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 GlasNews is a quarterly publication on East-West contacts in all aspects of communications - including journalism, telecommunications, photography, opinion research, advertising and public relations. GlasNews is published by the Art Pattison Communications Exchange Program, based in Seattle.

In the Autumn 1996 issue

  • Regaining respect after Russia's election
  • A journalistic summer in St. Petersburg
  • Resources for East-West communicators

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    Truth and news

    Russian journalists work to regain respect after a tough campaign

    Illustration and article by Alan Boyle

    The standard rate for a newspaper article in Moscow is $100 to $150 for four typed pages' worth - and that's how much Boris Yeltsin's staff paid for favorable stories during the past summer's presidential campaign, says Izvestia political correspondent Sergei Chugaev.

    The Russian news media's backing for Yeltsin was so obvious you could hardly call it an open secret: After all, the head of the country's largest independent television network was a top Yeltsin campaign manager, and Communist challenger Gennady Zyuganov's campaign travels went largely ignored by the central press.

    [Yeltsin as hero]But now that the election is over, Russian journalists have a hard task ahead of them: convincing their readers and listeners that they can be trusted to report hard truths about Yeltsin and his policy - that they can bite the hand that fed them if need be.

    "It was some kind of symbolic, open treaty with the leaders of the mass media," Chugaev said in a post-election interview. "They were against the Communists, but now that Yeltsin has won we do what we must do."

    Chugaev said Russian journalists faced an unusual situation, with a flawed president running against Communist rivals who most in the media considered "very dangerous" to the country's movement toward an open society and open markets in general and to Russia's media in particular.

    "It's too hard for a foreigner to imagine the situation in Russia and the dangers of the Communists coming in power," he said. "But we understood the situation very well. I knew very well these people were angry and wanted to take revenge."

    For some of Russia's journalists, there was an added incentive for helping the Yeltsin camp: Campaign staff members working under Anatoly Chubais, now Yeltsin's chief of staff, would "suggest to journalists that they cover some themes" and provide payments at the going rates for honoraria, Chugaev said. He said he did not receive such payments but recalled an encounter with someone working under Chubais. Chugaev had just written an article about questionable investments made by former Communists in the Bryansk region, and he said the campaign worker asked whether he would be opposed to having the article printed in regional Russian newspapers.

    "Of course I said, 'Why not?' " Chugaev said.

    The Izvestia journalist noted that in the current post-Soviet times, the central press has lost influence to regional media. While regional newspapers are burgeoning, Izvestia's circulation has dropped to 600,000 from more than 1 million two years ago - and from more than 10 million in its Soviet heyday.

    "People become more interested not in global policy but their own problems - news of life in their own town or region, and not of Moscow and the world," Chugaev said. For that reason, the regional press became a particular focus of Yeltsin's public relations efforts and campaign spending.

    [Quote from Chugaev]In Chugaev's mind, the local media are much more vulnerable to the enticements of payoffs and pressure: "If the country has no independent business, we can't really have independent mass media, because all of them depend on something - a government or bank or regional authority - because they need support from local government."

    Even in Moscow, Chugaev said the press is more careful about criticizing Mayor Yuri Luzhkov than about criticizing Yeltsin, "because from Luzhkov depends the rent of offices, flats and other interesting things."

    Businesses as well as politicians wield influence over Russia's press - through advertising, ownership or payoffs for favorable press. Companies aligned with the Yeltsin camp provided much of the money for the campaign, after all, and Chugaev said it is "the problem of each banker or commercial structure to decide how their money is spent." (In November, The Moscow Times reported that Lukoil, an industrial concern close to the government, bought Dialog Bank's interest in Izvestia - a stake said to be no more than 19 percent. Izvestia's employees own the controlling interest in the publishing firm.)

    Chugaev acknowledged that recapturing the trust of readers will be a tall order, and not just because of the press' actions during the presidential campaign. Over the past few years, "there were some events which undermined such trusting," he said.

    He points to the boom and bust of investment companies such as MMM in the initial flush of speculation that followed the collapse of Soviet Communism. Newspapers just breaking into the field of advertising published the wide claims made for such ventures, and readers used to accepting newspaper publications as government gospel eagerly accepted those claims as guarantees. "It was published in newspapers, so people believed it," Chugaev said.

    Over time, Russian readers will have to judge which newspapers accurately reflect the reality in their own communities - and buy those newspapers over less reputable rags. Chugaev outlined the slow process of building trust: "This newspaper writes that miners haven't been paid for six months, and the people see that it's true, the same thing is happening in our town."

    Amid all the political and economic maneuvering in the media marketplace, Chugaev believes those in the Russian media will have to stick to the basic principle if they hope to succeed: "The main thing is to have the truth."

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    White Nights and the news

    Summer school provides an inside look at Russian journalism

    Russian journalists and educators will team up during St. Petersburg's peak tourist season to shed light on the country's news media during a two-week summer school sponsored by St.Petersburg State University's School of Journalism.

    Among the topics for the summer session, which runs from June 30 to July 11: coverage of ethnic conflict and election campaigns by the Russian media, investigative reporting and crime coverage, journalistic style and the rise of the "yellow press." The courses will be taught by university faculty and staff as well as working journalists in St. Petersburg, and there will also be visits to media editorial boards.

    This is the second annual international summer school presented by the university's Mass Media Center. Registration for the session is $550 for non-Russians, which includes accommodations and lunches as well as a cultural program. Deadline for registration is June 15. The working languages for the academic sessions are English and Russian, with interpretation provided.

    The session is scheduled during St. Petersburg's "White Nights," when the sun barely sets on the city's midsummer revelries.

    For more information, contact Associate Professor Nina Boykova or Associate Professor Dmitry Ruschin, the summer school's director, at the Mass Media Center, School of Journalism, St.Petersburg State University, Pervaya Liniya V.O., #26, Room 606. St.Petersburg. 199034. Russia. Telephone/fax: (7-812) 213-00-67. E-mail: mmc@mmc.jur.pu.ru or ruschin@mmc.jur.pu.ru.

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    GlasNotes

    What's new on Internews

    You'll find these new or updated resources on the Web site maintained by Internews, a California-based nonprofit organization specializing in assistance for independent television (all in Russian unless otherwise noted):

    Other online resources

    On-paper resources

    Cries for help

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    Next issue. . .

    The Winter 1996-1997 issue focuses on the third annual "New Media for a New World" conference, conducted in October 1996 in Vladivostok. Look for it on the Web around February 1. Deadline for submissions for the Spring 1997 issue is March 1.

    Please send us an e-mail and let us know how you like our slightly streamlined design. Over the next year we will be phasing in a more thoroughgoing change in our publication, so please stay tuned. You can send postal mail to Editor Alan Boyle at 12412 S.E. 26th Place, Bellevue, Washington 98005 USA.

     

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