RUSSIA

Country Summary

The continuing pattern of anonymous threats, beatings, and murders of Russian journalists­particularly because they are rarely prosecuted or solved­serves as a stark reminder of the vulnerability of the press’s newly won freedom (see special report, p. 271). Nevertheless, many reporters, particularly those who work in the provinces, face more mundane forms of pressure.

While many news outlets in the larger cities have carved out a “fourth estate” free of direct government interference, they are still heavily dependent on the state for tax breaks, newsprint, access to printing presses, satellite time, and distribution and sales channels. President Boris Yeltsin decreed in December that media outlets and publishers were exempt from import tariffs on foreign paper and equipment and excused from customs duty on the import and export of their publications. City governments in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and other towns bailed out the print media again this year by subsidizing their spiraling production costs and compensating for their plummeting circulation. Ties between editors and journalists schooled in the Soviet media and officials in the Russian government are still so strong as to make the line between the second and fourth “powers” (as they are known in Russia) very fluid. Vertushki, Soviet-era direct phone lines to government offices, are said to remain in the offices of many major print and broadcast editors.

Major media such as the national dailies and the independent television stations have achieved some financial independence through an infusion of investment capital from Russia’s top banks and corporations­mainly the “Big Seven” businesses (Most-Bank, Menatep, LogoVAZ, Stolichny Bank, and others) that are close to the Yeltsin government. Although some of the Big Seven initially called on Yeltsin to postpone the July presidential elections, these corporate investors eventually used their media outlets to ensure Yeltsin’s victory. Ironically, their partisan use of the media sparked criticisms of bias and unprofessionalism against the very editors and reporters who had sought private investment as a hedge against government pressure.

New, smaller-circulation newspapers without access to such powerful financial backers, attempting to reach communities of reform-minded entrepreneurs, farmers, and young people, face a variety of obstacles, especially in towns where Communist officials retain power.

In Chuvash Republic, financial ministers urged the removal of a noncompliant editor of Biznes-Sreda. Officials in the Republic of Kalmykia manipulated reregistration of Sovetskaya Kalmykia to place government loyalists in control of the paper. And in Bashkortistan, printing houses refused to produce Vecherniy Neftekamsk after the prosecutor accused the paper’s editor of insulting the president of that republic.

During the elections, paper-starved provincial newspaper editors were startled when copies of a government-supported anti-Communist paper, Ne Dai Bog! (God Forbid!) flooded mailboxes. Some editors in provincial areas achieve a curious independence by attempting to serve two masters, a local Communist-leaning mayor and a Yeltsin-appointed governor.

Prepublication censorship of the print media has generally become a rarity. The more critical, muckraking newspapers, such as Moskovsky Komsomolets or Obshchaya Gazeta in Moscow, or Nevskoye Vremya or Chas Pik in St. Petersburg, have such relatively small circulations that authorities may not perceive them as a threat. Controversial television programs are the more common targets of the authorities’ wrath, visited in the form of cancellation, dismissal of critical executives or editors in state-run television, and the closure of some independent provincial broadcasting stations. In November, the head of the private national channel TV6 canceled two episodes of “The Scandal of the Week,” the first concerning ex-presidential bodyguard Alexander Korzhakov, who had been making public charges of campaign funding violations against Yeltsin supporters, and the second about Izvestiya’s claim of the alleged dual nationality of Boris Berezovsky, the new deputy of the security council. The show was suspended temporarily in December.

As in many countries making the transition to greater press freedom, Russia’s courts are clogged with libel suits that bedevil editors and journalists determined to serve the public’s right to know. According to Professor Andrei Richter, the editor of Zakonodatelstvo i Praktika v Smi (Media Law and Practice), there were 2,827 media-related defamation lawsuits in 1995, three times as many as in 1990, most of them from irate government officials or public figures seeking substantial financial retribution for insults to their “honor and dignity” under the Russian civil or penal codes and the press law. According to Obshchaya Gazeta, the media lost such libel suits in more than 60 percent of the cases.

The Judicial Chamber on Information Disputes (a controversial body within the executive branch of government initiated by Yeltsin and unrelated to the court system whose decisions are not legally binding) continues to examine complaints filed by citizens, public figures, organizations, and media outlets disputing the content of news and commentary or seeking enforcement of regulations under media law. The Chamber dispensed dozens of decisions on libel, hate speech, and ownership, and recommended prosecution in many instances. Some journalists see the chamber as an effective bolster for the sluggish, overwhelmed court system. According to this view, the chamber works to control the noxious expression of dozens of fascistic groups, which have gained access to state printing presses and national air time through the largesse of sympathetic officials and talk show hosts. Moreover, they view the chamber as a potential ally for the liberal newspapers that frequently receive threats from such violence-prone groups. Other commentators regard the chamber’s pronouncements as unacceptable intrusions on editorial independence and journalistic freedom, but cooperate when it summons them for testimony to avoid eventually dealing with the courts. The bolder publications, such as Moskovsky Komsomolets, simply ignore the summonses and do not appear to suffer consequences. Most journalists agree that as a creature of the executive branch, the Chamber has no credibility as a neutral arbitrator within their profession or the broader public.

Russian journalists comment that while they may have freedom of the press, they do not have freedom of information, particularly on military, security, and economic matters, both because many topics are classified as state secrets and because government officials are reluctant to go on the record, regardless of the secrecy status of an issue. The Parliament passed the first reading of a draft law on freedom of information that it was still debating at year’s end. Reporters are skeptical of such a law’s efficacy, because so far its draft has failed to grapple with ministers’ discretion to classify many types of information. Some journalists have noted that Russia does not have a tradition of investigative journalism as it is known in the West; rather, reporters are recipients of targeted leaks that serve the purposes of various government agencies. In some instances, such as the Yerofeyev case (see case summary below), they serve as pawns in skirmishes between warring agencies, often ending up as the scapegoats of vindictive officials.

(For a lengthier report on press freedom in Russia, see Briefing Paper on Press Freedom in Russia Before the July Elections, available from CPJ.)

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