It was an amazing month in terms of the relationship between government and the media. In Moscow, television images abounded of violence and hardship and gore and of the pain and complexity of the Chechen conflict. Rumors were rampant of Yeltsin plots against the media and media-related conspiracies against those around Yeltsin. The delicate progression toward press protection was bruised not only in the complicated ways that occur during war, here in the peculiar context that is the Russian Federation.
In this issue of the Newsletter, we try to reconstruct vital aspects of the December and January debates over media and govement control, using several episodes as media and government control, using several episodes as illustrations. These include the threatened dismissal of Oleg Poptsov from the All-Russian State Television and Radio Company, the intrigues surrounding NTV (the independent telvision channel said to be most candid and critical in its programming concerning Chechnya and Russian involvement), and the establishment and functioning of the institutions quickly created to manage the flow of information concerning the Chechen conflict: the Provisional Information Center and its successor, the Commission and News and Analysis.
We draw from a number of sources, primarily ITAR-TASS reports, press conferences, BBC reports of broadcasts and articles in Russia, articles in the Moscow Times and in other Russian, European and American newspapers, and contributions to the FSUMedia electronic forum particularly those of Julia Wishnevsky.
January 13, ironically, was the annual “Day of the Press,” a day honoring the journalism profession. On that day, in the Duma, the right-wing leader of the Liberal Democratic Party, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, proposed that NTV be stripped of its broadcasting rights because of its “inadequate coverage” of Chechen developments. On the same day, the centrist Russian Choice delegate, Vitaliy Savitskiy, called on the Security Committee to determine whether two members of the Duma, Sergey Yushenkov and Ella Panfilova, had been “bribed” to give anti-government reports on the Chechen crisis.
Not only was the fate of independent television unclear: steps had not progressed to privatize Ostankino (see PSMLPN, issue 12/13), the job of the chief of one of the major channels was in jeopardy if not already undermined, and journalists were in fear of being injured—if not killed, so it was an extraordinary time to honor the press.
In an official statement, issued on the Day of the Press, a statement reminiscent of boilerplate praise of the old era, President Yeltsin lauded journalists for their “participation in democratic reforms.” He wished “all media workers happiness, good health and prosperity.”
More meaningful, in evaluating Yeltsin’s attitude, was a statement on January 16, typical in its indirectness, that claimed that Boris Yeltsin considered that “the mass media must be left to do its business as usual, at last.” Like much that occurred during the period, the statement was in the name of Yeltsin. It was given to Interfax by Sergey Filatov, head of the President’s administration.
This Yeltsin statement could do little to reassure a media in turmoil because of events and rumors that had evolved through December and January. The very same day, for example, at a meeting between deputies of the Federation Council and media heads, Igor Golembiovsky, editor of Izvestiya, claimed that an all-out government assault on the media had begun—a fight within Yeltsin’s administration by those seeking to deflect Yeltsin from the “path of democracy.” “The country is beginning to be ruled by apparatchiks, the selfsame apparatchiks who, under red banners, had ruled over us for 74 years.”
Vladimir Shumeyko, Speaker of the Federation Council and a former Yeltsin minister, argued that while the mass media must be free, it should also reflect, in part, an official point of view. He recommended additional measures to support the press, including budget assistance and increased government purchasing of periodicals and books. (This position, one that unites rights and responsibilities, was echoed by Mikhail Poltoranin at the end of the month, as he promised to produce a series of laws concerning the role of media in society.)
At the January 16 meeting, Sergey Gryzunov, who had been fired (see below) from his post as head of the Provisional Information Center for failing to have the position of the government adequately communicated (but who retained his position as Chair of the Russian State Committee for the Press), said that there was a general effort to put the press under control. The current confrontation, he felt, could lead to the mutual self-destruction of the authorities and the press.
