Мэдыі ў посткамуністычных грамадзтвах: аб’ектыўная інфармацыя супраць ідэалягічных скажэньняў
Матэрыялы міжнароднай канфэрэнцыі, Менск, 18-19 кастрычніка 2002 г.
Кніга па англійску - Information space in post-communist countries: features and trends
Alexander TKACHENKO, General Director, Russian P.E.N.
Confidants
The relations between the power and the media in Russia have strikingly changed since only two years back when the information security doctrine emerged. The doctrine, proposed by former Russian National Security Council Chairman, Sergei Ivanov, tasked the government to take control of the independent press along with the independent journalists, publishers, etc. As a result, we lost the old NTV, the new Channel 6 and many others. But, what important is that we lost our confidence that Russia needs strong independent personalities, which could posses capital, independent media, and, therefore, their own independent views.
Has there been more or less freedom of speech in Russia after Yeltsin’s departure? Apparently, less. Although, the first Russian president did not rushed to lie under the train as he had promised after the Gaidar reforms, he would nevertheless stand up firm for the freedom of speech — say, it is sacred; do not touch it! Yastrzhembsky, one of the Kremlin leaders, openly and ambiguously declares today: “ We have finally put an end to the bacchanalia of the freedom of speech”. The media have found themselves gripped in a vice of the invisible government policy and the open, often physical, pressure from governors, mayors, the mob and different groups. Self-censorship, the abuse of the freedom of speech for the purpose of misinformation and undisguised lies by the journalists themselves, especially, the journalists from the state television channels should be added to this list, too. They are telling lies without a smile.
I think that in a true sense of the word, there is no freedom of speech in Russia. There are only the degrees of freedom. What happens in Moscow is not something what is taking place in the provinces. The murders of journalists in Tolliatti, Smolensk, Rostov-on-Don, the recent reprisals against the journalists from a local newspaper in Penza, which was the center of conflict between the governor and the mayor for the controls over the outlet, demonstrate the price of the word and how the journalists on the side and those who are afraid of the free word and glasnost are fighting for it.
There are dozens of cases, when journalists were harassed for having attempted to tell the truth: Sergei Zolovkin (Novaya Gazeta, Sochi). German Galkin (Vecherniy Chelyabinsk), Marina Popova (MK, Vladivostok), Anna Politkovskaya (Novaya Gazeta) and many others. When authorities themselves behave dissolutely and sometimes criminally, people start having their hands loosened. The killing of the Czar and the state-sponsored terror of the Soviet authorities are instructive historic examples. The simple folks realized that if the czar could be killed and generals could be executed without a trial, they could do everything with more mortals.
The second war campaign in Chechnya, the introduction of the implicit military censorship have placed the Russian society in a difficult situation. The society has totally accepted the government’s version of the war and embarked on internal genocide, supported with pseudo-patriotic sentiment, promoted to the level of almost semi-Nazi attitude towards other nationalities. Jews, Georgians, Azeris… By the way, Russian democrats have become the hated nationality, too. This has not happened in Russia long ago. Zone. Godfather. Confidants. Authorities play a confidant game with us.
For instance, the authorities tell us: we need to clean up the Russian language. Stupid. The language will clean up itself, anyway. Nobody but politicians and bureaucrats pollute the language the most. But, when we lift a cup in the confidant game, we can see that they are not defending the language. Rather, they are cleaning up literary people, who see the world in a different way. The first literary dissidents — Vladimir Sorokin, Bayan Shiryanov — have emerged. Aesthetes, no politics involved. But, let us recall Andrei Siniavsky, who said at a trial in 1968: “I have purely aesthetic divergences with the authorities.” Here we go.
The authorities tell us: Grigory Pasko is a spy, and put him into a high-security camp. Cups and thimbles, again. Because, right at the same time, they are using that noise cover to finish investigation into the Kursk submarine tragedy and save the true war criminals — admirals — from prosecution to either the Council of Federation [upper chamber of the Russian parliament] or another fleet. This is what the system of information security is all about. Most importantly, they always refer to courts. They say, go to courts and they will judge you. However, over the past several years, not a single court has taken side of those illegally offended or insulted. And, the guarantor of the Constitution is not even thinking about helping them. On the contrary, he calmly says: you are going to have your mouth full of court dust. Here comes the punishment without the crime.
I have just returned from Vladivostok and Ussuriysk where I visited Grigoriy Pasko. At this time, I was visiting him with almost no purpose. Because, they have already got their business done. I was visiting him simply to support him as a friend. It is twenty-first century now, but the destination for an intellectual is the same: jail.
Almantas SAMALAVIČIUS, President, Lithuanian P.E.N.
