BULLETINS OF CENTER FOR JOURNALISM IN EXTREME SITUATIONS
DANGEROUS PROFESSION: WEEKLY
WEEKLY BULLETIN OF EVENTS IN RUSSIAN MASS-MEDIAISSUE NO. 12 (321), MARCH 17 - 23, 2008
Author – Analyst Of Center For Journalism In Extreme Situations,
Candidate Of Political Science Mikhail Melnikov (mel@cjes.ru)
I. Events of the Week
The group of experts Inethics, which investigates issues relating to Internet ethics, has proposed the main provisions of the draft Ethical Code of the Internet. The code I targeted at the entire Internet community (users, providers, and site ownerdz0 and secures the interests of countries Its purpose s to solve the problem of immoral behavior in the Internet and offer users a new, ethical model of behavior in the Internet.
The basic principles of the proposed Internet Code of Ethics are as follows: “The Internet community: 1. Acts in accordance with the ethical guidelines of present Code; 2. Respects the freedom of speech, informational transparency and efficiency; 3. Observes the laws of one’s country; 4. Respects honor and dignity of people. Insulting is eliminated; 5. Considers public accessibility of Internet including children; 6. Only distributes valid information; 7. Respect copyright. Plagiary is intolerable; 8. Seeks the purity of the native language; 9. Respect moral and cultural values; 10. Shows fidelity in fighting spam and network attacks; 11. Admits mistakes and corrects them promptly.”
Because the Code is targeted at democratic countries, its provisions are recommendatory in nature.
The group of experts Inethics (a derivative from the word combination “Internet Ethics”) was created in Moscow in 2006. It comprises young scientists and experts in the area of ethics, philosophy, political science, the Internet, PR, IT, and lawyers specializing on ethics issues in the Internet.
II. Fatalities among Journalists
Ilyas Shurpayev, a journalist with Channel One television, was killed in Moscow on March 21.
The killing is not believed to be connection to the journalist’s work, the media liaison department of the Investigations Committee of the Russian Prosecutor’s Office told RBC.ru.
A source in the investigative bodies said the journalist most likely knew his killer because he had let him (or her) into his apartment. The journalist was strangled. The killer (or killers) set the apartment on fire to hide the evidence, but the fire was put out.
Shurpayev had a blog on livejournal.com, which he last updated the day before he was killed. In his last post, the journalist talked about a conflict between the editorial board of the Dagestani weekly Nastoyashcheye Vremya and its founders and general director Rizvan Rizvanov. The journalists are accusing the paper’s founders of interfering in the editorial and staff policy of the publication and trying to make them promote materials criticizing Dagestan’s President Mukha Aliyev.
After firing the publications’ editor-in-chief, Rizvanov made attempts to get rid of other journalists, Kavkazsky Uzel has reported. In addition, the publication’s founders have made a list of staff members whose materials cannot be printed and whose names cannot be mentioned in the publication, and Shurpayev was at the top of that list. In his blog, Shurpayev expressed surprise about that decision. “I did not anything that could be found inappropriate in that paper. I only wrote reports on my travels. I did not participate in the political life of the republic or even of my district,” the journalist said in his last post in his blog.
Shurpayev was a Channel One reporter in Dagestan. He has made reports from all problem areas of the Caucasus, including Dagestan, Chechnya, Abkhazia, Ingushetia, and South Ossetia. He moved to Moscow in early 2008.
III. Lawsuits against Journalists
1. Tatyana Firsova, a lawyer with Primorye’s public television OTV-Prim, told reporters on March 14 that the case involving attacks on journalists in Vladivostok have not made it to court yet.
In late August 2008, two groups of OTV-Prim were attacked in Vladivostok. The journalists, who had come to accident scenes, were beaten and their equipment was broken. The victims saw those incidents as encroachments on their professional rights and reported them to the Vladivostok prosecutor’s office. However, the city prosecutors did not find any evidence of a crime in the attacks and decided to dismiss the case “due to a lack of evidence.” OTV-Prim lawyers contested the decision and the case was resumed.
However, five months have passed and no progress has been made in the investigation. The investigators are saying they have “no precedents” and “no practice of such investigations,” although they are “trying very hard and are about to send the case to court.”
2. The St. Petersburg Nevsky District Court on March 14 issued a ruling in a case involving abuse of office by a police officer and encroachments on the rights of journalists.
