Russia
Russia
The Russian constitution guarantees freedom of speech and explicitly forbids censorship of the media. The criminal code and the law on the mass media also guarantee press freedom. But in 1995, four years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian press, still the most democratic institution in Russian society, found itself threatened by violence, political intimidation and financial pressure.
Violence against Russian journalists came in various forms. Vladislav Listyev, a television journalist and the director general of the Russian public television station ORT, was shot on March 1, the victim of an apparent contract killing. In May, the Tomsk pro-democratic newspaper, Tomsky Vestnik, was the target of a bomb. On June 17, Natalya Alyakina, a free-lance correspondent for German news outlets, was shot and killed while on her way to cover the hostage crisis in Budyonnovsk; Interior Ministry troops opened fire on her car just minutes after she cleared one of their checkpoints. In July, journalists photographing the Moscow headquarters of the openly fascist Russian National Unity Movement were beaten up by the group's activists.
More disturbing than the violence itself, however, is the fact that the Russian government has shown no sign of making a serious effort to react to it. To date, not one of the journalists' murders has been prosecuted [see Special Report: Russia, p. 167].
Journalists in Russia also were subject to political and financial pressure. The political pressure consisted, in part, of threats of legal action. "Ninety percent of Russian politicians believe that they should control the press," said Igor Malashenko, the president of Russia's largest independent television network, NTV. The dilemma was illustrated for NTV in the early days of the war in Chechnya. On Dec. 15, 1994, as violence in Chechnya escalated and NTV enraged officials with its hard-hitting, firsthand reports of the carnage, Deputy Prime Minister Oleg Soskovets announced that the government was considering revoking NTV's license to broadcast on Channel 4, a government channel. A public outcry forced the government to abandon that idea, but later less direct methods were used against the network. On July 13, 1995, the general prosecutor's office opened a criminal investigation of NTV journalist Yelena Masyuk under Article 189 of the Criminal Code (harboring a criminal) and Article 190 (failure to report a crime) in connection with her interview with Chechen field commander Shamil Basaev, who led the June raid on the southern Russian city of Budyonnovsk. Although many other journalists interviewed Basaev, Masyuk was the only one to face a criminal investigation.
Also in July, prosecutors opened a criminal case against the NTV political satire show, "Kukly" (Puppets), under Article 1 1 of the Criminal Code for allegedly insulting the president and high-ranking officials. The show depicted President Boris Yeltsin, Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin and Defense Minister Pavel Grachev as tramps begging for money because they could not survive on the minimum wage. The plans to prosecute the program were greeted with widespread ridicule and eventually dropped, but on Aug. 18, prosecutors filed charges of tax evasion and illegal currency dealings, punishable by up to 10 years in prison, against the producer of "Kukly," Vasily Grigoriev. Russia's tax code is so confusing that almost anyone can be accused of violating it, and Grigoriev made clear that he would not return to Russia from Paris until the threat of criminal charges and a jail term was lifted.
The Russian press was also subjected to financial pressure from commercial interests, a threat made doubly effective because of the print media's dire economic condition. It is estimated that only 15 percent of the country's 10,500 publications are financially self-sufficient. Since 1991, when subsidized subscriptions for Russian newspapers were drastically cut, subscriptions have sunk to less than a tenth of their former levels. Rising newsprint costs, high tax rates, declining circulation and competition from television news are all important factors behind newspapers' economic decline. And the provincial press, which for the first time has a bigger circulation than the national press, is even more vulnerable to pressure than the papers in Moscow.
In this situation, many entrepreneurial publishers with close ties to political organizations encouraged their papers to sponsor certain politicians at voting time. Similarly, firms that offered lavish funding to newspapers tended to want a say in the papers' content. To ward off such interference, some newspapers kept a majority of their shares in the hands of their editorial staff.
Nonetheless, most newspapers and other media outlets, faced with declining circulation and spiraling costs, feared the consequences of too much independence. In May, Nezavisimaya Gazeta, at one time the leading newspaper of the perestroika period, declared that it was closing down to search for new funding. The paper began publishing again in November after receiving financial support from private companies with close ties to the present government. Also shut down by poverty in the summer were Kuranty, another product of the glasnost era, and the more recent Novaya Yeshednevnaya Gazeta.
Among broadcasters, the economic crisis did not prove as severe, but editorial integrity was frequently sacrificed in the race for profits. According to Anatoly Lysenko, the director of Russian TV, "Television networks no longer have new ideas or new programs‹only new sponsors."
© 1996 alyakina@oocities.com
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