THE BURDEN OF FREEDOM: LITHUANIAN MEDIA DURING TRANSITION
The term “post-communism” is used in Lithuanian public dictionaries only occasionally and almost always unwillingly, perhaps for several reasons: on the one hand it immediately brings memories of a rather shameful past that many people who experienced the Soviet way of life now would like to forget it, on the other hand, political and cultural discourses these days rather prefer words like “market economy”, “welfare state”, “democracy”, “traditions of liberalism” and the like. In fact, these categories almost never refer to the reality of the present, but always contain a dimension of something projected to a desirable and always near future. Besides, these verbal phantoms help to create an impression that problems of post-communist condition are overcome and we are victoriously reaching the promised land of European Union, while the harsh social realities of today are temporary inconveniences, which will disappear in the upcoming boom of everlasting welfare. By remarking that these terms stand for something else, I don’t mean to say that Lithuanian society suffers from the lack of democracy, it would be much more just to conclude that it suffers from inability to profit from what democracy offers. After a dozen of years of independent being, Lithuanian media face more problems than ever. Even a superficial comparison of what daily papers wrote ten years ago and what they offer today indicates that in many aspects they are just a bleak shadows of promising and brave projects that matured in the attacks against censorship and the power, while they supported Lithuania’s strife for independence. An overview of Lithuanian press during its first five years of independent being suggests that former champions of a free speech, investigative journalism and analytical publications gave up their previous ambitions and became play-grounds of superficial entertainment, mirrors of glamorous ways of life of the newly rich and containers for production of pulp fiction type of journalism. They seem to have failed to pass the exam of independent existence to which they so effectively strived during the last days of perestroika. What is perhaps even more frightening — the leading daily publications have turned out to be strongly associated with power structures. The biggest independent national daily — Lietuvos rytas, which for several years had been labeled as the most objective publication and praised for its regular attacks on seemingly corrupt political figures, a couple of years ago was subjected to a huge national scandal, when it was found out that its editor-in- chief and the prime minister were spending their holidays abroad together, though both of them fiercely denied the fact until sufficient documentation finally surfaced. Many readers of this paper eventually realised that denial of close relationship between prime minister’s office and daily paper was nothing more than an attempt to manipulate the readers and mask the origins of some of the investigative articles published in the paper, that by no means served the goals of the ruling power. Of course, there have been much more media scandals lately, however I choose this particular one because of its symbolic meaning. Having learned about secret ties between the leading national newspaper and the head of state power, many people who formerly cherished belief in objective and truthful journalism had to give up their hopes that anything like “objective” or “truthful” is possible in a post-communist society that once more proved to be vulnerable, inconsistent and corrupted. It would be, however, a gross mistake to overrate the impact of this story on the mentality of Lithuanian society. Many previous or later public revelations of this kind did not develop into a consistent exorcism of post-communist consciousness, neither it contributed significantly to giving up mentality based on popular myths and beliefs and reinforced by the media. Like other transitional societies that had no long experience of democracy, Lithuanian public soon forgave the newspaper, which proved to be lying to its readers, and after an outburst of public indignation readers felt back to arms of their favorite paper.
It is not the aim of this report to get into the details of one or another media scandal. Much more important is to discuss the general state of press and other media sources in a society, which seems to be entering the space of common Europe with a relatively higher speed of success than some of its close neighbours. There are many facts related to the media that need further discussion and elaboration goying beyond, of course, the scope this paper provides. But some of the obvious tendencies of Lithuanian media should be brought to closer scrutiny. The undeniable fact is that the audience that Lithuanian daily papers are reaching has grown sufficiently smaller than it had been ten or even five years ago. In April the average circulation of Lietuvos rytas, a daily that boasts of the largest number of readers was as low as 42000—43000 copies, while its closest rival Respublika was circulated in 36000—37000 copies. The third national daily paper Lietuvos aidas, once established by the right-wing political structures did not even give this information publicly, most probably trying to keep to itself facts about its miserable sales. Ten years ago the first two publications were selling over 100000 copies each per issue. If we compare these figures to those in Western countries, it becomes obvious that the decline of even such quantitative tendency as circulation says a lot about the state of Lithuanian media. Though some analysts think that it is the economic factor that accounts for such low sales figures, I would doubt the validity of such arguments. What seems much more plausible as an explanation is the gradual decline of the quality of reading that these papers offer. Though there is a variety of openly gutter press in the country, the leading Lithuanian national publications are lately trying to imitate their style, instead of working out their own strategies of appealing to the public. The lack of journalist materials that might be termed as analytic, based on large information or even well-written has become a sign of their intellectual poverty. Inability to reach out for middle-class audience is compensated by orientation towards hysterical, manipulative lower-class public.