Against these deeply-felt charges and proposals thought to have Yeltsin’s approval, the January 16 reassurances by Filatov attributed to President Yeltsin, seemed inadequate. Filatov argued that the entire controversy demonstrated that elements of the mass media and politicians had “fallen back to the old stereotype of enemy images.” The Chechen crisis was a test, he said, “of our ability to maintain democracy.”
Yeltsin’s January 16 call for tolerance was an echo of a January 13 statement by Alexander Yakovlev, head of Ostankino and chair of Yeltsin’s Commission on Radio and Television Policy, in which he called for an end to the “senseless confrontation between the authorities and the press.” Yakovlev used the occasion of a meeting between Premier Victor Chernomyrdin and “intellectuals” to suggest a moratorium on personnel changes and the launching of trial balloons for the reorganization of television channels. Such a moratorium, in Yakovlev’s view—playing the wise man—would, ideally, last until the end of the Chechen fighting.
Yakovlev’s point was that the rumors of reorganization, and presumably those that dealt with firing Oleg Poptsov (and maybe Yakovlev himself), “dismay television journalists, make them nervous, and endanger the production and transmission of news programs.”
On the other hand, Yakovlev seemed to recognize the President’s concerns: it was just as absurd for “journalists to teach servicemen to fight” as it was for the “military to teach journalists how to write.” He conceded that the conflict had been covered, in the main, from a Chechen perspective and seemed to attribute that to the Russian military ban on journalistic activities within the Russian forces in Chechnya.
An example of paranoia feeding somewhat irrelevant media criticism occurred on January 14: President Yeltsin’s press secretary, Vyacheslav Kostikov, circulated a statement that indicated the degree of government sensitivity to criticism and its quickness to try to “correct” it. The statement said:
“I cannot help expressing my regret about the fact that, in a situation in which society presupposes balanced and accurate reporting of the Chechen conflict and the political circumstances connected with it, some media do not take into account the whole complex of social, psychological and political phenomena, which often leads to a distorted representation of the real facts and evaluations.
“In particular, there was an inaccuracy in interpretation by the NTV [television] channel for the import of yesterday’s [January 13] telephone conversation between Russian President Boris Yeltsin and FRG Chancellor Helmut Kohl. The presenter’s commentary seemed to be saying that Helmut Kohl was criticizing the actions of the federal bodies of power in Chechnya. This does not correspond to the truth.
“In actual fact, having listened to Boris Yeltsin’s information on the really dramatic development of the conflict in the Chechen republic, the FRG Chancellor expressed understanding of the complexity of the Chechen situation and the duty and responsibility of the president of Russia for preserving its territorial integrity.”
In Izvestiya, in late December, a long article, based on a conference of politicians and journalists, concluded that after the commencement of the Chechen conflict, “we all live in a different country, in which the powers that be are confident that they may manipulate public consciousness, subjecting various independent sources of information to censorship.” Izvestiya cited the remark of Vice-Premier Oleg Soskovets who reportedly said that the broadcasting license of the independent NTV could be removed “if it misbehaves” and that ITAR-TASS reporter Tatyana Zamyatina was barred from attending certain Kremlin meetings because of writings that suggested that the secret services had begun running the country.
At the very beginning of the Chechen crisis, a Provisional
Information Center was established in Mozdok in North Ossetia where journalists
were concentrated. Sergei Gryzunov, who had just been made the head
of the Committee on the Press after the ouster of Boris Mironov (see PSMLPN
No. 12/13), was placed in charge of the Center.
These were the early days of the actual conflict, days in which
the press was surprisingly hostile and, in part, blazingly independent.
Gryzunov, who had been fairly boastful about the new direction in which
he would take the main Press Committee, was laid low by those dissatisfied
with his functioning in his new and sensitive assignment. His task,
which seemed to be the care and feeding of journalists to assure that the
government’s point of view was adequately expressed, was an impossible
one.
