Post-Soviet Media Law & Policy Newsletter
Issue 35 Benjamin
N. Cardozo School of Law February 27, 1997
Media and Politics in Transition: Three Models
Media have been in transition in Russia since the spring
of 1986 and their transition from an administrative-bureaucratic model
toward the market and democratization has been closely connected with the
transition of Russian politics from Soviet authoritarianism to democratic
pluralism. The Political transition can be divided into three periods:
the Perestroika of 1985 to 1991; the establishment of new democratic political
institutions in 1992-1995; and the arrival of new players into the political
process during the presidential election of 1996—the financial and corporate
clans, which directly participated in various decision making activities,
including media and communication.
Now in Russia we are facing the need to retain the public
service sectors in communication and mass media in the context of growing
pressures of corporate interests and new information technologies.
This process of on-going transition in Russia coincides with global transition
to an information society in other countries and cultures. The difficulties
of transition in Russia reflect the complexity of rapid and not always
orderly movement to the market and democracy. Each of the three stages
of transition produced its new model of mass media.
The Glasnost model. During the perestroika
period Mr. Mikhail Gorbachev used the media to promote change and to get
rid of bureaucratic authoritarian trends. The Communist Party headed
by Gorbachev was loosening its grip on the media, but retained its control
even after the media law promoting the freedom of the press was passed
on June 12, 1990. This stage in the transition was brought to an
abrupt end by the August coup of 1991. The coup leaders tried to
reintroduce censorship and issued orders to stop the functioning of independent
newspapers and broadcasters. The defeat of the coup opened the way
for a new chapter in the history of Russian media free from party control.
The perestroika period is usually defined as the “Glasnost period.”
The media were certainly the most important vehicles of perestroika, but
they still retained their instrumental character.
The Fourth Power (or Estate) model. The
development of new democratic institutions involved free, independent,
and pluralistic media, both print and broadcast. Numerous new voices
have been creating a new media culture, which strongly resisted encroachments
on their independence from the State and for a large part took an adversary
position towards the Government and the Parliament. Media were for
the most part no more instruments or mouthpieces, they tried to promote
objectivity, depolitization and independence. One of the most remarkable
achievements of the free Russian media was their coverage of the Chechen
crisis.
The political freedom and the movement to the market
created new difficulties—the economic constraints. Newsprint, printing,
and distribution monopolies increased dependence of the media on advertisers,
sponsors, banks, and opened ways for new dependencies, which media have
resisted with different degrees of success.
During this period the State tried to interfere in the
activities of the media in October 1993 at the time of the crisis in relations
between the President and the Parliament. The Government suspended
several Communist newspapers (“Pravda,” “Sovetskaya Rossiya”) and tried
to impose censorship on some democratic newspapers ( “Nezavisimaya Gazeta”
published several issues with blank space in place of the stories cut out
by censors). This practice was abolished, however, under pressure
from journalists and democratic public opinion, and censorship has never
appeared in Russia since those critical days of the early October, 1993.
The Free Market Model. The third model
reflects movement towards the repoliticization of the media, broadcasting
and attempts to make of media instruments of political propaganda and even
manipulation. It represents in a way a return to the instrumental
model, which does not reproduce the administrative-bureaucratic Soviet
approach, but comes very close to it, especially in national television
networks which were moving towards an oligopoly of financial elites in
national broadcasting. During the Presidential campaign most of the
media, and especially television, rallied in their efforts to promote President
Yeltsin’s campaign at the expense of other candidates.
In a way the three models coexist now in a pluralistic
Russian media, but dangers to pluralism are becoming troublesome.