Structural changes in presentation of information have also become visible. A few years ago a general practice pursued by almost all national papers was to provide space for regular columnists. Daily papers offered columns for a numbers of political activists, former statesmen and, last but not the least, for writers. Today most of the regular columns have vanished, except a few run by the staff members of dailies. More professional, expertized commentaries were substituted by mere and most often rather superficial journalist viewpoints. The shrinking space previously provided for specialized columns and analytical investigative journalism signifies a larger problem — most of the national publications that boasted of a reputation of serious press lately gave themselves up to entertainment. They all adopted supplements dedicated to “ways of life”, “sports”, “leisure”, “TV guides” and the like. Most of them are especially keen on reporting about imagined “high society” events, disseminating gossips about private or intimate life of renowned public figures. They make hasty and almost desperate attempts to create virtual worlds, in which social problems give way to the glamorous style of life of quazi-elites that also partly belong to their own imagination.
Another tendency in Lithuanian media has also become apparent: the big press today demonstrates indifference and, occasionally, an open aversion for culture. Unlike in Nordic countries where cultural supplements of daily papers appear each day and have a double space on week-ends, their Lithuanian counterparts provide one weekly section at best. And even those modest presentations have become short and fragmentary clippings about cultural events hardly representing and overviewing the real cultural life. Reports on cultural events most often focus on insignificant facts. They become the focus of media attention only on those occasions that contain a potential for scandal. Otherwise, reporters visit cultural performances to notify how much food or drinks were consumed during this or that event… Five years ago one could find at least three or four book reviews averagely in an a cultural section of a daily paper, today only Lietuvos rytas occasionally reviews a couple of books, other papers gave up reviewing literary works completely. As I have noted elsewhere, Lithuanian dailies remember intellectuals or artists only on the occasion of annual National awards ceremony (reviewed as an “event”) or otherwise feeding on misfortunes or problems of their private/intimate lives. Strange as it might be, more information about books or personae of cultural sphere can be found these days in women journals, publications that despite of their shallowness still show attempts to popularize seemingly unpopular subjects.
It should be noted though, that the tendency to give up culture or intellectual life in daily papers is in a way compensated by profesionalization and quality growth of cultural journals and weeklys. About a dozen of publications of this type did not only managed to survive during the years of independence, but some of them in shape and contents can rival any normal European cultural journal. Discussions going on in this kind of media though usually reaching up to several thousand readers of each publication make up a public space for normal discourse of social and cultural criticism, that despite of limited audience still remains influential and in a certain way, stimulating voice of intellectual dissent. There had been lately at least several occasions when critical discussions going on in cultural/intellectual press were instrumental enough to influence power structures so as to stop a few devastating projects. Though big national media is rather indifferent to the opinions of intellectuals, cultural publications still remain relatively powerful strongholds of public opinion and social criticism that post-communist society needs. One more remark should be added: though the daily papers in their present shape are by no means defective, some signs of life and potential for future is to be found among a few weeklies (for e.g. Veidas or Verslo ˇinios) that aim for broader audience and focus on a large number of issues, including academic and cultural ones.
So far I have been referring to the printed media exclusively because they indicate all the ill-habits of transitional society’s press: first and foremost, the inability to become a source of truly reliable information and qualified social commentary. In some respects TV media are much more informative, selective and professional as far as news programs are concerned. Though all three privately owned commercial national TV channels like all other media are hooked on entertainment, their news programs remain an important flow of public information. And the public national TV channel, subsidized by the state, is the most important instrument and mirror of public opinion. Despite of many problems, associated with the growth of competition between media giants, lack of sufficient funding and as an outcome — good marketing, professional staff and impressive broadcasts, it constructs a certain space for public debates and discussion of the most urgent social issues. No wonder that this vulnerable institution has recently been subjected to the attacks of its rivals, who, using their lobbyists in the parliament initiated an ongoing campaign, the goal of which is to stop broadcasting advertisements on the public national TV. If these requirements are institutionalized, it means that the only public TV channel in Lithuania will be deprived of an important source of income and the burden of it will pass on the state budget and tax payers. This infamous campaign, most fiercely conducted by the present chairman of parliamentary committee on culture and science and surprisingly enough, supported by some circles of intellectuals is one of many examples demonstrating that freedom of media in a post-communist society is an illusion like independence of other social institutes. It is constantly threatened and thus, should be carefully watched over and protected when needed. The future developments of this campaign will indicate whether Lithuanian society has really matured during these twelve years of independent being, or it still remains imprisoned by the mentality of manipulated serfs, shaped during the infamous regime. So far, many controversies that broke out in the post-communist Lithuania prove that the transitional period marking our road from dependence to Western liberal democracy is far from being over, despite many institutional and structural changed or processes of European integration that in their own way, provide the basis for desired changes in the sphere of media.
Soviet totalitarianism has taught us many lessons. We learned some. First and foremost we learned to understand what happens when state and party power controls the free-flow of information, when it manipulates public opinion. Freedom is giving us lessons how media have to defend themselves against the pressure of the forces of the market. These lessons are still to be learned.