PRIMAKOV'S QUARREL WITH THE MEDIA

I.  Primakov will change how he deals with mass media press secretary.

        Russian Prime Minister Yevgeniy Primakov “will definitely take into account” President Yeltsin’s recommendation to change the ways in which he deals with the mass media, Primakov’s spokeswoman Tatyana Aristarkhova has told reporters.  “Dealings with Russian journalists will be more open,” she said.
        She said that she has not yet received from the prime minister any new instructions on handling the mass media.  “We do not plan to introduce any new schemes of contacts with reporters,” she said, adding that there is no talk about limiting the access of journalists accredited by the cabinet to the government building.
        She said that she has “many ideas on how to make communication with journalists more open.”  She said that “it would be expedient” to organize a meeting between Primakov and representatives of the news agencies accredited by the Russian government before Primakov flies out to the United States for a working visit.

Interfax news agency, Moscow, March 16, 1999

II.  Yeltsin tells PM not to quarrel with media.

        President Boris Yeltsin on [15th March] told Prime Minister Yevgeniy Primakov that he is dissatisfied with his relations with the press and advised him to be less emotional to its criticism of the government.
        “I do not like you relations with the media,” Yeltsin said in his first televised address in more than two weeks since his hospitalization with gastric ulcer, adding that initially he was also irritated by criticism directed at him.
        “But I forced myself not to act so sharply and negatively to the criticism of me,” he said.
 He noted that by his negative reaction Primakov only “irritates journalists instead of calming down the situation, and the media begin to snap back at you and invent what does not exist at all.”
        Primakov responded by saying that “you have stronger nerves than I.  You are a calmer man than me.  But I will take your advice.”

ITAR-TASS news agency (World Service), Moscow, March 15, 1999

III.  PM attacks media for misrepresentation.

        According to a long-standing Russian tradition, the first thing a boss does when he returns after a long absence is to deliver a reprimand.  That is what [Prime Minister] Yevgeniy Primakov did [on 10th March].   But what prompted the prime minister’s anger was not Chechnya but television, which the prime minister attacked during the morning session of the government presidium.  Never before has the note of steel in Primakov’s voice been heard so clearly.
        Yevgeniy Primakov likes watching TV.  And it looks as though the prime minister was unable to tear himself away from the screen during the vacation.  The prime minister was in no mood for laughter.  He regarded the analysis programmes on ORT [Russian Public Television] and VGTRK [All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company] not as a manifestation of freedom of speech, but as a malicious distortion of information about the government’s activities.
        In addition, Primakov recalled all the insults heaped upon him by the mass media.  He said there was no corruption in his cabinet and like [Yeltsin’s chief of staff] Nikolay Bordyuzha, instructed the relevant organs to draw the line under the corruption scandal.
        The prime minister’s next step is already known.  If the Prosecutor’s Office copes with the task it has been set and confirms that the government’s ranks are clean, Primakov will press for a decision from the president to remove Igor Shabdurasulov from the ORT leadership and dismiss Mikhail Lesin, deputy chairman of VGTRK, and [presenter of the Russia TV’s weekly news programme] Nikolay Svanidze.

‘Kommersant,’ Moscow, March 11, 1999

IV.  Berezovsky: primakov’s course dangerous.

        The course pursued by Yevgeny Primakov’s Cabinet is “extremely dangerous,” CIS Executive Secretary Boris Berezovsky said at a news conference at the Interfax head office in Moscow on Monday.  He will not press for the resignation of the Cabinet.” I would not say that it has to be replaced, but it poses a danger,” Berezovsky said.  There are important differences between him and Primakov, he said.  “The Cabinet lives in a surreal world.  I have ideological differences with the Cabinet.  The Cabinet does not understand liberal values in the economy or politics.  I do not think that the Primakov Cabinet is capable of leading Russia out of the dire situation it finds itself in,” Berezovsky said.  “Primakov did stabilize Russia,” he said.  On the other hand, the Cabinet is trying to seize power by taking over the Duma, the governors, the presidential entourage and the media, Berezovsky said.  The Cabinet is most successful with the Duma and least successful with the media, he said.

Interfax news agency, Moscow, March 1, 1999

V.  PM’s instruction on official statements to the media.

        Russian Prime Minister Yevgeniy Primakov ruled that only he himself, his spokeswoman, Tatyana Aristarkhova, and the government information department can express to the media the official government position on various matters.  Other government members can do that only on instructions from the prime minister, ITAR-TASS was told at the government information department on [16th February].
        Otherwise, “all employees of the federal bodies of executive authority who are quoted by the mass media should specify that their point of view is not the official government position,” according to a decision approved by Primakov . . . .
        On [13th February], Primakov said he was open for contacts with the media and called on reporters to refrain from publishing biased and unobjective information.

ITAR-TASS news agency (World Service), Moscow, February 16, 1999

Last Updated: 11/20/99

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