Gryzunov was unceremoniously replaced on December 15 by Valentin Sergeyev, a government spokesman. Vice-Premier Oleg Soskovets, according to the newspaper Kuranty, considered that Gryzunov’s work at the Provisional Information Center “failed to establish adequate communications between Moscow and Mozdok,” and as a consequence, conditions were created for biased coverage by some of the Russian media. Moreover, “the necessary propaganda was not provided explaining that the actions of the federal authorities on the territory of a Russian Federation member was justified, necessary and appropriate.” Gryzunov was said to be naive in his belief in the freedom of the press.
In mid-December, Alexander Mikhailov, public relations head of the Federal Counterintelligence Service, told a press conference that “out of the 145 reports provided by the Provisional Information Center, only a few have made it to the mass media. I think that journalists, at least Russian journalists, should somehow correct their actions. I mean they have to make up their minds what country they are working for. I understand, of course, that it is up to every journalist to decide why he writes and what goals he wants to achieve and what he wants to influence.”
According to Mikhailov, “If you want to demoralize the Russian army, then it’s one thing. If you want to raise the prestige of President Dudayev, it’s another.”
Displaying the music of ancient eras, two examples of the work of the bureaucracy disseminating information appeared on December 23 and were reproduced in the Moscow Times: Bulletin No. 35, for example, stated, “On December 22, Sergei Stepashin, Director of the Federal Counterintelligence Service, together with a group of officers, visited the village of Znamensokoye and Tolstoy-Yurt. The inhabitants met the Russian soldiers joyfully.” Bulletin No. 33 reported that when border troops sealed the boundary between Chechen Republic and Dagestan, “the local population reacted to this with great approval, and is helping the soldiers in every way.”
Aleksei Simonov, head of the Glasnost Defense Foundation, criticized the work of the temporary center on the grounds that it did not provide or even possess the kind of “official, objective information” that it was established to supply to reporters. “Journalists are forced to obtain information through conspiratorial or, unfortunately, illegal channels.” Ellen Mickiewicz and Dee Reid, writing in the New York Times on January 21, called the official version of the conflict, work which reflects the “cynicism of hacks” and is often “ludicrously at odds with eyewitness reports from the front.”
On December 28, the “provisional information center” was abolished, replaced by an official Commission of News and Analysis on the Conflict in Chechnya. Sergei Shakray, the Deputy Prime Minister, was placed in charge of the Commission, with Sergeyev his Deputy in charge of day to day operations.
In a press conference that day, Shakray described the mechanics of the Commission. The Ministry of Defense, the Federal Counterintelligence Service, the Interior Ministry, the Ministry for Emergency Situations, the Federal Frontier Service, the Migration Service, and the Ministry for Nationalities must submit “prompt information on the situation in the Chechen Republic and in Northern Caucasus.”
Under Shakray’s direction, the “heads of administration of the subjects of the Russian Federation are instructed to bring the materials provided by the press service of the Russian Federation government to the population in their regions, to provide information on the developments in the Chechen Republic.”
According to Shakray, the Commission”does not represent one more structure which brings still more confusion to the information flows, but it marks the elimination of unnecessary elements in the structure and an attempt to put the information task on a professional footing.” With Sergei Gryzunov relieved of his position as head of the Professional Information Center, the task of coordination was shifted from the Russian Press Committee to the Press Service of the Russian Federation government.
The Commission was given the responsibility to establish rules for the relationship between reporters working in Chechnya and North Caucasus and the defense, interior, and emergency ministries, and the Federal Counterintelligence Service. Under the order, state-run media was obliged to carry the news as reported by the Commission. As Shakray put it in his December 28 interview, “state media outlets, on request of the leadership of this Commission, are obliged to provide the official point of view of the government, of the federal structures, on the events. I emphasize that state-owned media must reflect the official position, the official point of view of the government of the Russian Federation. Thereby I want to make it clear that this does not mean that other sources of information for the mass media are being closed or banned. There remains the right of free professional comment on various information streams.
