Russian Government Daily Newspaper Gets Funding Boost in Election Year
Text of report by Russian newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta on 23 April
[Report by Aleksandra Samarina: "R2.7 Billion for One Supplement" - taken from html version of source provided by ISP]
The country’s budget has allocated 2.7 billion to Rossiyskaya Gazeta in the election year.
Among the 28,000 mass print media registered in the country, Rossiyskaya Gazeta occupies a unique place: as the state bulletin, it is required to bring the texts of new laws and decrees to the citizens. And so there is nothing surprising in the fact that it is fully financed through the budget. But on the eve of the elections, the role of the government organ has changed drastically. It has acquired an expensive supplement, consolidating itself in the role of the collective agitator and propagandist. It appears that it was specifically for this purpose that Rossiyskaya Gazeta, the only one among all the mass print media, received a budget subsidy this year of R2.7 billion.
Reznik’s Amendment
“It was my amendment,” acknowledged Boris Reznik, the deputy head of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy and deputy chairman of the lower chamber’s organizing committee on mass print media, in an interview for Nezavisimaya Gazeta. After speaking at a session of the committee last fall, the deputy asked for R3 billion for all the publications, “because an enormous amount of money was given for electronic mass media”: “We were cheated out of our rightful share. And when I was told that the capital had been allocated, I was very happy for all the mass media. It is true, however, that we were given R2.7 billion instead of R3 billion. Well, I think it was necessary; after all, they had been so generous. And then it turned out that all the money went to one newspaper.”
In December, when the budget was being discussed in the third reading, the parliamentarian was about to protest this decision after explaining that he had tried to get something altogether different. That is, equality. Or perhaps encouragement for the most successful publications. He was not heeded: the Duma voted to give the preferences to the government organ. Which seemed especially strange against the background of the permanent confrontation with the cabinet that is constantly being publicized by the United Russians.
The transformation of Reznik’s amendment was possible, as they explained to Nezavisimaya Gazeta, because of a special mechanism for preparing the budget for the third reading in the Duma. It is specifically at that stage that the budget sums assigned by sectors are divided up among the departments. This process is not at all transparent, thousands of amendments are examined, and in this stage very extensive room opens up for lobbying for any options.
The point is that all the amendments are divided into three categories: adopted, rejected, and “taken into consideration.” Deputy Reznik’s amendment fell into specifically this last category. Here the devil is always in the details. Outwardly the courtesies have been observed, but the changes emasculate the sense. The author of the initial text ends up looking like a fool. People will laugh at him openly: “That is what you yourself wanted!” The name of the person who made the “minor adjustments” to the text makes no difference. As a source in the lower chamber told the Nezavisimaya Gazeta correspondent, “Anybody at all can sign the document, but such a sum never makes it past the ministries and the president’s administration.”
“We cannot get involved…”
Nezavisimaya Gazeta turned to the government with an official query. The author of these lines asked that the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade [MERT] comment on the document, since it is specifically that department, it was expected, that could have the most direct interest in promoting market ideas in all spheres of the state’s economic life. The correspondent wanted to know how the additional billions in preferences to the government print organ fit with the ideals of free competition.
The answer received proved very terse. “That is not our affair. It is a question for the Ministry of Finance,” Kseniya Osipova, an associate at the MERT press service, told the newspaper. The Federal Antimonopoly Service [FAS] gave a more detailed opinion on the topic of interest to Nezavisimaya Gazeta. Izabella Fomina, a senior inspector of the FAS analytical administration, agreed with the author of these lines: “If in one way or another, some newspaper has more resources to carry on its activity, it has advantages on the market for its product.” But she noted: “These advantages have been assigned by federal law, and we cannot get involved…”
Indeed, they cannot. Fomina explained: in accordance with Article 20 of the law on protection of competition, state and municipal assistance (consisting, let us remind you, of tax deductions for citizens, including owners of commercial mass media and employees working in that sphere) “is offered with preliminary consent in written form of the antimonopoly organ, in other words, with the consent of this organ. That is how it has always been, with the exception of cases when the assistance is offered in accordance with federal law. The R2.7 billion has been allocated in the budget, that is, by Federal Law No 238 dated 19 December 2006, and consequently it is not subject to examination by our service.”
