Post-Soviet Media Law & Policy Newsletter

Issue 27-28     Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law     March 31, 1996 

Signs of the Times

Broadcasting Law Veto Override

    The State Duma on March 20 voted to overturn the president’s veto on the law on television and radio broadcasting. Under the Constitution, a veto is effectively overridden upon a two-thirds vote of both the Duma and the Federation Council. The law stipulates that a federal commission will be set up to deal with licensing broadcasts, approving their types and forming databases on the conditions for issuing licenses.

Regional Television Access

    According to an ITAR TASS report, an agreement on joint activity was signed in Moscow on March 26 by officials of the Federal Television and Radio Broadcasting Service of the Russian Federation, the All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company (Russian TV, second channel) and the council of the leaders of regional state radio and TV broadcasters. Here is the ITAR-TASS account:
    The agreement is an attempt to regulate the activity of the central broad casters and 89 regional state-owned broadcasting companies within the same frequency channel. The companies have long been complaining of the second frequency television channel being overcrowded and resembling a shared apartment with too many tenants stepping on each other’s toes. Local broadcasters often feel forced to encroach on the time slots given to central television in order to go on the air with their own pro grams.
    The agreement provides, among other things, for Russian central broadcasters to plan their work taking into account the interests of local population in the component parts of the Russian Federation. In particular, the period from 1720 to 1955 [time zone not specified] would be reserved for programs which could be easily supplanted by programs originating with local broadcasters. As concerns regional broadcasters, they pledge not to go on the air beyond the limits of the agreed period.
    The signatories agreed not to hamper election campaigning, particularly as the presidential elections will run parallel to local elections in a number of regions.

Ryabov Seeks Reduction in Free Air-Time

    On March 26, Chairman of the Central Electoral Commission, Nikolai Ryabov, addressing the all-Russian seminar “TV and Radio Broadcasting and Elections,” suggested that free broadcasting time given for election advertising to presidential candidates be sharply cut. 
    According to ITAR-TASS, Ryabov said that this measure is necessary to ease somehow a lack of budgetary financing for these services. The chairman noted that free advertising by state-owned TV and radio companies had no budgetary appropriations during the last parliamentary election campaign.
    According to preliminary estimates, ITAR-TASS reported, regional companies suffered damages of 50-60bn rubles. Nevertheless, this item of outlays was not included in the 1996 budget. Besides, there is small hope that a request to the State Duma to permit financing of these operations will be approved.
    Ryabov suggested that time for free advertising should be cut by several times. That is, presidential candidates can receive only 10 minutes instead of 30 minutes which were given to election associations and blocs during the past election campaign.
    If top executives of state-owned regional TV and radio companies approve this proposal, it will be recorded in a draft instruction of the Central Electoral Commission concerning election advertising in the media.

Sagalayev and the President

    The following is an account by Irina Petrovskaya from Izvestia, distributed by the Russian Press Digest on March 29.
    In his first appearance before journalists since he was appointed Chairman of the Russian Television and Broadcasting Company Eduard Sagalayev has told them that Yeltsin has asked him to refrain from “muck-raking” in Channel 2 programming, the charge that led to the dismissal of Sagalayev’s predecessor Oleg Poptsov. 
    Officials of the President’s administration, Sagalayev said, had told him his company was not to stress the darker side of Russian life like the Chechen war and the wave of crime and focus instead on positive developments, especially those going on in the provinces. 
    In principle, Sagalayev said, he was in agreement with this approach. He noted that part of the reason why he had agreed to take charge of Russian Television was his belief that “here and now I’ll be able to influence Yeltsin through direct contact and television programs in order to help him not only to remain in power but also to bring to his attention rational elements of his opponents’ platforms. Therefore Communists, nationalists and patriots must be allowed access to the air-time of a state-run television company.”
    According to the newspaper report, Zhirinovsky, Lebed and Svyatoslav Fyodorov have already indicated their interest in taking part in TV debates. Yeltsin is reported to have said in private he will not be taking part but Sagalayev said he was hopeful that the President would change his mind when he and other staff of the Russian Television Company made it clear to him that this would only harm his chances for re-election. 
    Sagalayev said he did not share the view that a state-run television company could not be an effective instrument of an election campaign, adding that Yeltsin was aware of the importance of television and that was the reason why he had invited Independent Television President Igor Malashenko to be his adviser. “By inviting Malashenko the President aimed to enlist the support not only of an independent TV company and its smart leader but also of the powerful financial group backing it.” In his words, Sagalayev is not a Yeltsin faithful but rather “a neutral person.” He feels instead of taking the “terrible” risk of trying to get re-elected in June, the wiser policy would be to “strike a deal with Zyuganov by allowing Communists into the Government and postponing Presidential elections by three years or so.” 