“Censorship is not being introduced in any form. I am deeply convinced that the last thing we need is to add to the bombings censorship of information. What we are doing is to introduce civilized forms of work by the government with the mass media and also with ministries and agencies in respect of information streams. We do not have the right, or the wish, to interfere in the day-to-day activities of the Deputy Premier who is at the head of the territorial administration of the Chechen Republic or in the activities.
“This action is intended not for scattering the information flow concerning the government’s work, but for coordination of that information.”
Shakray listed some of the routine work of the Commission: “the monitoring of the regional press in accordance with a standard set of rubrics, including reports concerning the nature of electronic media programs, to determine what, for objective reasons, often drops out of analysis by government bodies in decision making, namely how people in some regions perceive moves made by the government. This is routine work with information, the review and monitoring of the central press and an analysis of that review for the benefit of decision makers.”
The function of the Commission was to provide “full information to the Russian and world public on the situation in Chechnya.”
The day after Shakray’s news conference, another official information agency—the Interior Ministry’s Public Relations Center—charged that a number of journalists had been “flagrantly disregarding” Russian law in their coverage of the conflict. The announcement claimed that journalists’ reports “not infrequently” were conveying information not only placing at risk the fulfillment of the mission but also the lives of military personnel. The Center cited Article 29 of the 1992 law “On Internal Forces of the Russian Federation Ministry of Internal Affairs,” which states, in part: “In the interest of securing the safety of servicemen and their families, disclosure in the news media of information about the deployment or redeployment of military units . . . engaged in clashes with armed criminal groups, is not permitted.” The Article goes on to say that information about Interior Ministry troops’ activity may be provided only upon permission by military commanders.
In mid-December, the chief of the Public relations Center, V.P. Vorozhtsov, had written to V.L. Bogdanov, Chairman of the Russian Union of Journalists, and Aleksei Simonov warning that most journalists covering the conflict were not aware of the applicable laws governing the coverage of military activities. This lack of awareness, Vorozhtsov stated, accounted for the large number of actions taken by military personnel against journalists allegedly violating the laws. Vorozhtsov urged Bogdanov and Simonov, for the purpose of preserving the lives and health of correspondents, to make them aware of those laws, including Article 29, and to participate in a joint effort to draft recommendations for the activity of journalists in Chechnya.
In an interview on RTV on January 7, Shakray said that the aims of the commission were, first, to present the government and president with an informed and analytical picture of developments in Chechnya and recommend adjustments or new decisions; and second, to generate and process information on the actions of the government and federal structures and to provide this information to the public via the media. He stated that the Commission has no censorship function.
On January 5, Sergeyev was replaced by Valery Grishin, the third person to have the hot potato job. Sergeyev, it was said, “was hospitalized in a Moscow clinic with heart problems.” On December 20, a rally in Grozny had reportedly included death threats against Sergeyev and the disclosure of his home address and phone number in Moscow.
It was at this time, as well, that President Yeltsin issued his controversial, seemingly off-hand statement that “certain” media organizations were “financed by Chechen money,” suggesting acts of bribery. Already, by the end of December’s first week, suggestions were made that the television license of NTV could be revoked.
Another controversy—one which will surely arise time and again—relates to the duties of state-owned media, particularly during a time of stress such as the conflict in Chechnya.
During the height of the military campaign, on January 13, President Yeltsin signed into law the much-disputed Russian Federation statute “On Rules for Coverage by State Mass Media of the Activity of Bodies of State Power,” which includes among the duties imposed on state-owned media the obligation to disseminate, in full, reports by the President, Parliament, and high-ranking government officials. [A translation of the draft law, as passed by the State Duma last April, was published in PSMLPN, Issue #8]
On January 18, the government’s press service promptly accused both state-owned broadcasting networks—Ostankino and Russian TV and Radio—of violating the new statute, charging that the broadcasters had failed to transmit certain reports in full “which resulted in a substantial distortion of the government’s real actions.” Apparently, the report at issue concerned a government report on Prime Minister Chernomyrdin’s meeting with Chechen representatives.