However, by that same amendment – in its final version, certain sums were allocated to the newspaper Parlamentskaya Gazeta and the magazine Rossiyskaya Federatsiya Segodnya. The correspondent asked Boris Reznik to what degree they fit with the preferences to Rossiyskaya Gazeta. “They are kopecks,” the parliamentarian answered. It would seem that we can expect an especially high quality weekly – because of the considerable financial responsibility of its editorial office to the reader whose taxes it disposed of in that way. But the texts placed in it can only baffle the intended readers of the supplement.
It Is Not Our Blood
The heading: “A Modest Boy Killed 32 People.” And a wounded girl in the arms of the American police carrying a surviving victim of the Virginia tragedy from the field of battle. That is the headline of the last issue of RG-Nedelya. The supplement is free – it is distributed to the apartments of pensioners. That is, the details of the bloody drama are not expected to raise circulation or cover expenses. They simply are supposed to provide a few pleasant moments for the contingent being cared for. Especially the patriotically inclined: after all, the subject matter is life abroad.
The supplement will also help accomplish a more important task – the pensioner will greatly increase his capital if he takes advantage of the advice from the rubric “Where To Place the Extra Rouble.” If old people have some 30,000 left from their pension, it is best to use a bank’s services, the newspaper assures them. The supplement will suggest a choice. The lack of opportunities to put away extra money is the only thing that might complicate the life of a domestic pensioner, the authors believe, and they suggest that the old people buy a “little piece of VTB [Vneshtorgbank - Foreign Trade Bank].” In terms of the rest, his existence is tolerable. In their free time, in order to while away the long evenings, the category of elderly people most cheated by fate can, for example, look into sports: a column is devoted to reporting on the Eurasian Cup in Wheelchair Dancing.
The correspondent asked disabled persons from rural Orenburg Oblast how topical these subjects seem to them. They are wonderful articles, the Nezavisimaya Gazeta interlocutors said, but somewhat different problems bother them. For example: where to get a new artificial limb if, instead of the year that the old one was given to wear out, two years have now been assigned by order of Minister Zurabov. Moreover, because they are so cheap, domestic ones stop working after eight months. The pensioners have strong doubts that the minister will answer them in the newspaper which he himself in fact publishes. The disabled persons joke that in the next issue, they expect to see yet another optimistic article from their own lives. For example, the experience of selecting a cook or a gardener for a suburban home may be analysed.
Let us add: the supplement was issued as if not billions but kopecks had been spent on RG-Nedelya: instead of the expensive multicoloured pages that other publications use, we see a cloudy photo from the television screen on the first page. Even here they economized.
On the Sly
RG-Nedelya has entered the field of open competition with private mass media. Meanwhile this battle is not an equal one from the start. The newspaper does not have to fight for the reader, circulation, or survival on the market. The budget pocket has no bottom, and it cannot be compared to the purses of even the most well-to-do oligarchs.
The lack of competition relaxes things, and it is specifically this circumstance that is undoubtedly the explanation for the extremely low quality of the publication. The publishers of RG do not have to take a strong interest in the opinion of competitors with this layout. But Nezavisimaya Gazeta asked the editors in chief of the leading domestic mass media to comment on the preferences for the organ controlled by the cabinet of ministers.
Pavel Gusev, the editor in chief of Moskovskiy Komsomolets and chairman of the information committee of the Public Chamber, explained to the correspondent that the situation “creates if not a nervous, at least a depressing environment in the mass media”: “In this regard I heard at various meetings with the leaders of mass media, and without any initiative from anywhere else – they were simply indignant that enormous amounts had been allocated for that same RG.”
