The New York Times’s Unselfconscious Look at the Meek Russian Media
Today’s New York Times carries on its front page an article all about how the Kremlin silences its opponents in the media. Now, it appears, the Russian government is even adopting Stalin-era airbrushing to literally photoshop people with uncomfortably critical views out of already-recorded shows.
Everything in the article is true (and, frankly, something that most people had already known for years) and the NY Times is right to be worried about Russian press freedom, which is being objectively scaled back.
Yet the total lack of any context in the article can cause some misleading conclusions to be made. Allow me to fill in the gaps.
1. The article makes it sound as if media black-lists, or ‘Stop-Lists’, exist only in Putin era Russia. In fact, that practice is widespread in the US media, too, and especially during times of high presidential ratings and nationalist feeling (which were very high in America in 2003-2004, and are now very high in Russia). How many times have you seen someone like Kucinich or Norman Finkelstein on the CBS evening news?
For example, CNN’s Jessica Yellin recently revealed that in the run-up to the Iraq war, she was pressured by executives to carry positive stories and drop negative ones about the popular Bush administration. In fact, as a study of US network coverage by the left leaning media criticism think-tank FAIR reveals, in the run up to the Iraq war,
More than two-thirds (267 out of 393) of the guests featured were from the United States. Of the U.S. guests, a striking 75 percent (199) were either current or former government or military officials. Only one of the official U.S. sources– Sen. Edward Kennedy (D.-Mass.)– expressed skepticism or opposition to the war.
Therefore, in the US as in Russia, commercial media organisations routinely ’self-censor’ opposition to popular or strong executive administrations, without any ‘overt’ strong-arming from the government. Vladimir Putin is both extremely popular among Russians and very strong in terms of political power, so it is to some extent to be expected that Russian media organisations will take that into account when booking guests.
2. The article lacks some nuance about the state of press censorship in Russia. The crackdown on press freedom, like most abuses of power in Russia, exists as an indirect consequence of the coersive social, economic and power relationships in the country, rather than a blunt edict from the Kremlin. Social: the nationalistic feeling, strong support of Putin and general attitude of intolerance to dissent in recent years means that there are actually few vocal social figures willing to jeopardise their mainstream careers to go on the air and voice opposition to the authorities. Russian media society is saturated, as in any country, with sychophants espousing conventional wisdom and unwilling to voice overly controversial positions challenging authority. Why would a network go to the trouble of finding dissident guests and antagonising its relationship with a popular government and lucrative advertisers? It is more profitable and easier to play it safe and avoid political controversy by having headache proof guests. Conversely, media authorities and overzealous apparatchiks are very keen to avoid and dissipate those controversial statements that do get made on air in order to curry favour with the Kremlin higher-ups. The complacent, symbiotic relationship between a patriotic press corps; a weak, obedient civil society; and the dominant economic motive keeps the media in line better than any iron-fisted police tactics.
3. Attacks on press freedom did not start with Putin. In fact, the tradition of media coercion and journalist killings started in the middle of the ‘democratic’ Yeltsin era. Most glaringly, the liberal station NTV has admitted to having signed a Faustian pact with Yeltsin to broadcast propaganda on his behalf during the 1996 presidential campaign and withhold airtime from his opponents, the Communists:
“During the decisive 1996 presidential elections, in which Boris Yeltsin beat back a seriouschallenge from Communist Gennady Zyuganov, oligarch-controlled “independent media” played a decisive role in Yeltsin’s come-from-behind victory. NTV eschewed its independent character to become a propaganda arm of the Yeltsin team, and, in a staggering conflict of interest, NTV’s president became media coordinator for the Yeltsin team…Whenever its Kremlin paymasters were seriously threatened, as during the 1996 presidential elections or the 1999 legislative balloting (after which Putin first cultivated a pliant parliamentary majority), the media became a propaganda arm for the administration”. (Jonathan Weiler, Foreign Policy in Focus)
And herein lies perhaps the essential part to take away from all this: Russians are shedding very few tears about the demise of the liberal independent media, because that media let them down when they really needed it–1996 to name but one date. It has not been an honest broker in the past, throwing its lot with the despised oligarchs and Yeltsin era liberals, and that is one reason why Russians are not standing up to defend it against attacks from Putin.
Also worth noting: for every Anna Politkovskaya of the Putin regime, scores of journalists perished for their reporting in the ‘liberal’1990s. In fact, according to an analysis by the British weekly New Statesman, 27 journalists were killed under Yeltsin to 16 under Putin.