Duma Lectures Networks

    An article in the Moscow Times, by Sophia Coudenhove, March 23: 
    The Russian State Duma reprimanded the heads of two Russian television companies March 22, saying their coverage of the parliament was biased. 
    Citing few concrete examples, deputies accused the companies of favoring the government over the opposition. One deputy, presidential candidate Vladimir Bryntsalov, complained that even though he had paid RTR to publicize information about his campaign, the company did not accept the money.
    However, the two television heads, Sergei Blagovolin, general director of ORT, Russian Public Television, and Eduard Sagalayev, chairman of RTR, Russian Television and Radio, seemed unperturbed by the meeting. 
    “It was a normal discussion between normal people,” Blagovolin said after the session, in which deputies accused both stations of favoring the government in their coverage. 
    Blagovolin conceded that “not all is ideal” in ORT’s coverage of the Duma and said he believed that deputies and journalists needed to find better means of cooperation.
    Earlier this month, ORT spokesman Alexei Pushkov told The Moscow Times that the company was geared toward showing President Boris Yeltsin in a positive light as the June 16 elections approach. 
    Sagalayev echoed Blagovolin’s views of Friday’s meeting with the Duma deputies: “I have a good feeling about it. It was fine,” he said after the meeting. “It’s important for us to talk to one another because we can’t banish communists to the moon and they can’t banish democrats to Mars. We all live in this country and we must not hate each other. Today’s discussion was a good example of the deputies listening to us and us listening to the deputies.” 
    He denied that the meeting was an infringement of freedom of speech or that deputies were applying pressure to the media. “They’re viewers who have a right to their opinion,” he said of the deputies. Asked whether the meeting would influence RTR’s coverage, Sagalayev said that this would be for his reporters to decide after discussing the views aired in the Duma. 
    Gennady Maltsev, general secretary of the Russian Journalists Union, had a different take on the incident, however. 
    “It’s a gross violation of the law on the mass media. The mass media should be independent. The State Duma has no right to dictate the conditions of their creative work. Of course, individual deputies have a right to meet with them but not to summon them like little boys.” 
    In an ITAR-TASS report of March 22 Blagovolin was quoted as saying that he “had been somewhat baffled by the formulation of the item on today’s 22nd March agenda of the State Duma” . It read: “Concerning facts of unobjective coverage of the work of the State Duma.” 
    Blagovolin said that ORT, in conjunction with the house committee for information policy and communications, had drafted a memorandum of principles for ORT’s coverage of the work of the State Duma. He said he was prepared to give the draft the effect of a document without leaving the house. 
    Blagovolin said the key principle in ORT activity was “work for the good of a great and stable Russia.” 
    According to ITAR-TASS, VGTRK leader Eduard Sagalayev told the house that “he had no time to sin against you during my first month in the office of the company chairman” . He stressed that his concept as VGTRK leader was to provide impartial coverage of the activity of all branches of power in the Russian Federation. 
    According to Komsomolskaya Pravda, the new wave of dissatisfaction in the Duma came after the “Belovezhskaya Forest” decree of March 15 condemning the dissolution of the Soviet Union. “The deputies even calculated that on that evening ORT presenter Arina Sharapova “carped” for 25 minutes about their decision. Rumors found their way into the Duma suggesting that Speaker Gennadiy Seleznev had been knocking to no avail on the doors of the first and second TV channels. Zyuganov also complained in the corridors about the cold attitude of the press.