The political structuralization of the Russian society
brought about new roles for the media in democratic procedures (elections,
public debates, etc.). We find different uses of the media and new
tendencies to promote political aims through State-controlled and independent
private television channels and press.1
The dynamics of the political involvement of media
in Russia are reflected in the gradual disengagement from the State and
Party control during the Perestroika and Glasnost period, toward the increasing
independence in the democratization process, the Fourth Power concept and
then to new dependencies upon the political sympathies of the financial
clans, exerting their influence upon the Government and the State, an instrument
of political power again. The emergence of the tendency towards “offizios”
(officieux, semiofficial) private media, expressing views close to those
of the Government (the NTV television, the InterFax news agency) is characteristic
of the developments in the media in 1996 during the presidential campaign
and immediately after it. This change was singled out by the “Moscow
Times” in Patrick Henry’s story “NTV increasingly the Kremlin voice.”2
And now political pressures of the Government on the media are often channeled
through private outlets of Mr. Gousinsky and Mr. Berezovsky.
The changes in the political power structures in Russia
and the difficulties in the development of the civil society are reflected
in the changing roles of the media in Russian politics.
In Russia we are used to get our newspapers by subscription.
Postmen deliver newspapers to our homes, and during the perestroika the
mail boxes in our homes were overloaded: circulation of our press skyrocketed
in 1990, national dailies sold more than 90 million copies, and the literary
magazine “Novyi Mir” had five million subscribers. The press laws
of 1990 in the Soviet Union and Russia in 1991 proclaimed freedom of the
press and the right of citizens to found and publish newspapers, and magazines,
to start radio and television stations. The explosion of new publications
and broadcasting organizations followed. Since 1990 more than thirty
thousand new titles and about one thousand five hundred radio and television
companies have registered.
Our faculty decided to start its own broadcasting.
We still did not have enough money and had to invite as partners the “Ogonyok”
weekly, the Radio Association of the Soviet Union, and the Moscow city
council. The radio was named the Echo of Moscow (Ekho Moskvy) and
became the first independent non-state broadcasting company. It gained
popularity for its courageous and outstanding coverage of the assault of
Soviet troops on the Vilnius television on January 13, 1991, and for defying
the putsch in August 1991. It remains now one of the best radio stations
in Moscow—it has since been joined by twenty-six more radio stations now
available in Moscow.
Unfortunately, the media were the first to feel the
influence of the market. The price for newsprint, printing and distribution
increased dramatically in 1992. As a result of this prices of the
newspapers and magazines rose sharply, leading to drastic cuts in press
circulation. The circulation of Moscow national dailies dropped from
90 million in 1990 to 8 million in the first half of 1996. Subscription
prices became too expensive for many Muscovites, and they bought their
newspapers at newsstands. In spite of the falling circulation, Moscow
newspapers still retain their vividness and pluralism and their ties with
politics.
At the local newsstand near my home I was told that
they sell 15 titles of dailies. The most popular newspapers here
are “Moskovskiy Komsomoletz,” “Izvestiya,” “Komsomolskaya Pravda,” “Nezavisimaya
Gazeta,” “Sovetskaya Rossiya,” “Segodnya,” and “Kommersant Daily.”
These seven newspapers have different political orientations and readerships.
Four of these newspapers were established in the Soviet
Period: the “Moskovskiy Komsomoletz,” which had been published by the Moscow
branch of the Young Communist League; “Izvestiya” was the paper of the
Supreme Soviet of Russia; and “Sovetskaya Rossiya” was the Communist Party
newspaper for the Russian Federation. The present day “Moskovskiy
Komsomoletz” and “Komsomolskaya Pravda” both have changed substantially
nowadays, both are in a sense democratic, “Moskovskiy Komsomoletz” seems
to be right of center, the “Komsomolskaya Pravda” rather left of center.
“Komsomolskaya Pravda” has one of the biggest circulation among the dailies,
1.4 million (it had 24 million copies daily in 1990). “Izvestiya”
is an independent daily, centrist in its politics. “Sovetskaya Rossiya”
remains the newspaper of the Communist Party of Russia and retains its
old rhetoric.
The other three papers were set up during the Perestroika.
“Kommersant Daily” is targeted towards financial and business circles.
It has twelve to sixteen pages, making it the biggest of the Moscow papers.
It covers finance and business and has an excellent cultural page on Saturdays.
