Belarus economic disaster coverage shows Russia’s press at its finest best
Issue:
July 2011, Vol. 6, No. 6
Tags:
Lukashenko
The Russian television channels’ bold economic news coverage and the print media’s comprehensive analyses of the current events in Belarus, presently battling with a disastrous national economic meltdown with little or no success in sight, have shown that the Russian press has not fully forgotten the basic ethical principles of modern journalism, which include professionalism, integrity, absolute lack of self-censorship, credibility, etc. The Russian media have maximally applied these principles in their unparalleled valiant coverage and in-depth analysis of the Belarus events as they occurred as well as extrapolating them to explore all the theoretically probable event development scenarios, accompanied by public opinions sampling on the streets among anti-Lukashenko intellectuals and financial experts in and outside Belarus.
Indeed, the Russian media’s Belarus coverage at the peak of its worst economic crisis was reminiscent of the early post-Perestroika-era journalism that lasted till early 2000s, when modern Russian press was, according to famous Moscow journalist and Namedni Program author Leonid Parfyonov, turned by the Kremlin into “a completely useless and ineffective civil institution,” where the nation’s leaders are now treated only as dead people, about whom only either good things or nothing all is said.”
However, the current Belarus economic fiasco coverage has brought out ‘the very best and finest’ in modern Russian media. Indeed, it was a bit amusing in its musicality, when Russia’s major TV channels repeatedly lauded themselves in their overwhelmingly anti-Lukashenko propaganda as the only sources of fully independent and completely uncensored information for their Belarus viewers, most of whom have been kept in complete darkness by their state-controlled media houses. Ironically, these are exactly the same charges faced by the Russian press from Western media when talking about Russia.
Unknowingly to themselves, Russian media CEOs, by raising the quality standard of their journalistic reports in the Belarus economic debacle coverage to a sky-high level, have set for themselves a much higher benchmark by which they will now be judged by their home viewers, who will no longer, et ceteris paribus, accept the pre-Belarus poor quality reporting status quo. Knowing their local media’s capability to produce excellent journalism, both Russian and foreign viewers in and outside the country will henceforth expect only exemplary coverage of all the political, social, economic and financial events and issues in Russia with the same contagious zest, unmatched fairness and absolute lack of censorship — both self and externally imposed — in their reports.
If they lack perfect leads on major economic and political issues in Russia and need some professional advice, I would gladly recommend them to contact some internationally famed independent Russian economists that are not affiliated with the Kremlin, the Russian White House or any of the powerful state-owned deep-pocketed corporations to help explain how the Russian economy really fared during the current crisis, and more importantly, how a nation so endowed with unequaled abundance of human and natural resources could hardly make it through the financial meltdown.
While the above case will be an interesting study in theory of independent journalism, the time for practical examination for the Russian media, now known for journalistic integrity and objective reporting as shown in the Belarus case, will be during the upcoming State Duma and presidential elections. Like most news addicts in and outside Russia, I now particularly expect them to cover all the political parties equally in the December State Duma election by giving every party boss the same air time and print space as they usually give to the ruling United Russia party leadership, and repeat the same practice without any bias, fear or favor during the March 2012 presidential election for all the aspiring candidates. 
Failure to live up to this new journalism standard will be a reminder of an anecdote that was very popular among Soviet citizens in the heyday of the communist empire, where a Russian and his visiting American talked about lack or presence of civil freedom in their countries. According to this joke, the American boasted that, protected by the First Amendment, he can move onto the White House lawn and call President Reagan ‘an idiot’ without any negative consequences. To which the Russian allegedly retorted: “What a big deal: I can also move on to the Red Square and call Mr. Reagan ‘a big idiot’ and nothing would happen to me too.”
It now seems the Russian media executives have endorsed this ‘anecdotic principle of simulating freedom of speech’ as benchmark for day-to-day judgments of what news and events are worthy of coverage, while lashing out mercilessly against Lukashenko and his bankrupt economic policies. If the Russian press should continue this biased practice of only criticizing foreign leaders and their policies with such unalloyed zest and strident vocality, while turning ‘a blind eye’ to what is happening on its courtyard, then it will have completely failed to live up to its expectation as the fourth estate, the custodian of society values and checks and balances between other arms of state governance. Russia and Russians do not need media and media executives, who have consistently displayed professional infantilism and unparalleled myopism in their events coverage judgments.
On the contrary, modern Russia and its citizens need professional media executives, who like Henry J. Raymond, the founder of The New York Times, should see media as the ‘last bastion of independent public thought,’ and above all, should always be ready to put everything on the line to report, despite the gravity of the odds that might be against them, what they really believe to be true without any bias, fear or favor.
Only such approach, rather than blanket criticism of Lukashenko or Russian public figures that have fallen out of favor with the authority, as was recently the case with Luzhkov, will mean the true dawn and complete triumph of freedom of speech in Russia and the local media CEOs’ final awareness of their real professional calling and objective.
Web design,