Censorship Predictions

    According to a report on St. Petersburg Television, March 5, Oleg Poptsov and Mikhail Poltoranin, among the biggest “formers” in the world of media policy, reflected on the future of broadcasting and the press. Poltoranin was quoted as follows:
    “Prepare yourselves for a tough, forceful and unavoidable struggle between the authorities and the mass media. 
    Censorship through personnel, censorship through finances, censorship through any other means -it will become stronger. Censorship will be stepped up on the first channel Russian Public TV, ORT . Censorship will be stepped up on the second channel. Censorship will be stepped up on NTV television. If NTV starts getting frisky -and as you can see, NTV is gradually starting to tone things down a bit -then they’ll just summon Gusinskiy chairman of Most-Bank, NTV backer to the Kremlin or somewhere and tell him: if your chaps keep laying into Yeltsin and so on, then you, Gusinskiy, won’t get this, that and the other.”
    Poptsov was said to have blamed the president of Logovaz, Boris Berezovskiy, for his dismissal from the management of RTR because, among other reasons, he had once refused Berezovskiy’s proposal to turn the Russia Television channel into a joint-stock company. 

Staff Changes at ORT

    Text of report by the Russian newspaper `Komsomolskaya Pravda, March 1,’ 1996 Big changes are afoot at the Television News Agency [ITA, news and current affairs division of program provider Ostankino] on the first channel [Russian Public TV, ORT]:
    For many of ITA’s journalists, the first day of spring was also the day when they were sacked -their contracts were not extended. Among those shown the door were Aleksandr Goryanov, Sergey Slipchenko, German Solomatin, Aleksandr Barkhatov and others. First deputy chief editor Igor Minayev, production department head Vitaliy Miroshnikov and chief editor Vladimir Perfilyev were relieved of their duties.
    According to Perfilyev, strict political censorship has been brought in at ORT and criticism of the Russian president is prohibited.
    The top person at ITA is now chief producer Kseniya Ponomareva (who previously worked for the newspaper ‘Kommersant-Daily’). ITA staff told our reporter that at her first meeting at the agency, Ponomareva admitted that she knew little about television but did know her way around politics. She announced that ITA would be restructured along Western lines.

Future of ORT 

    The following is an edited text of an extremely interesting article by Yuri Bogomolov, published in the Moscow News February 14, 1996 on the future of ORT after the firing of Oleg Poptsov and his replacement by Eduard Sagalayev. 
    First. In firing Poptsov, the president flexed his “administrative muscle” and reminded the mass media who is in charge. 
    Second. Replacing Poptsov with Sagalaev is important in terms of future government-press relations. In the government’s view, the prolonged presence of one individual in such a powerful and responsible position creates the harmful impression that a worker can be irreplaceable. Thus an executive confident in his own indispensability poses a problem for the president: he is more difficult to manage. In order for the country’s leaders, the most democratic in generations, to remain firmly in charge of the mass media (especially electronic mass media), they must have an executive who knows he is replaceable and must therefore be more complying. 
    Third. Executive authority has hinted that of the two state-run television channels, ORT and RTR, it prefers the television’s first channel. This is a major victory for the entertainment industry over information and news programming. 
    More importantly, the decision may herald a consolidation of both channels under one state-run company.
    The idea of merging both channels under one “administrative roof” has already been aired by the top echelon in the government and was even made public by an important official, but met with sufficiently harsh opposition from democrats. Now the merger may be realized in a softer and subtler form. 
    The shadow of Gosteleradio, the propaganda monster that ran all radio and television in Soviet times, immediately crosses one’s mind. But the danger actually lies elsewhere. One united and indivisible TV-radio complex for all of Russia was a purely propaganda institution. The new State TV and Radio Company would serve a therapeutic function, much as a rehabilitation center equipped with machines for exercises (Latin American and Russian soap operas), invigorating showers (thrillers), heel scratching (game and quiz shows), soothing injections for relaxation and nostalgia (old Soviet songs and films), demonstration sessions of black and white magic, entertainment shows to make the public sit back and relax. 
    As director of Channel Two, Poptsov was a political scientist putting his personal stamp on the character of the company. 
    Sagalayev is a different proposition altogether. He is less of a political analyst and more of a social moralist. That’s the way we remember him from the old Ostankino program Seven Days and his newest baby -commercial television’s Channel Six, the second-most apolitical Russian television station. 
    Soviet Gosteleradio worked as if its huge audience was one colossal clapper which applauded or booed as prompted. 
    The new non-partisan, apolitically smooth TV giant is built on the assumption that its audience will be full of PATIENTS not spectators.