On February 10, 2006, a container overturned in a St. Petersburg railway station, causing 120,000 tonnes of diesel fuel to spill on the railways. The area was encircled by the police. When journalists came to the scene, the police did not let them film. They had an order form their superiors to remove form the area everyone who did not have special permission to film there.
Anatoly Ilyin of Channel Five television and Yulia Vasilyeva (of the program Vesti-St. Petersburg) began filming from a place located outside the encircled area. However, policemen Dmitry Krylov and Igor Simonov began driving the journalists away and took the materials the journalists had already filmed. According to the journalists, the policemen subjected them to violence and threatened to throw them off the bridge if they did not stop filming. The journalists were eventually detained and taken to a police station.
After being released, Vasilyeva went to a doctor to register her hand injury. Ilyin did not seek medical assistance, but says he one of the policemen hit him really hard in the crotch.
The journalists filed a lawsuit against the policemen, accusing them of abuse of office. Each of them sought to recover 100,000 rubles from the policemen in moral damages. Their claims were granted and the policemen received jail sentences.
IV. Restrictions on Journalists. Pressure on the Media
1. “The Altai media fear the introduction of censorship in the territory,” Natalya Yumasheva, a reporter with Novaya Gazeta in the Altai Territory, said in an article dealing with the March 14 meeting between the territory’s Governor Alexander Karlin and a group of editors of the territory’s media outlets.
Some journalists (including writing journalists) were barred from attending the meeting, and television journalists were only allowed to film the beginning of the meeting.
The information report on the meeting, which aired on state-run television later in the evening, was very laconic. The press service for the territory’s administration issued an official press release, in which it said that the purpose of the meeting was “to exchange opinions on the future cooperation between the territory’s administration and the mass media on informing the people f the Altai Territory on the processes taking place in the socio-economic and political life of the region.”
The governor said that “there is a need to make certain changes to the organization of the work of the region’s executive administration in the area of liaison with the media and communication of the administration activities and plans to the people.” He believes that “the liaison between the media and the authorities can be called satisfactory if it is systematic and results in complete communication to society of information on the work of the executive administration. In addition, communication should be competent and should not distort or unprofessionally report information.”
The governor gave special attention to the problem of interpretation of official information. “We do not see the mass media as a technical means of communication, Every journalists interprets information. We want this interpretation to be similar to what the authorities are communicating. But this should be achieved through certain communication technologies, not through administrative pressure,” he said.
Some of the territory’s media outlets, specifically, the information agency Banfax and the website PolitSib.ru, assumed that the governor’s condemnation of the “wrong” interpretation of information may indicate that the administration intends to introduce censorship in the region.
2. The heads of the four factions of the parties represented in the People’s Assembly of the Republic of Ingushetia have issued a letter criticizing the television channel REN TV. The letter, which is addressed to the administration of the Russian parliament and Russia’s top law enforcement officials, accuses REN TV of “preventing the stabilization of the public and political situation in the region” by providing “a clearly biased and prevocational coverage of events taking place in the republic.”
The authors of the letter said REN TV broadcasts to Ingushetia and the presence of its journalists in the republic are “undesirable.”
Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov said the Federation Council cannot stop REN TV broadcasting to Ingushetia.
“Unfortunately, we have no ability or powers to close television channels or influence their content,” Mironov said while commenting on the letter.
The State Duma will not intervene in the work of REN TV either, said Boris Reznik, deputy chairman of the State Duma committee on information policy, information technologies and communications. He called on the Ingush parliamentarians to word their claims against the television channel more clearly in a lawsuit.
3. The Perm television channel Avto-TV is closing its main information program Nashi Novosti as of April 1, Kommersant has reported.
The channel’s General Director said the decision to close the program was made by the company’s shareholders for economic reasons.
4. The press service for the Russian Central Elections Commission has denied reports stating that it has filed lawsuits against several foreign media outlets over their reports on electoral violations during the recent presidential elections in Russia.
However, the Central Elections Commission does not rule out the possibility of such lawsuits being filed in the future “after the appropriate proposals made by the public and individual citizens are analyzed,” said Central Elections Commission Chairman Vladimir Churov.
V. Lawsuits against Journalists
1. Akhmat Ebzeyev, editor-in-chief of the opposition newspaper Vesti Gor (which was closed in November 2007) and a member of the parliament of the Republic of Karachayevo-Cherkessiya, has been charged with extremism in Karachayevo-Cherkessiya.
