Life on an Island

Russia is an archipelago. Of course it’s not an island state – on the contrary, it’s the world’s largest land power, a former Empire without overseas territories (apart from Alaska, and that was only 55 miles away across the Bering Strait). But Russia is nevertheless not a single territory; it is a gigantic ocean of a state containing numerous islands, each with its own social, political, economic and value system.

In the part of the ocean filled with old academic institutions there are also islands of cutting edge science and scholarship, integrated with their counterparts around the world. In the business sector, composed mostly of structures dependent on the state, there are nevertheless vigorous, thriving global level companies. Among the state-controlled former Soviet trade union bodies can be found a few effective employee organisations, and among public servants, renowned as a body for their cynicism and corruption, some honest bureaucrats as well. The same goes for the media – there too one can find examples of innovative and independent activity in the ocean of servile and  low quality propaganda organs known as the Russian media.

The independent news island...

The first, and for me the most important, media island comprises the independent mainstream news organisations that work on more or less the same principles as their  counterparts in more developed markets – the newspapers Vedomosti, Kommersant and Novaya Gazeta; the weekly New Times; the online Gazeta.ru; Forbes, Esquire, Bolshoi Gorod, Afisha and a few other glossy publications with an independent editorial policy; the Dozhd TV channel, Ekho Moskvy radio and a few other radio stations. Adjoining it are internet platforms producing material of the same high quality as the mainstream media: Slon.ru, Snob.ru and Lenta.ru. It is important to stress that these all work in a competitive market and follow strict ethical rules. Altogether we are taking about 1000-1500 journalists servicing several million readers, listeners and viewers, and there is also a potential audience for independent media in the ever-expanding large cities that are home to 30% of the Russian population.

This island has a direct bridge linking it to the enormous social media archipelago that is home to social networks and the blogosphere. These rely on the professional media for information on public and political developments and events. According to a recent article [Russian link] in Vedomosti, direct re-postings of independent press material account for 38% of all the re-postings of politically orientated Facebook groups, and more than half of re-postings on VKontakte. (Another island, which I won’t go into in this article, is the many entertainment media, including the tabloid press; the glossy magazines; the state owned TV channels, such as Kultura, where all political material is banned and non political websites such as gismeteo.ru and lookatme.ru.)

...and the ocean around it

These all have to contend with the vast ocean of state controlled TV and other media. The Putin regime regards TV channels as strategic forces; they are strictly controlled and essentially mere conduits for official propaganda. They employ tens of thousands of people and cost billions of pounds per year, and their main job is to entertain and indoctrinate the Russian ‘masses’ – the people who provide the ruling clique with its majority, come election time.

While the independent media have a collective income of £130-200 million a year, those bankrolled by the state operate in billions. In the 2012 Budget RUB75.3bn (£1.5bn) per year was allocated to the media, most of it going to television. RUB5.5bn (£115m) was allocated to print media, including official government publications. The state run news agencies RIA Novosti and ITAR-TASS receive RUB2.9bn (£60m) and RUB1bn (£21m) respectively. The official media are also major players in the monopoly advertising market. Channel 1, Russia’s largest channel, and NTV each have an annual advertising revenue of around £650m, and the same is probably true of the ‘Russia-1 channel. The company Video International, which has a monopoly on TV advertising, is a subsidiary of the Russia Bank, whose majority owner is Yury Kovalchuk, a friend of Vladimir Putin. Kovalchuk’s company, National Media Group, is also the largest shareholder after the state in TV’s Channel 1 (the state holds 51%of its shares, Kovalchuk 25%), as well as owning St Petersburg’s Channel 5, the REN-TV television company, Izvestiya newspaper and Rusnovosti radio station. Another, even larger consortium, Gazprom-Media Holding , owns the NTV television company, the Ekho Moskvy and Citi-FM radio stations, the Seven Days publishing house, and numerous other publications and radio and TV companies, as well as the RuTube video site (equivalent of YouTube).   

RIA Novosti, a state run news agency, is allocated a significant budget every year. Photo: (cc) Flickr/maiak.info

The Putin regime regards TV channels as strategic forces; they employ tens of thousands of people and cost billions of pounds per year, and their main job is to entertain and indoctrinate the Russian ‘masses’ – the people who provide the ruling clique with its majority, come election time.

The Russian state’s massive presence in its country’s media is the result of a systematic policy which began as soon as Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000.  Putin started his first presidential term by bringing ORT (now Channel 1) and NTV under state control. The process then continued, less by increasing direct state holdings in existing companies than by gradually re-selling companies to trustworthy owners such as National Media Group and  Gazprom-Media Holding. But direct state holdings grew as well, with the appearance of RT (Russia Today), an international multilingual TV news network conceived as a counterbalance to global broadcasters such as CNN and the BBC. Finance for RIA Novosti and ITAR-TASS also increased, and since the end of last year ITAR-TASS, thanks to the efforts of its new director, whose previous job was in PR, has even been poaching journalists who are feeling increasingly unhappy in the independent sector (at Kommersant, for example, which has been going through a troubled period).