The paper was set up in 1990 as a continuation of the old Kommersant which
was published in 1909-1917, and ceased publication in 1917 with the advance
of the October revolution. It is the favorite paper of the new business
elite and has the best column on restaurants, which goes beyond Moscow
and even Russia. It is believed to be supported by the Stolichnyi
Bank. Its publishers own a chain of magazines, including “Kommersant
Weekly.”
“Nezavisimaya Gazeta” (The Independent) was launched
in 1990 on the model of “Le Monde” and “The Independent” with the motto:
Sine ira et studio (without anger and prejudice). Its editor Vitaly
Tretyakov is well experienced in Western media. He tried to sustain
financial independence, but failed and had to rely on the support of Boris
Berezovsky’s Logovas corporation. Still this paper has the best interpretative
journalists. “Segodnya” newspaper was set up by former journalists
of “Nezavisimaya Gazeta,” who disagreed with Vitaly Tretyakov. It
is financed by the MOST Bank group, has a very broad cultural approach
to the news, but has recently started moving towards business journalism.
Four other papers should be mentioned to make the picture
more complete: “Trud” daily, which used to be a newspaper of Trade unions,
but now is independent and retained its readership among employees and
workers with the biggest circulation of 1.44 million. It is now partially
owned by the Gazprom corporation.
The most notorious extremist newspaper is the “Zavtra”
(Tomorrow) weekly, which calls itself the newspaper of the Russian State.
It has nationalist, very close to xenophobic inclinations.
I should add to this “Pravda,” which was the most authoritative
and authoritarian newspaper in the Soviet Union, but it has lost readership
even among the Communists, its circulation now is about two hundred thousand
as compared with more than 10 million copies in 1990, and last but not
the least it is owned by a Greek millionaire.
We have an interesting and well-informed English language
newspaper “The Moscow Times,” which is distributed mostly free of charge
in international hotels, universities and other public places. The
Menatep bank has bought 10% of the shares in this paper.
In November 11, 1996 I received a fax from David Penn,
my friend from the University of Sunderland. He wrote: “I read in
the ‘UK Times’ Higher Education Supplement today that the Russian Universities
Education service on Channel 4 is to be closed with consequent loss of
jobs, etc. Is local cable TV a viable alternative? . . . I would
be interested to know what you think of the current situation and whether
there is any way in which we might be able to help.” On that day
NTV—an independent private Russian television channel which has been broadcasting
for some time on Channel 4 in the evenings after 6 p.m.—took over the morning
and afternoon time starting at 6 a.m. from the State-run educational service,
and Russia was left without educational television for the first time in
twenty years, though NTV retains an hour of the Russian Universities from
1 p.m. to 2 p.m. Certainly it is a loss for Russian culture as a
result of the advance of commercialization on Russian television.
There are, however, plans to set up a new educational and cultural channel,
but its initiation depends on obtaining funds, and unfortunately with the
present financial difficulties it is not likely that the money will be
found soon.
Most of our television channels in Russia are now private.
Out of six national channels available in Moscow: two are private (TV6
and NTV); two are state owned (the Russian Television channel and the Saint
Petersburg television); the MTK (Moscow television) is a shareholding company,
and the ORT (Public Russian Television) is jointly owned by the State (51%
of the shares) and the private companies. This combination of state
and private television channels provides a plurality of approaches.
During the Chechen crisis the private channel NTV and, to a degree, the
Russian Channel did a remarkable job of uncovering the crimes and perils
of the conflict. The situation changed, however, during the presidential
election campaign, when the six television channels started speaking with
the same voice. The concept of the adversary position of the media
was abandoned, as well as the concept of the Fourth estate, and television
became an instrument and a tool again, much more monotonous and conformist,
than it used to be. “The Moscow Times” noted in its article “Perils
of Dependent Television”: “When all the major television channels show
unanimity in their desire to preserve the status quo, then there is a threat
to democracy.”3
The position of the private channels was determined
by their owners who supported Yeltsin mostly as the least evil, but they
became in the process if not official, then officious.
The problem of ownership in Russian media is very complicated.
The very notion of “owner” does not exist in the press law, because the
law was adopted before Russia started to move toward a market economy.
