Post-Soviet Media Law & Policy Newsletter
Issue 32 Benjamin
N. Cardozo School of Law September 5, 1996
Content Control on TV in Russia
The Russian Federation legislation makes no special
provisions for control over mass media content. According to Article
29.5 of Constitution, freedom of mass information is guaranteed and censorship
is prohibited.
Russia still lives in a situation where a broadcasting
law has not been adopted. This allows for voluntary use of frequencies
allocated for the radio and television services. Today, the licensing
process is regulated by the Decree on Television and Radio Licensing in
the Russian Federation approved by the government on December 7,1994.
This Statute creates an advisory role for the Commission on Broadcasting
formed by the Federal Service of Russia on Television and Radio and by
the Ministry of Communication. Specialists in broadcasting, actors,
sociologists, lawyers, serving the public interest, are invited to become
involved with activity of the Commission.
As it considers applications, the Commission generally
puts forward certain demands on the content of the proposed channel.
Every license contains the channel description defining the broadcasting
character.
One question posed by the creation of this licensing
system is whether the licensee cares about the channel description in the
license?
Analyzing the programming of 27 radio stations in Moscow,
we find at least 6, or about twenty percent, which do not observe the license
conditions. The situation in other regions of the country is not
as well known, as the Commission does not have the staff to monitor broadcasting
outside Moscow. But it can not be better.
Why are broadcasters so insensitive to the conditions
of their licenses? Economic pressure makes them forget about license conditions,
stop thinking about the public interest and generally move toward a cheaper
format. For Example, two private television companies in Nizhniy
Novgorod—“Volga” and “Nizhegorodskaya set”—use the format typical of many
regional companies: American movies, often pirated, news items captured
from foreign satellite channels and a lot of advertisements.
The absence of a proper mechanism of license observance
has led to the exclusion of a tangible public interest from the mentality
of Russian broadcasters.
The peculiarity of the development of broadcasting in
Russia reflects the rapid move from total ideological control over the
media towards absolute absence of any control. During this period,
however, the necessary and traditional role played by the state, whereby
public regulators restrain the influence of capital and advertisers while
securing the public interest, has not developed.
Furthermore, economic stagnation, the increase in prices
for signal delivery, and the lack of financial support from the state budget
(in the beginning of 1996 RTR—a leading state company—got only 30% of money
needed for its normal functioning) have brought state television close
to bankruptcy.
In this situation, financial privileges and subsides
which television and radio companies receive from the state power organs
eventually determine the companies political position. Recent elections—for
the State Duma in 1995 and the President in 1996 show us the worst examples
of television behavior. There are 4 local state television channels
and 2 private television channels in Nizhniy Novforod. All 4 state
channels are subsidized by the local administration which is said to avoid
direct pressure but is using certain financial levers. During the
State Duma elections governor Boris Nemtzov promoted himself by promising
a financial reward for positive coverage. Nemtzov’s competitor, Mr.
Rasteriyaev, appeared in television programming only when, according to
the Law, he was granted free time.
Today, all Russian media understand the situation in
this way: the refusal to cooperate with state authorities means an end
to financial support as well as other potential penalties.
The Federal Service on Television and Radio recently
formed Regional Commissions on Television and Radio responsible for local
licensing. These licenses became an important tool in the hands of
local administrations who managed to take control over these Commissions.
For example, the head of the Commission in Tomsk is the Tomsk governor
adviser. If a company is not loyal to the administration, the company
will not receive a license or is in danger of losing it. The local
Commission will always use a chance to make the company’s life difficult
during the process of license renewal.
At the same time a company loyal to the administration
can get a channel without process of licensing. NTV—a well-known
property of the financial group “Most”—got the prime time hours of the
state owned fourth channel two years ago without license by high-level
bureaucratic decision. It became known recently, that the President
assured NTV that, by decree, he will grant them an entire channel.
The Federal Service on Television and Radio played no formal role in this
process, nor did its licensing commission.
So, NTV will again receive a channel without any official
procedure, a step widely seen as payment for the channel’s vital support
of Boris Yeltsin during the recent election campaign in which the head
of NTV, Igor Malashenko, played a key rile as presidential adviser.
The growing dependence on state structures is distorting
media performance. A recent article in the “Moscow Times” by Catherine
Fitzpatrick, Eurasian program coordinator for the Committee to Protect
Journalists, described the climate for the news media in Russia as “difficult,
even frightening.” She underlined that “paradoxically under Yeltsin, the
press has suffered its most brutal attacks in decades.”
Many journalists acknowledge that control over media
content relating to economic and political issues is very extensive and
reflects strong political concerns. Mr. Malashenko controls every
word in NTV’s news programs. As does Ksenia Ponomareva, the head
of the ORT’s news program “Vremya.” Before the recent presidential elections,
ORT fired many professional journalists and hired students. “I hate
the word professionals,” Mr. Ponomareva said.
“I cannot understand why they have fired us. We
were able to reelect Yeltsin,” said the former “Vremya” correspondent Lilia
Lashenko. Perhaps, in my view, it was a little too risky to work
in the presidential campaign with the people who once contributed to building
the most democratic institution of the Russian society—our mass media.
These people were educated by the struggle for freedom of the press, and
strove to enhance journalistic professionalism. They have opinions
and are not ready to change yet again.
Two years ago, the Faculty of Journalism, Moscow State
University, and the Research Center of Middle Tennessee State University
conducted a sociological study entitled “Freedom of Expression and Journalists.”
The study indicated that journalists felt rather free expressing their
views in the presence of their editors-in-chief. Furthermore, there
were few differences in the responses of American and Russian journalists.
It would be interesting to repeat the same study today, at a time when
journalists describe the atmosphere in editorial broads as one of overwhelming
hostility, and where “collectives are hostile to the editors-in-chief and
the editors-in-chief are hostile to their own collectives of journalists.”
The main reason for this hostility where private television
is concerned is the tough control over content exercised by editors and
owners.
At times, the owners’ control is incomparably more restrictive,
as demonstrated by the media coverage of the State Duma elections.
Victor Tzoi, owner of the television company “Integral” and radio company
“Prospect” in the city of Habarovsk, provided perhaps the most striking
illustration. During election campaign, his companies broadcast political
ads and feature-stories about Mr. Tzoi and journalists worked as public
relations officers for his candidacy. Regional media critical to
Mr. Tzoi is in the State Duma and, as vice chairman of the Mass Media Committee,
will be a significant voice in determining Russian mass media policy.
New industrial and political clans controlling the political
and economic life of Russian society exercised thorough pressure over broadcasting
during the presidential campaign of 1996. The result in many cases
was that journalists’ freedom of expression was limited to the goal of
reelecting Mr. Yeltsin, for the sake of furthering democracy. Even
the ORT and NTV choice of movies was determined by the task of the moment:
to expose communists as the evil of the world.
Today, despite many achievements in the field of broadcasting
in Russia, and all the guarantees of freedom of the press in the Russian
Federation Constitution, we can nevertheless trace new attempts to limit
freedom of expression broadcasting by the party of power. We can
say that modern Russian broadcasting is treated by the new political elite
as ideological institutions where journalists are considered as ideological
workers who serve the state and/or private owners.
Svetlana Kolesnik
Associate Professor
School of Journalism
Moscow State University