Post-Soviet Media Law & Policy Newsletter
Issue 32 Benjamin
N. Cardozo School of Law September 5, 1996
Freedom and Responsibility in the Russian Media
The relationship between media, freedom, and responsibility
has become crucial for Russian journalism since the adoption of Soviet
media law on June 12, 1990 and its approval on December 27, 1991.
The adoption of these laws signalled a turning point in the development
of freedom, independence, and pluralism of the Russian press, television,
and radio.
As a result of these laws, censorship was abolished,
opening the way for freedom of expression for the media and the public.
The emergence of a multiplicity of new newspapers, magazines, television
and radio stations, and news agencies dramatically changed the Russian
media landscape, an important indicator of the increasing freedom enjoyed
by Russian media systems. Aided by a growing independence from the
State and a movement toward pluralism, these newly free and independent
media are playing an extremely important role in the democratization of
Russian society and the evolvement of its democratic political culture.
The freedom of the press has become one of the most important, if not,
the most important achievements and successes of the newly born Russian
democracy.
Electoral campaigns of 1995 and of 1996 initiated outbursts
of media activities. In many ways they reflected the pluralism of
the media and of political life in Russia. The atmosphere surrounding
he preelection debates intensified as a result of the dilemma between confrontation
or consensus, and tolerance was yielding to the partisan intolerance.
Pluralism in a way was replaced by and was turning into media confrontation.
As a result, media did little to heal the divisions
in Russian society and actually increased existing social tensions.
Election results, however, did not reflect political preferences held by
the media. In 1995 the progovernment political movement “Our Home
is Russia,” which had the unqualified support of the most of the media,
lost to the Communists and Zhirinovsky’s Liberal Democrats. And in
1996 despite enjoying practically universal support of media and especially
television President Boris Yeltsin was forced into the second round of
Presidential election with a rather small advantage of several percentage
points over Zyuganov.
The non-traditional role the media was developing in
relation to the dynamics of the Russian electorate lead the Moskovskiye
Novosti (the Moscow News) to title a post-election story “Yeltsin Wins,
Media Loses.”1 The author of the article, Yelena Rykovtseva,
spoke of “a developing pattern: the person who manages to win over TV loses
the elections.” Included in the story were a series of examples taken
from recent history: “former Ukrainian president Leonid Kravchuk wound
up as an outsider after the media had concentrated all their efforts on
his election campaign; ‘media outcast’ Alexander Lukashenko won presidential
elections in Belarus.”2
At the start of the Presidential election marathon,
some analysts predicted that the candidate supported by the ORT (the Public
Russian television in which the State has 51 percent of shares) would lose.
But this time the situation changed. The Presidential election team
was joined by the Director General of the NTV (Independent and private
channel). Mr. Igor Malashenko, and thus all Federal and National
television channels were united in conducting the pro-Yeltsin presidential
election campaign. Most Moscow newspapers joined in supporting the
incumbent.
On May 30, 1996, a month and a half before the first
round of the elections, the political observer of he Komsomolskaya Pravda,
Pavel Voshchanov, summarized the situation in the media in this way: “for
the last several weeks almost all the Russian press unconditionally went
over tot he side of Yeltsin. According to the estimates of experts
he is supported approximately by 75 percent of the election news published
daily. In television his share is even higher—about 90 percent.”3
Mr. Voshchanov, who is Mr. Yeltsin’s former press secretary also pointed
out that very little or almost nothing was published about other democratic
candidates, while support of Yeltsin was combined with attacks on Zyuganov,
who received a lot of negative publicity.
Thus the presidential race reflected a bipolar trend,
particularly ignoring alternative democratic candidates such as a popular
reform economist Yavlinsky, who occasionally was attacked violently by
the media. And in a way journalism picked up the Bolshevik tradition
of turning media into an instrument of those in power. Most of the
media became vehicles of the Yeltsin publicity campaign, resulting in a
blurring between the line that separates political advertising from news.
The heritage of authoritarianism was most evident in
various activities of Russian officials during the election campaign.
The presidential administration opened an agency of regional press to promote
the coverage of the President in regional and local media. And provincial
journalists were invited to Moscow for briefings and interviews with prominent
members of the Administration, their return ticket and stay in Moscow paid
for by the authorities.4
The heritage of the Soviet press also showed itself
through intolerant and uncompromising attitudes towards opponents, which
pushed both sides in the presidential campaign to the extremes. The
pro-Zyuganov camp was supported by the newspaper “Zavtra” (“Tomorrow”),
which is notorious for its xenophobic nationalist outbursts.5
The two election campaigns revealed important
difficulties in the development of Russian democratic media. For
the sake of supporting President Yeltsin, who seemed to represent the only
viable alternative to the Communist, Gennadi Zyuganov, many journalists
sacrificed their professional democratic attitudes and principles.
