamber should fit into the judiciary system.  We should perhaps have regional branches.  All these things are being studied.  And a law is being drafted on the judiciary system and we have an understanding with Mr. Mityukov that we will be allowed to indicate what our place in the judiciary system should be.  You see, we witness a growing self-identification of the information sphere.  Property disputes have their own features, criminal affairs have theirs, civil law has its own domain and the information industry has its own problems.

Comments on Pending Legislation

    The Judicial Chamber has made an official response to the draft law on the state support of the mass media and it is this: the mass media need state support but the forms of support can vary.  It may be in the shape of privileges and subsidies etc.  But we have categorically rejected the idea which in our view threatens freedom of expression, the idea of creating a monster whose name is National Fund to supervise all the media, all the printing facilities, etc.  This is absurd in legal terms, harmful in political terms.

    The forth estate will be directed by a single individual and the whole thing becomes very chancy because a lot depends on the individual.  And of course if you think in terms of anti-monopolism this is something outrageous because we are committed to demonopolization and free competition.  That calls for pluralism in society and for a pluralistic media.  And all of a sudden we are creating a giant which is reminiscent of a certain era in our history when all the ministries were brought together in one huge ministry.  What was the result? The Duma Committee for the Press and Information Policy headed by Mr. Poltoranin inveighed against the Judiciary Chamber.  And Rossiiskaya Gazeta which constantly complains that it is short of space has been devoting entire pages to this issue.

    Meanwhile, this was just routine discussion of a bill though its political implications are important.  But organization-wise, this bill makes no sense.

The Problem of “Commissioned” Articles

    On September 5, the chamber held a working meeting, and we considered ways to issue recommendations with respect to so-called “commissioned” or paid-for articles, since, in our opinion, those articles have been taking an improperly large place in all publications.  And the main problem is not that they reflect the struggle, which can be easily seen, between some companies.  This is probably an aspect showing our advance to a market-based economy.

    We know from works of classical writers about heated debates in the mass media of developed countries with respect to displaying advantages of sponsors and negative features of opponents.  And this would not be a great problem, but there appear such articles which influence the wellbeing of whole production sectors and regions.  Yesterday my colleagues showed me an article which says that there is a place in the middle of that famous city, Odessa, in which the ground is about to sink and the article was published before the start of the vacation season.  It had no real grounds, but the people of Odessa were outraged because the article allegedly discouraged vacationers from going to Odessa and thus deprived Odessa of its tourist revenues.

    We have a very delicate matter pending before our chamber connected with the processing of precious stones.  The agency in charge of this business has complained that a number of newspapers have carried articles which do not create a true picture of the Russian precious metals industry.  And the question was asked whether these articles were not published at the instigation of rivals of the Russian producers of precious metals and precious stones.  Competition in the field is fierce.   The question is, how do we put a curb on these commissioned articles.  They can be of all sorts.

    For instance, a journalist may be approached to help an accused in some legal case and the journalist proceeds to charge that the investigation has broken regulations, that the wrong man has been detained, that the wrong man is in the dock.  And one often can easily see that this is a commissioned article.  But how does one prove that the individual whose profession it is to witness to human affairs and to interfere is indeed pursuing a selfish interest.  I think pursuing selfish aims is a crude violation of a journalists’ ethic.  And we are thinking along the following lines.  We will unite with the Union of Journalists, with Mr. Bogdanov, and will probably work with Pavel Gutiontov on this problem because it is undermining the authority of the Russian media.

Fomenting Intolerance

    The Mironov affair was triggered by the fact that the Judiciary Chamber has asked or recommended to the Russian Press Committee to issue a number of warnings to those media which have been fomenting social and national intolerance.  Our resolution of July 14 speaks about social and national intolerance and must tell you frankly that the woes experienced by Sergei Petrovich since then are of our own making.

    It was on the bidding of the judiciary chamber that he issued warnings to corresponding media outlets that they were in breach of Article 4.  And then Mironov—the deposed chair of the Press Committee—began asking questions as to why Sergei Petrovich had acted at the instance of the Judicial Chamber.  That gives you a glimpse of another aspect of this conflict involving the activities of Mironov.

    This was a follow-up, but to trace it to its origins, it is the newspaper Zavtra when Mironov objected to issuing a warning to the newspaper Zavtra as the Judicial Chamber urged.  This brought the judiciary chamber into conflict with Mironov.

    We published a resolution on the newspaper Al-Kods, actually it is published by Rossiiskaya Gazeta though the way it published it raises some questions.  It printed it in the smallest print possible.  You couldn’t read it even through a magnifying glass.  And further developments too: instead of ruling to withdraw the registration license issued to that paper because the paper was grossly breaching the law—a national of another state has no right to establish papers—a law suit was initiated.

    In effect the Russian Press Committee brought a law suit against itself, asking the court to cancel its original registration.  The court, this is also an issue, did not hear the suit and passed the buck, where do you think to?, to the court of arbitration.  What has the court of arbitration got to do with this? After lengthy discussions the latter decided that they are discontinuing the case because it has no relevance to them.

    After that events were under the control of Sergei Petrovich and complaints were filed to the Moscow city court and to the court of arbitration.  In other words, the matter is far from over.  But obviously, there is some sort of deliberate confusion.  And what I also would like to mention is that the Prosecutor’s Office has started a criminal case.  And although there were many critical remarks about the Prosecutor’s Office, and I agree with most of them, but they are doing something.

    This is not the only case concerning a newspaper.  There was the case with the newspaper Zavtra and we stated our views also on other newspapers.  Incidentally, the chamber of justice drew attention to yet another aspect of coverage in the mass media—the ethnic aspect.  If you remember, only some two-three weeks ago the newspapers were full of contentions that most of the criminals are “people of Caucasian nationality.” They went even so far as to mention “Caucasian appearance,” etc.  We drew their attention, and we passed a relevant decision, to the fact that this also is a form of inciting national passions.

    We also told them that this was a way of camouflaging the genuine causes of crime.  This happens when crimes are ascribed to some ethnic groupings.  They exist, of course, and nobody denies this, but at the same time this is not the prime cause of crime in Russia.  For this reason I will not agree with your contention that we are not doing anything.  On the contrary, we are working and we are getting for this mostly bruises.  All is not that simple.  But at the same time the Committee for the Press, and some other bodies also supported us, nevertheless is trying to a barrier in the way of dissemination of these socially dangerous and stupid publications that divide society.

Remedies and Freedom of the Press

    With some newspapers which crossed some line of morality—violating Article 4 of the [Mass Media] law—we raised the problem, deciding that we were not going to punish anybody, but just decided to look at the registration application and its correspondence to what they publish.  And this was quite effective.  Many of them shuddered.  And I should say—maybe it will become public once, if there are special reviews, etc—that we managed to find such facts we could not even imagine.  Naturally, all that registration process—and Mironov also had his hand in this—is a total mess.

    We should check everything, we should analyze the process, etc.  But there are also normal legal ways we have been using.  We issued warnings, reprimands, sometimes raised the problem of dismissal in some odious cases.  And what is particularly important—I am increasingly convinced—that our justice chamber is often being encouraged.  Therefore, I am saying that we have opportunities.  And we are not limited to such measures as imprisonment and fines.  Sometimes public censure is very serious, very serious.