After getting rid of State and Party controls, most media became independent
and were put into the hands of the journalists; but the economic realities
of the media industry require capital, and in search of funding journalists
turned to banks, corporations, the State, and private individuals for money.
The state tried to subsidize the press, but it did not have enough money
and, second, this involved state control which was not welcome to journalists.
Then the banks and corporations came to finance the media industry, and
now we have our own media tycoons. Most prominent among them are
bankers and financiers Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky.
Boris Berezovsky’s media empire includes investments
in the “Ogonyok” weekly magazine, ORT and “Nezavisimaya Gazeta.”
Vladimir Gusinsky, the former head of the MOST Bank,
created the largest Russian media corporation, which includes the “Segodnia”
(Today) newspaper, the NTV television channel, “Itogi” newsmagazine (published
in cooperation with the American Newsweek), Echo of Moscow radio [Ekho
Moskvy], and the Seven Days [Sem Dnei] television weekly. His approach
to the media is expressed in the phrase “the race for sensation, which
is maximally hot and interesting.” For him media “are becoming super
profitable.” As for journalists, their attitude was well formulated
by Albert Plutnik of “Izvestiya”: “the free word is becoming a hostage
of the financial dependence of the press.”
Besides Gousinsky and Berezovsky, the owners of the
media include the Gazprom corporation, which invested in the NTV television,
“Komsomolskaya Pravda,” “Trud,” and other media enterprises.
It is not clear whether Russian media tycoons get big
financial profits, but clearly they achieve political gains, and through
them they may achieve profitable business ventures. Igor Malashenko,
the Director General of the NTV Television, flatly stated in his interview
with “Nezavisimaya Gazeta” that corporations, by investing in media, “do
not seek exclusively commercial gains, for them the concerns of prestige
are important.”4
Berezovsky’s and Gusinsky’s media clans supported
Yeltsin in the Presidential election campaign, and both were rewarded:
Gusinsky’s NTV channel got the daytime share (from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.) of
the Fourth Russian State-owned channel for just $730, and Berezovsky was
appointed to the position of Deputy to the Secretary of the Security Council
of Russia.
The development of free media in Russia has its difficulties
and paradoxes, but nonetheless Russian journalism has become a formidable
force. And this can be seen by the example of the most popular Moscow
daily, the “Moskovskyi Komsomoletz,” with a circulation of about one million
copies, mostly distributed in Moscow. The paper covers local Moscow
news, sports, entertainment, popular music, crime, and accidents, but it
is also involved in national politics. It publishes investigative
reports, which often go beyond local scandals. It was this newspaper
which exposed corruption in the Russian Army. One of its investigative
reporters, Dmitriy Kholodov, who was covering the Ministry of Defense,
was murdered by a bomb in 1994, just before the beginning of the Chechen
war.
The latest political sensation of “Moskovskiy Komsomoletz”
was the publication of a tape of a secret conversation during the presidential
election battle between Anatoly Chubais, who is now the head of President
Yeltsin’s administration, Victor Ilushin, the first vice-premier, and Sergei
Krasavchenko, an advisor to Yeltsin. According to the published version
of the tape, the three leading members of President Yeltsin’s campaign
plotted how to cover up the use of US dollars from unknown sources to promote
Yeltsin’s victory in the elections.5
This publication and subsequent events demonstrates
the realities of the media situation in Russia. The three leading
politicians denied that they ever had such a conversation. The State
Duma, the lower house of our parliament, referred the case to the Prosecutor-General,
and Alexei Mitrofanov, a member of the Duma from Jirinovski’s Liberal-Democratic
Party, called the publication “a crime against the State” and said that
the journalist who wrote the story, Khinstein, should be “put into prison
once and for all.” We have a full amount of freedom of press and
of expression; but there are people in high places who would like to control
and manipulate the media. I must add to this that “Moskovskyi Komsomoletz”
supports President Yeltsin and does not in any way belong to the opposition,
but it is strongly against corruption.