Russian TV quickly responded to these charges. Newsreader Tatiana Khudobina, during the news program Vesti on the evening of the 18th, acknowledged that Vesti had not broadcast the report, but then read from the statute’s Article 5 and commented that reports by employees of the press service did not qualify for mandatory coverage. On the same day, Konstantin Belov, one of Vesti’s producers, declared that “much information emanating from the power structures does not fit in the format of our program,” and cited as an example the impossibility of reciting lists of names on the air.
Much of the attention over the last month was directed at NTV, the independent television channel which is gaining a stronger and stronger hold on the audience, is far less under the control of government, and which has been recognized for its uncompliant and unbending news of the Chechen conflict, not at all to the liking of those near Yeltsin.
In mid-January, ITAR-TASS quoted high-ranking sources as saying that a presidential decree was being prepared to “reorganize” channel 4, the channel used by NTV together with some educational entities in a sharing arrangement.
According to the ITAR-TASS report, the reorganized channel would be given over entirely to private television companies, but the state would retain 51% of the channel’s shares. Also, the government wanted to gain an ownership interest in NTV, possibly replacing the Most Bank group.
Viktor Ilyushin, President Yeltsin’s press aide, was quoted as saying that “those who might reorganize channel four have reason to be displeased with NTV which protects certain interests.” Valery Grishin, who had just been appointed to head the government press center responsible for official Chechen coverage, stated that though he had no role in any possible reorganization, it was his judgment that NTV’s coverage of Chechen events was “one-sided.”
The charges and counter-charges concerning NTV were read against a much larger political canvas, one that involved the nature of President Yeltsin’s authority structure and the general competition for power within society.
Peter Reddaway, former director of the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies, published an essay in the New York Times on January 13 stating that “a group of critics” had decided, in Moscow, that “the only course was to persuade Mr. Yeltsin to resign or to call early elections” and to do so “by deliberately, if not openly, destablizing him.” The initiative was, according to Reddaway, based on the fact that “the large centers of power that control resources—the energy and banking sectors, the military-industrial complex, the agricultural lobby—increasingly came to see Mr. Yeltsin’s circle as unpredictable and too incompetent ever to stabilize the situation.” Reddaway himself contended that the Chechen conflict would “destroy what is left of democracy” and this might have, indeed, “been the main purpose of the invasion for Mr. Yeltsin and his increasingly desperate inner circle.”
Reddaway suggested, through his summary of Russian media accounts, that “the lead role” in the process of destabilizing Yeltsin “was taken by the Most group of companies,” which, of course, includes NTV and the newspaper Sevodnya.
The banking group had taken the related, perhaps opposite view, namely that there was a government conspiracy against them. Already, on December 6, the Association of Russian Banks held a press conference complaining of an incident on December 2 in which President Yeltsin’s chief security administration sealed off a central entrance to a municipal building where the Most Bank is located. According to a report in Kommersant-daily on December 7, one speaker, Vladimir Gusinsky, Most’s chief executive, surmised that the “act of intimidation was related to the fact that the bank finances NTV and other media outlets” and that “someone” did not like their coverage of media events.
In a January 18 interview, Alexander Korhzvov, Yeltsin’s chief of security services hardly disguised his feelings about the Most group, NTV, and the criticism of Yeltsin’s handling of the Chechen conflict: “Don’t you find that the attacks have been well orchestrated. They have been launched by the people we know quite well as the `goose’ flock [referring to Gusinsky] and the high-ranking officials closely linked to them. Let me note that I have long had a liking for goose hunting.”
Another front in the controversy between government and media concerned the phantasmagoric and never-fulfilled firing of Oleg Poptsov, the chief of the All-Russian Television and Radio Company, the state-television service.
Early in the conflict, “Vesti,” RTV’s prime-time news program, relied primarily on government handouts, according to Professor Ellen Mickiewicz, the long-time media observer who is a professor at Duke. Very soon, however, the news program was “underscoring the divergence between the real news and the official version.”
