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The creation of a new public TV channel is a slap on the faces of current stations

Author: Christopher Kenneth Section: Editorials

Issue: May 2012, Vol.7, No.5

Tags: Medvedev

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Without explicitly meaning to, the outgoing incumbent president has finally confirmed as a fact what has been a globally recognized reality in his country — and that is the local press, and specifically, the television channels — are not free and independent of the Kremlin or other state agencies’ ‘direct and overt influence’ on their editorial policies.

Indeed, today, to say that most Russians do not trust the information being disseminated by their nation’s current TV channels, especially on issues involving the Kremlin, the government and their policies, will be a big understatement. Indeed, most literate Russians, especially those aged between 25 and 50, simply no longer use these channels as their default sources of meaningful local and global news or other vital events happening across the globe with relevance to Russia.

This category of citizens, who are big fans of Apple’s famous portable gadgets and other advanced mobile technological devices, has long become used to ‘surfing the Internet’ for the ‘correct news’ or ‘information in its original meaning’ prior to their being ‘appropriately doctored’ by the Kremlin’s spin wizards and other government propaganda gurus that have their PR, media and public opinions manipulation skills tuned to absolute perfection during the communist era and early days of perestroika.

For fairness sake, one, however, needs to note that the Kremlin or the Russian White House under the current prime minister cum president-elect might not be directly giving open, memo-styled official directives to TV stations’ CEOs on how to formulate their editorial polices or as guidelines on the exact contents, spins and leads on their coverage. As one TV industry analyst once said, these CEOs and news editors, in trying to win or remain in favor of the government, which is by the way the owner or principal stakeholder of these media via industry dominating state-owned corporations such as Gazprom, have officially implemented the so-called ‘self-censorship polices’ on their airwaves.

In other words, the channels try to ‘second guess’ the official views on their news coverage, therefore, instead of reporting mere facts as they really are, they either overlook certain aspects that might be damaging to the government or deemed unpalatable by some top ranking bureaucrats in the highest corridors of power or overact to other issues which they think the government wants them to emphasize. Although some sources say some ‘ready news scripts are often sent down from above,’ and as a proof citing the ‘shameless similarity of leads and same textual and phraseological sequences’ on some news coverage relating to the government, it, however, seems that the channels have become so good in their ‘self-censorship’ or ‘second guessing’ the Kremlin and the White House that the government no longer has the desire to interfere on the channels’ editorial policies, at least on a daily basis.

The manifestation of this ‘self-censorship’ even came to a comical stage last year, when the president in his December 2011 meeting with nation’s largest federal channels — The First Channel, VGTRK and NTV — requested the CEOs to ask tough questions, prompting them to raise such issues as freedom of speech and press independence. Instead of using this unique opportunity to vent out their discontent and viewers’ dissatisfaction with the status-quo on the nation’s airwaves, these media managers went into an inconsistent tirade on the theory of press freedom and the young age of the Russian democracy that made the audience wonder whether these gentlemen actually understood the president’s simple request.

Indeed, it actually turned out that the president was not impressed by their statements and raucous speeches that were very long on symbolisms, but fell very short on real substances, by reminding them that ‘it is often odd to see that some news and events making waves on the Internet do not always find due reflections in your channels’ coverage.

This is the core of the issue of lack of public in the current channels. And the direct responsibility for this lies not with the Kremlin, but with the channels managers, who, having fully forgotten that Russia and its citizens are now living in the era of unprecedented information transparency brought about by Internet technologies and globalization, have continued to use the worst of Soviet-styled propaganda ‘business modus operandi’ in their broadcasting services.

Also, these ‘learned gentlemen’ have probably forgotten that the Soviet propaganda machine was very effective because then the state, in the absence of today’s Internet and globalization, had absolute monopoly on information, while the few alternative foreign news airwaves such as the BBC, Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty radio stations that could have pierced through the Soviet’s infamous Iron Curtains were effectively blocked by the ever-efficient KGB. To think that if The First Channel, VGTRK and NTV do not show events on their airwaves in today’s Russia that most citizens will not know about them is a callous miscalculation that speaks volume of the degree of lack of recognition of the prevailing realities by these TV channels and the mental capabilities of those actually running the country’s major news channels.

By the same token, the creation of this new channel, expected to go air on Jan. 1, 2013, is a big slap on the faces of Russia’s current largest TV channels CEOs, ‘a full vote of no confidence in them, an impeachment by implication. And if there were any honor still left in them, they ought to have tendered their resignations as ‘totally bankrupt media managers’ by now or do so as soon as the new channel goes into operation. It is also right to assume that these types of media CEOs that have once misplaced their allegiances — by putting their career interests and state’s questionable desires before the constitutional rights of the citizens to factual and objective news and information —should be kept at an arm’s length from the new TV channel. Lest they will contaminate it with their bankrupt ideologies, absolute lack of principles and gaping inability to differentiate between good and bad in their channels’ coverage.

This is why it is very apt and timely today that the Kremlin has embarked on this new mission to set up a new TV channel that can actually lay ‘a rightful claim of unalloyed allegiance’ to objectivism, pure journalism, absolute respect for true coverage and fair reportage irrespective of circumstances, and full independence of its opinions and editorial policies. This will be the real rebirth of the post-Soviet Russian press as the ‘fourth estate’ as a bona fide equal stakeholder in the Russian political power hierarchy, able to shape public opinions and be an arbiter in the system of checks and balances between the different branches of government.

These lofty words are actually the rephrased/paraphrased excerpts from the official decree laying the foundation for this channel. The only fear, however, is that Russian bureaucrats have always been very good in such officious oratories that often lead to dead ends, but one will only hope that this time there will be no difference between the real words and actual actions in this decree in the realization of this de-facto epoch-defining policy on news transparency and objective events reportage in the country.

One of these yet to be addressed fears, for instance, is the fact that it is currently unclear how the officially declared lofty objectives of the new channel will be achieved if its top management, as stated by the decree, will be appointed by the president alone, rather than via an equal-rights holding coalition with the other independent non-government institutions in the country such as the opposition parties, civil organizations and authoritative individual statesmen and women with their personal independent views on all issues of national relevance. It is only a coalition of this nature that can fully guarantee the new channel’s stated independence from all forces and external pressure influence or groups.

This and other discrepancies raising concern among citizens need to be urgently remedied. In this context, it is very imperative for Medvedev, before handing over his executive powers, to remove all the possible bureaucratic, legal and other forms of loopholes capable of undermining the successful realization of this policy, one of his really true democratic legacies in his four years in the Kremlin as the nation’s president.