How free is the Russian media?

IN Media Practice | 12/06/2006

Dasu Krishnamoorty

Before we answer the question we must know that Russia is changing in many ways, some good and some indifferent. Private ownership which is an important ingredient in the definition of democracy is increasingly visible in every sphere, including media. Like the Berlin Wall, the Iron Curtain too has collapsed. Next month, Russia is hosting the G8 summit, indicating the surge of its economy, mainly due to oil. It collaborates with the West in fighting terrorism and overseeing nuclear proliferation. It is now a major player in the global market. These changes signify that Russia is opening up, a process that will benefit media too.

The Russians’ view of the outside world and the latter’s view of Russian media are linked to the sources of their information. In the cold war era, Russians read Izvestia, Pravda and Tass-supplied foreign news. The Americans swallowed the world AP, New York Times, Life and George Orwell brought to them. They also heard the Voice of America. In India, we digested AP and Reuters news flowing in through the sieves of PTI and UNI. We also had the great Readers’ Digest that converted early Independence generations of Indians into devotees of Adam Smith. At journalism schools, students imbibed the Soviet theory of communication Wilbur Schramm and Fred Siebert propounded. This is how the outside world and "the Evil Empire" understood or misunderstood each other.

Moscow has just hosted a congress of the World Association of Newspapers which dramatizes the meltdown of the world’s two leading dogmas that brought ruin and tragedy to whole continents. It must be admitted, however, that the output of the Soviet propaganda mills was nowhere near that of the output of American media, Hollywood and publishing houses reaping the advantage of English. That president Vladimir Putin stoically sat through unflattering analyses of the state of freedom of press in Russia and the WAN chief went slow on his stridency about the changing face of Russian media highlighted this transition.

WAN chief Gavin O’Reilly told Putin at the opening ceremonies that many WAN members had resisted up to the last minute the choice of Moscow as venue, arguing that it would indicate an endorsement of the ‘sorry’ state of press freedom in Russia. In turn, Putin told the congregation that Russia could not have the huge transition from the Soviet era were it not for the press. He said, "Without a free press, the great transformations of the 1990s would have been simply impossible and today I would like once again to underline the not only special but irreplaceable role of the written word in the making of the new Russia."

Since absolute freedom is found nowhere, our premise has to be relative freedom. In the end, we must know the truth about the state of media freedom in Russia. It depends on how we understand the term freedom. The western concept of freedom as the "right to tell the government to go to hell" stresses too much the adversarial role, glossing over the social responsibility role and partnership in nation-building. This narrow definition hides the truth that there can be and there are other agencies besides the state which limit freedom of the press. Religious fundamentalism in many countries and racial fundamentalism in the US certainly are enemies of press freedom. Include in this list constraints of self-censorship that mainstream newspapers in the US practiced in the wake of 9/11 and Patriot Act.

In Russia, much of the media are owned by the State. The state is still buying up several private media. Putin argues that the state is acquiring media for profits -- the same reason for which a Rupert Murdoch or a Kalanidhi Maran is in media business. It makes sense to say that while profits from Murdoch empire and Sun TV go into the pockets of Murdoch and Maran, profits from state-owned media theoretically go to the exchequer, and to the people in the end. It is a different matter that both state and private media have a common goal - promoting their own interests. I am only trying to show the futility of making a distinction between "controlled" media and "owned" media.

The journalist that refuses to carry out the writ of the owner/state will have to quit. In fact, freedom of the press is freedom of the owner and not of individual journalists. Ramnath Goenka exiled editor-in-chief Frank Moraes to London. He sacked Arun Shourie.  Birla had the freedom to fire B.G.Verghese for writing an editorial on Sikkim. The Bennet Coleman Jains gave a taste of press freedom to H.K.Dua. Neither the Jains, nor the Birlas nor Goenkas are any different from a V.C.Shukla or a Sanjay Gandhi.   Murdoch fired Harold Evans. Nobody can fire N.Ram or Ramoji Rao because they own the newspapers they edit. This is the face of freedom of press that all of us lament is absent in Russia. Remember, control is a major function of ownership, state or private.

This background is necessary when we discuss freedom of press in Russia.  It must be noted that there are a lot of private-owned media in Russia now, if we consider private ownership as a virtue. Three of every four media consumers in Russia get their information from private media.  According to the BBC, out of the 11 big newspapers, seven are privately owned; one of the three news agencies, Interfax, is privately owned; of the five major radio networks, Moscow Echo and Russkoye Radio are in private hands; Centre TV and Ren TV are fully private owned and 49 per cent of Channel One shares are privately held. Gazprom Media, a subsidiary of the gas giant Gazprom, has bought off Russia’s biggest private TV channel NTV. This is bad if we forget that India owns the biggest state TV and radio network in the world.

What is significant is the extent and presence of private ownership of Russian media, impossible in the Soviet era. The newspaper with the largest reach of ten million Argumenti I Facti is privately owned. There are pressures on media in all countries. Russian pressure is more advertised. The collaboration of the New York Times and the Washington Post with the State Department in sending an innocent nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee to nine months of solitary confinement came to light only when the scientist sued them for invasion of privacy. The American annual report Project Censored tells us how many stories do not see the light of the day and why.

All Americans acknowledge that their government`s requirement that reporters reveal their sources restricts press freedom. After the advent of the Internet, people everywhere are discovering a world different from what the free media depict. In the past too our ideas of freedom of the press would have changed if we had read the right books written by people like Ben Bagdikian, Herbert Altschull, Herbert Schiller, Tom Goldberg, Michael Parenti etc. none of whom is a communist. 

Russia is not my ward but I can say western coverage has never been far from questionable. The globalization of media demands that one of its major goals should be to help the emergence of a world without wars, cold or hot. Media are not senseless conveyer belts. They wield a lot of power and influence and should factor responsibility into their performance. Putin certainly is not anybody’s idea of an ideal democrat. But non-state media are gaining ground in Russia and it becomes the duty of western media not to throw a spanner into that process and accept the common sense that control follows ownership. "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her." (John 8:7, King James’ version)

Contact: dasukrishnamoorty@hotmail.com