On February 21, the Main Investigations Department for the Southern Federal District submitted to the Supreme Court of Karachayevo-Cherkessiya documents accusing Ebzeyev of committing a crime envisioned by Article 282 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (fanning hatred or feud by denigrating the dignity of a person or a group of people based on ethnic origin involving the use of the mass media). The Supreme Court began considering the documents on March 17. If the arguments presented by the Investigations Department are found to be grounded, a criminal case will be opened against Ebzeyev.
Ebzeyev flatly denies the extremism accusations. “I did not fan anything and I did not denigrate anyone’s dignity. As the only opposition publication in the republic, we have irritated the republic’s administration for three years. The prosecutor’s office has also suffered form us. For this reason, I consider the attempts to prosecute me to be vengeance from the republic’s authorities.”
The conflict between the journalist and the law enforcement agencies started over an article written by Ebzeyev, which came out on September 25, 2007. The article stated that there are too few ethnic Karachais in the administration of the republic’s prosecutor’s office and investigations department.
On October 5, 2007, the republic’s prosecutor’s office issued a warning to Ebzeyev about the inadmissibility of dissemination of extremist materials. The warning stated that the article contained “elements fanning ethnic intolerance and calls for a change of the territorial integrity of the state, and also intolerance based on ethnic origin.”
Vesti Gor stopped coming out in November 2007.
2. Mark Kirillov, editor of the bulletin Slovo (a publication of the Jewish religious community of the Republic of Karelia) has been prosecuted for public demonstration of Nazi symbols.
The republic’s prosecutors told reporters on March 19 that one of the editions of Slovo contained articles illustrated with a picture of Hitler with swastika on his arm. Linguistic tests performed on the article showed that the publications justified the ideology and practices of fascism.
In accordance with Article 20.3 of the Russian Code of Administrative Violations, (propaganda and public demonstration of Nazi attributes or symbols), the bulletin’s editor Mark Kirillov has been ordered to pay a fine in an amount of 500 rubles.
3. The Samara Sovetsky District Court has granted the request made by the city prosecutor, who accused the
The content of the magazine “is aimed at fanning ethnic and religious feud, promoting exclusivity and supremacy of people based on race and religious affiliation,” the Samara region’s prosecutors said in a statement.
4. The Russian Supreme Court on March 18 has rejected the lawsuit filed by the prosecutors of Ingushetia seeking the closure of the website Ingushetia.ru.
The website was accused by the republic’s prosecutors of fanning ethnic feud. The site owners are denying the accusations and are saying they do not intend to stop their work.
5. A criminal case has been opened against Konstantin Dushenov, editor-in-chief of the newspaper Rus Pravoslavnaya (Orthodox Russia) in St. Petersburg. The journalist is charged with fanning ethnic feud.
According to information possessed by the investigators, Dushenov has organized a criminal group to disseminate a film entitled “Russia Stabbed in the Back. Jewish Fascism and Genocide of the People of Russia” and an article entitled “Russia Stabbed in the Back,” which he had authored. Experts have found the film and the article to promote hatred and to denigrate the dignity of Jews.
Commentary Prepared by CJES Lawyer Viktoriya Blonskaya for Section III.1
The lack of precedents and practice of investigating cases involving encroachments on the rights of journalists that the Primorye investigators are talking about indicates a low level of journalists’ activity in defending their rights. In the meantime, encroachment on freedom of the press is a crime under Article 144 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.
Impeding the lawful professional activities of journalists by coercing them to disseminate or refuse to disseminate information not only violates the constitutional freedom to search, receive, transmit and disseminate information, but also the conditions ensuring this freedom (the professional activities of journalists). Coercion to disseminate information or to refuse to disseminate information means actions that can considerably influence a journalist’s will and make him or her stop fulfilling his or her professional duties or exercise his or her rights. Coercion to disseminate or refuse to disseminate information may take place through violence, threats of violence, threats of dismissal, demotion, dissemination of information defaming the journalist or his relatives and loved ones, etc. Part 2 of Article 144 of the Criminal Code envisions increased liability if such crimes are combined with abuse of office.
We are hoping that the investigation into the case involving OTV-Prim in Primorye will constitute a precedent of such investigations.
Type Of Event
Number Of Cases
Attacks On Journalists
1 – St. Petersburg
Fatalities Among Journalists
1 – Moscow
Detentions And Arrests Of Journalists
Lawsuits Against Journalists
1 - Karachayevo-Cherkessiya, Republic of
1 – Karelia, Republic of
1 – Ingushetia, Republic of
1 – Samara region
2 – St. Petersburg
Other Kinds Of Pressure On Editorial Boards And Journalists
