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In Russia, piper-payer still calls media's tune

By David J. Craig

When Bill Ketter, chairman of the COM journalism department, was in Tver, Russia, last month to address a conference of Russian journalists about the role of a free press in a democracy, something occurred that was incongruous with the theme of his visit – a local newspaper was in effect shut down by the government.

	Bill Ketter, chairman of COM’s journalism department, visited Tver, Russia, in November to address a conference of journalists about the role of a free press in a democracy. Photo by Michael Hamilton

A reporter from the Tver’s Life told the conference that because her paper had criticized the governor of the region, suggesting that he was corrupting a local election and was not adequately explaining the region’s budget, the government refused to pay for the printing of subsequent issues of the paper. Without the subsidy, the paper was effectively finished.

Why would an independent newspaper have such deleterious financial ties in the first place? The answer is pure economics. According to Ketter, because the number of media outlets in Russia exploded in the wake of the Soviet Union’s breakup, and because the nation’s economy is so unhealthy, newspapers cannot drum up adequate advertising and therefore have turned to the government, political parties, and special interests for financial help.

Thus, almost a decade after officially being freed from Communist party censorship, the Russian press remains beholden to myriad political interests, which regularly weigh in on editorial content and make objective journalism nearly impossible.

"Once Communism collapsed, there was a publishing free-for-all," says Ketter. "The marketplace has started to sort out some of the more credible publications, but there’s still not a sufficient advertising base and Russian people can’t pay a lot for subscriptions. In order to sustain itself, the press needs help, and that help has most often come from the government."

Revenue sources

In the United States, advertisers typically represent about 80 percent of a newspaper’s revenue. But in Russia, the bulk of newspaper costs is covered by subscriptions, newsstand sales, and government subsidies.

"The government," Ketter says, "often buys the newsprint, pays for the printer, owns the distribution network, and in other ways subsidizes the operations of newspapers and TV and radio stations, so they can pay their people."

As a result, Russian papers, many owned by political parties and special interests, are skimpy affairs, with few advertisements, and not surprisingly, only tepid criticism of government officials and programs.

"You find some criticism of the government, but it tends to be pretty mild, and simply suggestive," says Ketter, who has traveled to Russia as a journalist several times. "The journalists understand the ground rules. And if they want to stay in business, they have to be careful about what they say."

The national Russian newspapers are on more stable economic ground, and therefore have a bit more leeway in terms of what they print. This fall, for instance, some papers questioned the official Russian explanation that the sinking of the nuclear submarine Kurst was caused by a collision with another submarine, and called for a more thorough investigation.

But almost all Russian papers accept some state subsidies, Ketter says, and will rarely criticize the government directly.

Moreover, Russian citizens who appreciate the importance of a free press that can serve as a government watchdog remain few.

"There’s not an expectation there that the media will perform the same kind of role that it performs in the United States, because they don’t have the history of a free press," Ketter says. "So when the government shuts down a TV station or jails a guy like Vladimir Gusinsky, who owns several media outlets, there’s not a big outcry. People tend to say, ‘Well, that’s the way it’s always been.’"

Secrets for sale

The Russian government has demonstrated that it "sincerely wants to move in the direction of democracy," Ketter says, but it clearly is not "openly embracing the Western model of a free press."

Young Russian journalists, meanwhile, are increasingly pressing the government to subsidize the news media without any strings attached, but Ketter thinks that is an unlikely scenario. He says that the Russian economy must stabilize before the media becomes more independent.

"The papers with the widest appeal will shake themselves out eventually," he says. "But it’s going to take some time. The biggest breakthrough in terms of independence will probably take place on the Internet, because Web publishing is so much easier and less expensive."

Even if Russian journalists are freed from the financial ties that now bind them to political interests, the task of informing ordinary Russians about how their country operates still will be formidable.

Secrecy laws in Russia remain much more restrictive than in the United States, Ketter says, and journalists reporting on allegations of corruption or other government misdeeds often have little else to go on than government leaks. For access to some classified information, he says, newspapers have been obliged to forego even more editorial independence.

Such a trade-off is the likely explanation why no mention of an incident involving Ketter was included in a local news story about the conference, although the Russian reporter who wrote the story knew about the episode and was alarmed by it. The FSB, the Russian internal security service, had come to Ketter’s Tver hotel to interrogate him about his reasons for being in Russia.

"A lot of Russian newspapers have signed an agreement with the FSB stipulating that they will show the government any story that mentions the FSB and let the government eliminate anything it considers a security risk, in exchange for access to information about certain FSB investigations," says Ketter. "In this case, the paper’s editor probably figured that leaving the FSB mention in the story wasn’t worth having to deal with them."

7 December 2000
Boston University
Office of University Relations