“Izvestiya” is a much more prestigious daily with the
reputation of a serious, quality paper. Its has a circulation of
556,000 copies and is distributed throughout Russia. “Izvestiya”
attracted public attention by publishing a series of articles about the
appointment of prominent Russian banker and financier Boris Berezovsky
to the position of Deputy Secretary to the Russian Security Council, Mr.
Ivan Rybkin.6 Izvestiya disclosed that Boris Berezovsky
had double citizenship: of Russia and of Israel. Berezovsky denied
the allegations at first, then after another publication in the “Izvestiya”
Berezovsky admitted that he had Israeli citizenship, but had withdrawn
it. “Izvestiya” went on with their investigation, revealing that
the Israeli authorities had not received an application from Berezovsky
to cancel his Israeli citizenship, and moreover his name was still in the
computer of the Ministry of the Interior as citizen of Israel. Certainly
Berezovsky is a very bright man—he is a banker, a financier, a prominent
academic, an economist, and a media mogul, who controls a substantial part
of our media—but he did not hesitate to deny evident facts and to mislead
the public.
This wave of accusations and revelations, which can
be compared to the Watergate scandal, received its name in Russian, “compromatball”—where
the compromising facts are taken as a ball in a game or rather a feud of
financial and political clans.7 The “Moscow Times” described
it as the “Kremlin sleaze war.”8
The cases of both “Moskovskiy Komsomoletz” and
“Izvestiya” are characteristic of the media situation in Russia—media are
free to criticize and to expose, but the Government and the courts are
free to ignore these criticisms, revelations, exposures. It is important
to note, however, that the television channels belonging to Berezovsky’s
and Gusinsky’s empires ignored these revelations. These new information
policies led the “Obshchaya Gazeta” journalist Anatoly Khimenko to the
conclusion about new and also very old methods of controlling Russian television
formulated in the title of his article, “New Agitprop? Tele-preachers
and their flock.”9 And finally the Russian public and
the world at large know very well about the corruption in Russia, but corruption
remains. The Russian media are like Cassandra, who was prophetic,
but was not listened to.
The development of the free and democratic media involves
difficulties and paradoxes. For the last decade Russian media have
been in transition from an administrative-bureaucratic model to the market
and democratization—the Fourth Estate model; now they are facing new difficulties
involved in the growing tendency to turn media, and especially television,
once again into instruments, tools, sources of power for the Government
and private corporations which are close to the Government.
Changes in the political power structures in Russia
and the difficulties in the development of the civil society are reflected
in the changing roles of the media in Russian politics. Ethical and
professional standards are becoming more important in promoting media independence
and autonomy. Certainly we have pluralistic print media, independent
regional and local broadcasting, and growing access to the Internet and
satellite television (CNN and other networks), which contribute to counter
this trend. And while it is true that control over the national television
has certainly increased, they have not yet become absolutely sterile.
Professor Yassen N. Zassoursky
Dean, Faculty of Journalism
Moscow State University
References:
1. A most striking description of the manipulative uses of the
media is contained in the Report I of the Fund of Effective Politics “President
in 1996: scenarios and technologies of victory” (Moscow 1996) (in Russian).
Additional information is contained in the publications of All Russian
Center for the Study of Public Opinion, “Presidential Elections of 1996
and the Public Opinion” (Moscow 1996) (in Russian), and of the Fund in
Defense of Glasnost, “Sociology and the Press in the period of parliamentary
and presidential elections 1995 and 1996,” (Moscow: The Publishing House
“Human Rights” 1996) (in Russian).
2. “Moscow Times,” Oct. 19, 1996.
3. “Moscow Times,” Nov. 10, 1996.
4. “Nezavisimaya Gazeta,” Dec. 16, 1996.
5. See “Moskovsky Komsomoletz,” Dec. 15, 1996.
6. See “Izvestiya,” Oct. 31, Nov. 2, Nov. 5, Nov. 6, Nov. 22, 1996.
7. “Moskovskiy Komsomoletz,” Oct. 15, 1996.
8. “Moscow Times,” Nov. 16, 1996.
9. “Obshchaya Gazeta,” Nov. 28 – Dec. 4, 1996, p. 12.