On January 6, Sergey Kovalev, the fabled human rights commissioner, told Moscow Echo Radio that President Yeltsin had told him, in a one-on-one conference, that he had signed a decree removing the assertive Oleg Poptsov from his job. Yeltsin said nothing publicly about this decision for over a week until the word came out that Poptsov was not to be fired.
In the meantime, on January 6, Poptsov himself appeared on Moscow Echo Radio and said, “I have been removed for the truth.” Poptsov, who had been a member of the old Parliament and who had been placed in charge of the television service during the Gorbachev period, was zealous in defense of the institution he had built.
“It is not important whether Poptsov is there or not; what is important is that there should be the All-Russian State Television and Radio Company, and that it should continue to exist in the future. Perhaps we haven’t done a great deal, but perhaps we have. Today I can say with complete conviction and complete civic responsibility that today, the existence of the All-Russian Television and Radio Company means the existence of one of the bulwarks of democracy in Russia. And if it is eliminated, then democracy will have a much harder time.”
On January 7, Deputy Prime Minister Sergey Shakray, in an interview on RTV, confirmed that the issue of Poptsov’s dismissal had at least been raised at a Security Council meeting, but he claimed that he opposed it, largely for pragmatic reasons, not those of principle: “I consider that—in terms of political consequences—sanctions against the mass media, including major personnel changes, could bring about a reaction contrary to that intended.” The dismissal of Poptsov would be seen as heavy-handed and impermissible. “I think there is a chance to find another solution.”
By January 20, Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin told correspondents of All Russian Television that the authorities had never planned to dismiss Poptsov. “If we really wanted to, we would have done this long ago and in strict correspondence with the current legislation. ITAR-TASS reported that Chernomyrdin acknowledged that Poptsov had been criticized by the authorities, including the President, for “non-objective” coverage of Chechen events.
The attack on Poptsov had its ironies: in the Gorbachev days of the late Soviet Union, the new All-Russian Company, under the guidance of Poptsov, was sarcastically known as Yeltsin TV for its allegiance to Russia (as opposed to the great Ostankino’s supposed allegiance to Gorbachev and the USSR).
In reflecting on the threat to him and Russian Television, Poptsov insisted that weakening the institution would be short-sighted of Yeltsin. The channel, he said, “reflected the interests of the citizens, supporting, in this way, the president who was elected by the people. If RTV ceases to be the mouthpiece of public opinion, the President will be deprived of a reliable pillar of support from fellow citizens.
“We cannot allow ourselves to turn Chechnya into a second Chernobyl, a catastrophe for the whole of society.” In a sharp-tongued statement in the Financial Times, January 7, Poptsov was quoted as saying, “The president and those close to him are breaking the mirror because of their own disfigurement. This does not cure the sickness. Glasnost is ending and we are returning to the rules of the Soviet period.”
Poptsov charged that his dismissal was sought by those in the power structure near Yeltsin “exercising strong pressure because the situation in Chechnya was deteriorating and they were dissatisfied with the coverage of developments in the conflict zone.”
The “conference of the staff” of RTV had written a letter to President Yeltsin condemning the prepared decree as “a start of the destruction of our company and the abolition of freedom of speech in Russia.”
In a reference to the power of journalists under the media law, they cited the fact that they, themselves, were the “founders” of the company and that they had elected management before Yeltsin signed his decree appointing them. The inference was that, under law, the staff, not the President, had the authority to hire and fire, or at least to be involved.
(On January 15, amid the swirling reports concerning the possibility that he might have been sacked, Oleg Poptsov, chair of the All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company, participated in a press conference to express his philosophy. As a story elsewhere in this issue indicates, at press time, Poptsov seemed still in control.).
I have agreed to a press conference because of the rumors that surround the All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company and, perhaps, its chairman in particular. You know that the information we received was supplied by Sergei Adamovich Kovalyov after his conversation with the President, and developments began to snowball.