The publication of a free newspaper that intrudes into the mass print market above all hurts the regional press, Gusev is certain: “People who are not so rich and cannot spend money on other magazines and newspapers will be content with a free supplement. As a result, the circulation of numerous other publications will decline. That kind of precedent leads to aggravation on the internal media market.”
In commenting on the amount allocated to colleagues by the federal budget, Yelizaveta Osetinskaya, the editor in chief of Vedomosti, says: “With such possibilities, of course, it would be easy to compete with other mass media that are self-supporting and do not receive these subsidies. Imagine that you have now been allocated an enormous budget, and you can use it to make a mega- newspaper. So I have a civilian question – not as an editor, but as a person who pays taxes: where did this money go? I did not notice any greater competition from Rossiyskaya Gazeta…”
“I am not in on the matter because I myself never received such money…” responded Andrey Vasilyev, the editor in chief of Kommersant.
What Is Needed is Not Money But a Law
Deputy Boris Reznik is certain of this. Convinced from his own sad experience of the impossibility of ensuring equal rights on the market of the mass print media that he oversees, the parliamentarian complains of the lack of political will that prevents the adoption of a draft law on this topic that has been ready for a long time. He is certain that freedom of speech cannot be observed in the country without ensuring the economic independence of the mass media. As confirmation he cites the results of his own monitoring: the president mentioned this for different audiences eight times, mostly at meetings with journalists.
Reznik’s draft is in fact called “On Ensuring the Economic Independence of the Mass Print Media.” It does not envision distributing paltry amounts to everyone, but the same preferences for all publications, not of a monetary but of a legislative nature. Notably that means amendments to the Budget and Customs Codes. Today, Reznik notes, the state unitary enterprise Pochta Rossii [Russian Post Office] is exploiting the publishers furiously: “Moreover, it does not do the exploiting itself, but has created commercial organizations in its system that parasitize the newspapers.” The deputy cites an example: “Producing Izvestiya in Khabarovsk costs R576 for six months, while delivering it costs R1,500, and that is altogether inappropriate: it is a question of moving the newspaper from street to street.”"It is impossible to make a business of delivering publications,” the author of the draft law is certain, “the state should provide patronage for this.”
Moreover, Reznik believes, steps must be taken in relation to the customs organs that ignore the Florentine Agreement signed by Russia back in 1976 entitled “On Special Preferences at Customs Offices for Importing Products of Science, Culture, and Education.”
“The customs office shrugged off this agreement,” the deputy comments on the situation, “although Article 13 of the Constitution designates the primacy of international norms of this type over domestic laws.” The value-added tax for mass print media is very low throughout the entire world, Reznik added: “Either there is none at all, or it comes to 3 per cent-7 per cent. But in our country the value-added tax for a newspaper is the same as for vodka, 18 per cent.”
What does lack of political will mean if the president called for economic independence eight times? The parliamentarian was unable to answer this question from Nezavisimaya Gazeta. He merely presented this picture: “There they have their own priest and their own devil, and no one is afraid…”
In the third reading of the 2007 budget, Reznik voted against his own amendment. It was too late. The election year of 2007 had already begun, and the government did not intend to stand on ceremony.
The link between the publication of the supplement and big politics is unquestionable. On the eve of the parliamentary elections, the electorate is presented, supposedly free of charge, with a serene picture of national life. In popular terms it is explained to the reader what a wonderful country he is living in, paid for by his own hard-earned money. Meanwhile there is no mention that the citizens were on the brink of rebellion – sociological surveys provide a different picture. The unprecedented efforts of the state apparat on self-advertising compromises it, making people suspect that the government is nervous and afraid of the opposition. The billions in bonuses for semi-official publications are dangerous for the additional reason that they look like support of the free press, while the goal they pursue is exactly the opposite.
(c) 2007 BBC Monitoring Former Soviet Union. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.