Bad times for The New Times (and other papers)

Russia’s independent publishing sector in general is increasingly unhappy. The independent media sphere is steadily shrinking. The daily Moscow News, now state owned, has returned to the newsstands after its change of ownership but was reformatted a few months ago and is now a popular, entertainment-orientated local rag. The quality online portal Openspace.ru has closed down, and the weekly Bolshoy Gorod (Big City) is on the brink of closure. Another weekly, The New Times, may also disappear at any moment, and many other publications are facing financial problems.

The past year has seen a wave of dismissals of editors known for their independent views, and critically minded bloggers are also under pressure. Rustem Adagamov, the most widely read contributor to the popular Livejournal.com site, has recently been forced to leave Russia to avoid highly dubious accusations of paedophilia (although no actual charges have been brought against him). Aleksei Navalny, the anticorruption campaigner  and another high profile blogger, is at present on trial for embezzling £300,000 from a timber firm, a charge most independent experts regard as a complete fabrication. Our rulers, you see, prefer to operate obliquely: censorship is never open; people are never sacked for opposition to the regime (the one exception  to this rule is Maksim Kovalsky, the ex editor of Vlast, a periodical that is part of the Kommersant group, fired in 2011 for publishing  a photo depicting a ballot paper defaced by the caption, ‘F... off, Putin’). Publications and radio stations are closed for reasons ostensibly having nothing to do with politics. The main thing is that the machine should appear to be moving under its own steam, its workings invisible to anyone other than media people themselves and foreign commentators.

'Dutin Pick": One of the two now-famous images, the publication of which has led to two top employees of Kommersant being fired and one having to resign. Photo: Darya Malyutina

Our rulers prefer to operate obliquely: censorship is never open; people are never sacked for opposition to the regime, publications and radio stations are closed for reasons ostensibly having nothing to do with politics.

The chief instrument of control and pressure is, however, economic. All potential sources of finance are strictly monitored – the Kremlin knows exactly who they are. Private companies are vulnerable to blackmail over dodgy deals, and can be threatened with the loss of their business, while MPs can face the threat of losing their parliamentary immunity. The closure of Openspace.ru and Russian Life (Russkaya Zhizn), not to mention the situation at Kommersant, which is still alive and well but losing good journalists one after another, is all down to this: people can’t take the constant financial pressure.

Publications with a strong public interest bias have real difficulty attracting advertising: no one wants their brands linked with publications what are out of favour with the regime, and advertisers are often openly threatened.

Commercial backing is limited by the appalling state of the advertising sector, a situation only partly explainable by actual market conditions, including a global downward trend in advertising revenue in the traditional media. Since the start of this year the Russian press is longer able to carry ads for alcohol drinks: this single measure has deprived some papers of up to 15-20% of their income. Publications with a strong public interest bias have real difficulty attracting advertising: no one wants their brands linked with publications what are out of favour with the regime, and advertisers are often openly threatened. The weeklies New Times and Bolshoy Gorod have practically no advertising income.

The wrecking machine is encroaching not only on the media, but on other centres of free thinking, such as NGOs and independent research centres. The people who work for these are among the most valuable contributors to the independent media. To be an independent commentator in Russia today often means relying on grant funding from abroad, and organisations receiving such funding are under massive attack from the Kremlin.

Worlds apart

So, how is life on an island? The professional and corporate culture of ‘oceanic’ media is very different from that of our ‘island’. Suffice it to say that paid-for content and deals with PR companies are the norm in the media owned or controlled by the state – and I’m not even talking about material directly dictated by the government. And, unlike the ‘island’ media, they either have a monopoly in their market sector or are completely independent of the market since they are financed by the state.

We wake up each morning, amazed that we are still alive. We are like the inhabitants of the Maldives, who know that sooner or later their islands will disappear beneath the waves.

The free and un-free media live in different worlds. The former operate in the marketplace, have codes of ethics, check facts, compete with one another for readers and advertisers, keep transparent accounts and pay taxes. The latter basically operate without rules.  For them the market is a relative term, and fact checking and ethical principles are impossible since they have to ignore them to order.

We wake up each morning, amazed that we are still alive. We are like the inhabitants of the Maldives, who know that sooner or later their islands will disappear beneath the waves. There is no sign of the pressure lifting; on the contrary, we have reason to expect even more measures designed to ‘neutralise’ the independent media sector, although they will not, of course, be presented as direct censorship or politically motivated suppression.

The insular nature of Russian life is not only not on the wane, but is in fact becoming increasingly obvious. There are individual academics and research centres, but no Russian science or academia as a whole. There are businessmen and women, but no business sector as a force that can hold its ground against the regime. There are honest officials, but no ‘caste’ of public servants that would represent a commitment to the general good, rather than a conspiracy of mutual cover-up. And it’s the same with the media – there are islands of independence, at constant risk of sinking, but there is no concept of an independent press. This situation is the result not only of mistakes or inertia on the part of the public (although that’s certainly a factor) but of deliberate efforts on the part of the government.

After its burst of civil activity in 2011-2, the Russian public is quickly  reverting to its default state of an archipelago where everyone goes off to their own little island, beautiful or ugly, depending on individual taste. And lives alone with both their problems and their achievements.                           

PS.

openDemocracy Russia will be running two roundtables at the Perugia Journalism Festival in Perugia, Italy on 26/27 April. For more details, visit: journalismfestival.com. Maxim Trudolyubov will be speaking on April 26th. For more information, see: Russia's protest movement and the media