I would not like this discussion to concentrate on the person of Poptsov. I would like to say a couple of words about a very different thing. What is state television, and how do we, the All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company, understand that? And what are the reasons behind those conflicts which, from time to time, arise in our relations with the administrative structures, with the state?
The point is that the state company, if that state is not totalitarian, is not a company of those in authority, or a company of one branch of power or another. It is a company of the state at a more abstract level. The fundamental factor for such a company is society and the people. Therefore, the task of a state company in a democratic state—and ever since 1990 we keep saying that we are building a democratic state—therefore, the task of that company is to reflect the viewpoints, sentiments, and thoughts of that fundamental component, which can be called demos, or the people.
I have to tell you that that’s where discrepancies occur. We all stew in the Bolshevik broth, and there is nothing one can do about it, for we all have come out of that period. Our habits and our flaws today, our discontent with the mass media, this is a revolt inside many of us and primarily inside bodies of power, reflecting a past in which television, the radio, and newspapers were established by the Party Central Committee and expressed its point of view.
Life has changed since then. Life is different now. The second moment, the crucial one, is that in 1991, following the nation-wide election of the first President of the Russian Federation, the first President of Russia, a thesis was announced that the new authorities would pursue an open policy, for the previous policy was a secret one.
The All-Russian State Television and Radio Company, was established in those days as a challenge to the old order and it has sworn its loyalty to this idea: to the openness of the policy of the first Russian President and the openness of the policy of a democratic government. Of course, nothing can be perfect or ideal.
A transitional period is always a mixture of the past, a mixture dominated by the past, because, as I have already said, we all have our roots in the past, the presence of certain new elements, not dominating our future yet, it is going to be a very long time from now when these new elements will become a dominating factor. It will be a long period.
But since we have announced an open policy and sworn our loyalty to this concept, it is either impossible to close the door, or very difficult. But I think it’s impossible. Perhaps, the biggest guilt of the Russian Television and Radio Broadcasting Company is that it was and remains faithful to this principle of openness.
There is nothing awful in a situation when authorities tell people that they have failed to achieve something, that they have made a mistake and that conclusions should be drawn from their mistakes. This is a normal behavior of authorities in a democratic society.
There can be no state broadcasting company which presents one point of view as right—mine, I mean the authorities, theirs, the opposition, as wrong. The objective of a state company is to present a spectrum of viewpoints, and to encourage society to look at a process from different points of view, to encourage the authorities to look at these points of view as if it were a mirror and to draw conclusions. State television in a democratic state is a difficult concept. It is not by chance that the notion of state television has been superseded in the West by the notion of public television. This stresses the fact that public television is not the television of the authorities, but the television of society.
I think the task of state television is to extract constructive and critical elements from different viewpoints and to acquaint our society with this constructive and critical element of our society. Naturally, as part of it, the task is to familiarize the public with the minuscule part of society that is the authorities, to acquaint them with this and to induce the authorities to develop reforming models, to help the authorities develop these reforming models, to avoid mistakes and to make it a practice that they recognize its mistakes in the face of society.
These were the ideas to which the All-Russia State Television and Radio Company swore allegiance. And I think it is to its credit that it has remained loyal to this idea and to these principles.
I come now to my second point. When it became known that the company is criticized for not setting forth completely the two points of view on the Chechen events, I must say that this is very difficult to do because it is impossible to present the official point of view in an incomplete, truncated form. It forms such a small part of the information flow that we presented it down to the last comma.
As soon as correspondents were given access to the army, the supply of information instantly increased. As regards the other point of view, the criticism is justified because it is, perhaps, our fault that at a tragic moment we showed five dead bodies and not a hundred dead bodies so as not to torment the public, because society is a vast space of nerve tissue. Yes, perhaps, we might have provided more of this dark, harrowing, tragic material. But at such moments a feeling of compassion stirs up in each of us, compassion for those who have lost their homes, and also compassion for all those who are present there because it is a painful feeling being in a state of war. Perhaps, we have not provided the full amount of information, but we have sought to convey all the viewpoints so that the public should not be misled about the situation, so that another Chernobyl should not befall our country, or another Georgia, or another Afghanistan, so that we should not speak about the Chechen syndrome tomorrow, as we speak about the Afghan syndrome today.