As our prominent investigative journalist Yevgeniya Albats put it during
a debate at the European Centre of he Freedom Forum on June 28, 1996, the
media was faced with “a choice between bad and very bad.”
It was a difficult decision for Mr. Igor Malashenko
to join Yeltsin’s election camp, but he made it knowing that a Zyuganov
victory meant an end to all independent media, to all media, which were
not controlled by the State. Ironically, his decision drew Mr. Malashenko’s
NTV television closer to the President, to the Government, and to the State.
Mr. Vsevolod Vilchek, the head of sociological service at ORT summed it
up in question and answer form: “What was the difference between the State
channels and the commercial NTV? Only in the level of professionalism.”6
During the election process, the Russian media
which supported Mr. Yeltsin became extremely selective in their news coverage
and their comments. Even the popular puppet show “Kukly” (“dolls”),
broadcast on the NTV channel, lost its satirical fervor. The television
critic Lidiya Polskaya wrote in the “Moskovskiye Novosti”: “Before the
elections ‘Kukly’ chose soft irony, acting according, to certain rules
of politeness, which often turned into elementary dullness.”7
Television “was prejudiced in favor of democracy,” writes Mr. Vsevolod
Vilchek, a prominent television expert. And the Moscovskiye Novosti
published a story about the U.S. reaction to the Russian election under
a characteristic title: “Corruption Better Than Communism.”8
The presidential election campaign was free of
any restraints and was often conducted on the pattern of an information
war.9 Yevgeni Krasnikov of the “Moskovskiye Novosti” writes
that two principles were taken up: “a la guerre comme a la guerre” and
“the aim justifies the means.”10 The program of public
opinion management was conducted by the Fund of Effective politics, headed
by Mr. Gleb Pavlovski. Its activities, which included staged events,
disruption of Mr. Zuganov’s press conferences, distortion of the views
of opponents, were not open to the public. Mr. Gleb Pavlovski closely
cooperated with Mr. Igor Malashenko and leading television anchors.11
In a less regulated Russia media, self-censorship
is practiced even by respectable newspapers. For example, the serious
quality newspaper “Izvestiya” refused to publish Sergey Kovalev’s Open
Letter to President Yeltsin accusing the President and Mr. Lebed of failing
to fulfill their preelection promises12 though this newspaper
did strongly attack the lack of progress to implementing the President’s
election program. This self-censorship diminishes the freedom of
the press. Thus the social responsibility of the media bows to political
pressures and political convenience.
The election campaign confronted Russian media with
a difficult choice between a mouthpiece and a mirror, as the Kommersant-Daily
put it in the article on the role of television in the Presidential elections
in Russia.13 To a large degree, Russian media became an
instrument of political advertising, the mouthpiece in many cases winning
over the mirror. Such developments make the road to the freedom of
the Russian media very rocky indeed. That road must travel from Soviet
style propaganda-agitation-organization press to free and diverse information.
The presidential election campaign exposed the dangers
of reinstating state control over the media and of turning it into vehicles
of support for the President, the Government, the State. The return
to the practices of independent, free and pluralistic journalism will take
some time, but hopefully it will be realized. The difficult emergence
of the new democratic media culture is none the less irreversible, though
there are various pressures to substitute freedom for responsibility instead
of promoting freedom and responsibility.
Dean Yassen Zassoursky
Notes:
1. Moscow News, International Weekly, No. 26, July
4 – 10, 1996.
2. Ibid.
3. Komsomolskaya Pravda, April 30, 1996
4. Moskovskiye Novosti, No. 18, May 5 – 12, 1996.
5. Komsomolskaya Pravda, May 8, 1996.
6. Moskovskiye Novosti, No. 18, May 5 – 12, 1996.
7. Ibid.
8. Moskovskiye Novosti, No. 2, July 7 – 14, 1996.
9. Moskovskiye Novosti, No. 26, June 30 – July 7, 1996.
10. Moskovskiye Novosti, No. 28, July 14 – 21, 1996.
11. Ibid.
12. Obshchaya gazeta, July 24 – 31, 1996.
13. Kommersant-Daily, No. 113, July 6, 1996.