Russia: pluralism quashed by one-headed hydra

On the evening of 3 December, the day after parliamentary elections, all three of Russia’s largest television channels began their news programmes with the same four-minute clip of a self-congratulatory speech by Vladimir Putin at a factory outside Moscow.

Each programme then cut to the same press conference at the central election committee, showing the same odd shot from a ceiling-cam that panned over the assembled journalists. All three channels similarly neglected to field commentary from any of the liberal, pro-western parties that failed to win any seats, and all three condensed criticism of the election by international observers to a footnote at the end of the report.

One authoritative study in Russia shows that television is the primary news source for some 85% of the country’s population. In Russia, he who controls the airwaves can manipulate public opinion. Boris Berezovsky, Putin’s arch-enemy now living in London, understood this well and in the late 1990s deftly wielded managerial control over ORT, the TV channel with the widest coverage, to his personal advantage. After consolidating power in 2000, the Putin administration wasted no time in getting ORT back. Later, it seized NTV, once the pride of independent journalism, from Vladimir Gusinsky, another erstwhile oligarch who has been banished. The last to go was the young Ren-TV, which was snapped up by Kremlin-friendly businessmen in 2005.

There was a time when Russia’s media was dynamic. Under Boris Yeltsin during the 1990s, the country actually choked on press freedom. Each of the national television stations was owned or controlled by an oligarch, who manipulated content to advance commercial interests and unleash diatribes against political enemies. Under Putin, it is just the opposite: there now seems to be one master tape that is passed between stations.

The Kremlin’s policy of quashing freedom of speech and press has generally followed in step with the most dramatic events of Putin’s presidency. After Moscow’s theatre tragedy in 2002, Boris Jordan, the head of NTV, was forced to resign for critical reporting on how authorities bungled the rescue operation, resulting in the deaths of 129 hostages. In the wake of the Beslan school massacre in September 2004, Raf Shakirov, editor-in-chief of the liberal Izvestiya newspaper, was forced out for showing graphic pictures of the event on the front page. Another crackdown followed Ukraine’s Orange Revolution, which for the Kremlin represented its biggest foreign policy failure and a wake-up call about the might of non-governmental organisations.

Since 2000, 14 journalists have died in Russia. None of the cases has been solved. Most remarkable was Anna Politkovskaya, a reporter for Novaya Gazeta and an indefatigable critic of the Kremlin’s policies in Chechnya, who was gunned down in her Moscow apartment building. Commenting on her death, Putin said that Politkovskaya did more harm to Russia by dying than she did alive. This effrontery was enough to prove his malicious attitude toward the media. To add insult to injury, twice in recent months authorities have raided regional offices of Novaya Gazeta, in which Mikhail Gorbachev, the former general secretary of the Soviet Union, owns a 10% stake, seizing computers and equipment.

There is some plurality of opinion in Russia, but it is a function of geography and medium. The further one goes from Moscow, the less media freedom one will find; likewise, if television is rigorously censored, then the internet sizzles with a lively exchange of opinions. Some Moscow-based websites offer wonderful diversity and are frequently anti-Kremlin. One new portal created by Shakirov - www.newtimes.ru - currently features an interview with the libertarian economist and former Putin-adviser Andrei Illarionov, who does not shy from calling Russia’s leadership dishonest and authoritarian.

Newspapers also offer variety. According to the Federal Agency for Press and Mass Communications, there are some 17,000-18,000 newspapers and periodicals in Russia, of which national, regional and local publications account for one-third of overall print-runs each. In 2006, 8 billion copies were published, which is 5.3% less than in 2004. The agency says that a declining population, fewer young readers, distribution challenges and changes in the advertisement market have taken a toll on the newspaper market.

The most popular daily is Komsomolskaya Pravda, which boasts an average daily readership of 2.1 million. It is owned by Prom-Media, Russia’s largest media conglomerate whose publications reach some 23 million people. Moskovsky Komsomolets is second with an average readership of 1.1 million. Russia’s third and fourth most popular dailies are sports editions - Sport Express (568,000) and Soviet Sport (463,000) - while Izvestiya comes in fifth with a daily audience of 431,000 readers.

Nationwide, the press is riding Russia’s oil-driven economic boom. Sales in 2006 amounted to $4 billion, up 13.7% year-on-year and this year’s projected growth is similar. Media holdings are expanding aggressively as advertising revenues soar. Last year alone ad sales in all media, including television, were up 29% to $6.5bn. The sale of internet ads saw a massive hike of 67% to $100 million.

But the noose would appear to be tightening around the internet as well. In March, Putin signed a decree creating an agency that will regulate the electronic media and information technology. For now, only 13% of Russia’s population relies on the web for news. But the higher that figures moves, the more it will come under threat. Russian bloggers beware.

• Gary Peach is a freelance journalist living in Riga, Latvia.

On the evening of 3 December, the day after parliamentary elections, all three of Russia’s largest television channels began their news programmes with the same four-minute clip of a self-congratulatory speech by Vladimir Putin at a factory outside Moscow.