It is absurd and ridiculous to look here in our company for the supporters of the dictatorial Dudayev. It is really absurd. It is absurd to look for supporters of the criminal structure that emerged in the Chechen Republic. But if you undertake a military operation, just do it and demonstrate your professionalism. If it is a police operation, do it by police forces, and prove your professionalism. Don’t torture your people. This is the point. This is the whole matter. And I understand — we understand — it is difficult at this moment, perhaps, it is more difficult for the President of this state than for anyone else. Perhaps, it is especially difficult for him because the burden of responsibility for any decision taken rests first and foremost with the President. And it is our task, if professionals do not fulfill the task as it has been set before them, it is our purpose and our duty to point this out rather than keep silent. This is what I wanted to say in the introductory remarks to our discussion.
It is my profound conviction that everything happening today is, by and large, a textbook case. The period of transition, naturally, always is a period of struggle. The period of transition is marked by setbacks and successes. I should say that, as a rule, fault-finding is a result of setbacks. It is a well-known truth that victory has a thousand parents, whereas defeat is an orphan. I think that this condition, this conflict situation in our society—Kisilev was indeed right that by the end of summer we had, perhaps, for the first time in the past four years, a more stable situation than ever. But we should always think about those forces which have no stake in stability, about those forces which are trying to blow up that stability and that climate of accord. And why are they doing that? We are either concerned about that and discussing that, or we have nothing to do in our offices. Indeed, it is a duty of the journalist to speak up and expose, to speak up and demonstrate, to speak up and prove, because, dear journalists, dear gentlemen, in the beginning was the word, and everything the rest, including ourselves, came later. I am through with my introductory remarks.
We are going through a period of trial and we are well aware that there are many questions about any step taken by the leadership of the country. Speaking about the Chechen events, the question “Why now? Why not before?” is quite natural. The question “Why are you doing things this way?” is also quite natural and understandable. Also natural and understandable is the question “If you have decided to do things this way, why is there such a lack of professionalism?”
The question “What are the consequences of such a decision?” is as natural and understandable. It would be natural to ask a question “Will these consequences be limited only to that territory or will they affect the whole of Russia?” As you see, there are many questions about just one, perhaps, tough but rather unexpected decision.
No matter how the situation develops, I think we should do our work. The company and its staff are ready to do this work. We will do our job, we will tell the truth, we will try to be balanced in our assessments, we will try to cover as many views, as many aspects and as many sides as possible. We will work for our viewers and our listeners. We will listen to their reproaches very carefully, but we believe that neither television nor radio should capitulate to these reproaches. On the contrary, they should make society and their viewers and listeners rise and look into the future in order to see and hear just a little bit more than they have before.
If we succeed, we will fulfill our major task to expand the information field. By enlarging the information field we will enlarge the field of democracy and therefore the field of respect for the individual, his feelings, concerns, and views. And this means that we are with the individual, that we protect his interests. We make a lot of mistakes, but we remain confident that we have always defended the interests of the individual and we will do so in the future whatever the cost might be. To make us act differently, they will need to eliminate us.
We cannot act differently. After all, this is our professional duty. Without it our work and our life will become senseless. These are not just lofty words. These people who gather information risking their lives, our journalists whose car came under fire and were beaten up when they wanted to take a snapshot of their own car in which they had narrowly escaped their death.
I want to tell you that they do this not out of curiosity,
but because we cannot do otherwise. We have not been taught to betray
people and the idea. If some people tend to call this romanticism,
I wish the All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company had
more of it. As soon as the romanticism dies, the company will die
too. Thank you for your attention. Thank you for your solidarity.