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Russia: Commentary Says Media Freedom is a Closed Issue

Posted on: Tuesday, 25 October 2005, 06:00 CDT

A commentary on a Russian news website has said that US appeals for media freedom in Russia are missing the point. That issue has already been decided it says and now Russia is learning to use entertainment programmes, such as soap operas, for ideological purposes. The next battle will be to counter the expansiin of foreign publications. The following is the text of an unattributed commentary: "Subsidies for Patriots" published by Russian Gazeta.ru website on 20 October

American congressmen are concerned that Russian mass media lack freedom and independence. State Duma deputies are worried about whether newspapers, magazines, radio and television are carrying the light of culture and the grace of morals to the popular masses.

They hardly coordinated between themselves, but they remembered about the Russian mass media practically simultaneously on both sides of the ocean. On Wednesday [19 October] in the US House of Representatives a resolution was introduced calling on Russia to ensure the independence and freedom of the Russian mass media and condemning the killing of American journalist Paul Klebnikov and 11 of his Russian colleagues. On Thursday hearings were held in the State Duma "On the Legal Regulation of the Dissemination of Cultural Values and the Formation of Moral Ideals in the Mass Media."

The draft resolution introduced in the House of Representatives by Republican congressman Thaddeus MacCotter contains an appeal to the Russian government "to take appropriate action to protect the independence and freedom of the Russian press and all representatives of the media arriving there".

However if the American representatives had participated in the Moscow hearings, it is possible they would have understood how untimely their appeal was.

Everything has already been decided in Russia on freedom and independence. The issue is simply closed. It is possible to discuss it when the last independent, opposition or semi-opposition mass media are falling under the control of, if not the government itself, then even better, business structures loyal to the authorities, but it is somewhat senseless. Ren TV under Mordashev, just like Nezavisimaya Gazeta under Remchukov, if not quickly, then nonetheless surely, will retain freedom and independence in exactly the dose and exactly in the fields those who the American congressmen for some reason dignify with the term "government" prescribe. But the new owners of old mass media, in contrast to Mr Gaydamak, the new owner of the long suffering Moskovskiye Novosti, will not publicly declare their loyalty to the authorities, preferring to instruct the journalists in the quiet of their offices.

The Americans are appealing to a Russian government, which is not at all in charge of this issue, to ensure the independence of the mass media, as the same time that Russian politicians and officials are bothered by a problem of an entirely different nature.

The head of the Federal Agency for Culture and Cinematography Mikhail Shvydkoy, who declared at the hearings that Russian TV is "the best and most interesting in Europe," did not say a word about either freedom or independence. Having maintained that in recent years "the national product on television has been displaced by foreign ones," he called on the state to actively stimulate the cinematography market. "We need 1,500 hours of Russian soap operas a year, not 900 and 150, or even better, 200 films, rather than the 90 we produce with state support."

In actuality, the Americans are assuming that up to now the brains of the Russians have been washed exclusively by the output of television news or the leading government newspapers.

If before they wrote resolutions the US congressmen had watched several contemporary Russian soap operas, which play on Russian TV channels practically from morning to evening and attract a bigger audience than informational and even more "analytical" broadcasts, they would have understood that Russians are swiftly moving ahead and have creatively assimilated American and Soviet technology for using film for ideological purposes.

Today one does not need to listen to the stern voice of Yekaterina Andreyeva, with its correctly placed news accents or study conspiracies with Aleksey Pushkov or be wound up by the propagandistic hysteria of Mikhail Leontyev. It is enough to watch the soap operas in order to understand the following: the best people in the country are the military, the prosecutors and the police, all ills are from the West, the antiheros are the oligarchs and persons of Caucasian and other unintelligible nationalities. It is necessary to deeply love your Russian homeland, although it is difficult and dangerous to live in it.

In Russia a fight is going on, not at all for freedom, but for the control of minds. The major task is to win it in the West, which is planting values foreign to Russians.

According to Shvydkoy's version, on the television and film fronts, if we are not winning then we are attacking aggressively. On the print front we are fighting a difficult and unequal battle. Valeriy Fadayev, the editor-in-chief of the magazine Ekspert informed the participants of the Duma hearings about this. In his words "right now we are experiencing a very strong expansion of foreign mass media, especially in the sphere of magazines. The expansion is so large that in the near future moral ideals will be formed by foreign companies; this will already take place within the next year." In order to support domestic publications that are under unequal competitive conditions, the liberal economic journalist proposed abolishing VAT for Russian companies putting out their own newspapers and magazines and retaining the VAT for firms with foreign capital operating in the print mass media market. Patriotically inclined parliamentarians should devote all their attention to a proposal so ideologically well motivated.

Are not the minds and souls of Russians worth subsidies for the domestic mass media? Is not freedom worth trading for subsides?

Naive Americans think that this issue is still open.

Source: BBC Monitoring Media

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