BROADCAST BLUES IN RUSSIA. FIFTY-NINE PERCENT OF RUSSIAN TV VIEWERS PREFER NEWS, AND STATE CONTROL OF MAJOR MEDIA ENSURES IT'S UPBEAT ABOUT THE COUNTRY'S LEADERS
On 2 March Russians will choose their next president. Surveys show that on average more than 80 percent of Russians support the policies of the departing leader, Vladimir Putin, and 65 percent voted for his United Russia Party in the December parliamentary elections. Such statistics bode well for Putin's protégé, Dmitry Medvedev.
One of the major tools for achieving such public consolidation in Russia was imposing government control over the major media.
The bulk of the Russian population gets its news from Russian television, which broadcasts mostly upbeat news about the country and its leaders. According to recent research by the All-Russian Center for Public Opinion Research (VCIOM), 59 percent of Russian television viewers prefer news to all other programs. Research last October by the Moscow-based Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations showed that the major broadcasters, Channel 1 primarily, devoted nearly half of their news programming to the Russian president. There is no bad news about Putin in the state-controlled media, which includes all the major television companies -- Channel 1, Russia TV (RTR), Center TV, NTV, and Ren-TV.
Russian television constantly broadcasts the image of Russia as a rapidly developing country that is implementing reforms in health, education, housing and industry, led by a corruption-fighting government. The news also presents Russia as a world leader in international politics and economy. Viewers see Russian officials who care about problems and are working to overcome them.
The main newspapers and news websites are little different, projecting pro-Kremlin news and commentary. These include Izvestia, Komsomolskaya Pravda, Moskovsky Komsomolets, Rossiyskaya Gazeta, and strana.ru, lenta.ru and regnum.ru.
In contrast, a number of independent news websites, which Russians collectively call "Runet," provide much more reliable information. Newsru.com is one of the leading independent news sources in Russia today. The site provides news in the fields of politics, social life, economics, sports, culture, religion, technology, travel and entertainment. The site also offers video content.
Other sites, such as InoPressa.ru and Zagolovki.ru provide links to important international media with news about Russia. Gazeta.ru, grani.ru, polit.ru, and utro.ru also provide quality and independent sources of news. Some daily newspapers -- Kommersant, Novye Izvestia, and Vedomosti -- offer a good standard of journalism in both print and online versions.
INDEPENDENT VOICES
Independent radio broadcasts are also available online. The site of one of the best and most independent news sources, Echo Moskvy, provides news in text and audio formats, giving users access to opinion by and interviews with the best Russian journalists, political scientists, and writers.
Besides the best journalists, Echo Moskvy is one of the few Russian media companies to interview opposition politicians and human rights activists whose voices are rarely heard in the pro-government media. Moreover, Echo Moskvy regularly invites foreign political and cultural celebrities visiting Moscow.
Some foreign-owned media also broadcast news in Russian. One of the most popular, the news channel Euronews, runs nightly and in the mornings on one of the federal TV channels, and 24 hours a day on pay TV and the Internet. Although Euronews has no exclusive coverage of Russia, it broadcasts in-depth reports about European affairs and the news of the rest of the world.
Foreign radio broadcasters offering 24-hour news and commentary are Svoboda (Radio Liberty), which is financed by the U.S. government, and the BBC Russian service. Many Russians regard these stations' websites as reliable news sources.
Along with Internet news resources, many Russian viewers also have access the major worldwide television news channels such as CNN, BBC World, and CNBC. The Russian public, however, instinctively tends to trust domestic more than foreign media.
Despite the range of media, a wide range of information about life in this vast country is still not accessible. Certain geographical and subject areas are barely covered.
Most Russians living outside of the north Caucasus have little knowledge about this turbulent region. Life in Ingushetia, Chechnya, and Dagestan differs from Central Russia significantly. Armed clashes, kidnapping, and cruel human rights violations happen there every day -- but often go unreported. The federal forces' victories over "terrorists" and Chechnya's return to stability following the 1994-1996 and 1999-2000 military campaigns is about the only thing that the pro-government media report on the north Caucasus.
The independent voices (for instance, Caucasian Knot, Chechnya.ru and the Chechenskoye obschestvo newspaper provide more information on the region, but to get a full picture of life in the northern Caucasus is still impossible: independent reporting from this region is dangerous and journalists who practice it are persecuted. Coverage of Russian officials' corruption, political opposition and human rights violations is highly restricted in the pro-government media as well.
The biweekly Novaya Gazeta, as well as human rights web wire Prima-news.ru, try to report on these subjects, but they have limited resources and face official barriers. Novaya Gazeta is a leader in investigative journalism, but it has paid a high price for its intrepid work: three of the newpaper's journalists -- Anna Politkovskaya, Igor Domnikov and Yuri Shchekochikhin -- have been slain since 2003.
In Russia today, those who want to get a clearer picture of domestic politics and current affairs must develop critical thinking skills and try to combine information from various media. That is difficult to do for most Russians, since the Internet is such an important source of independent reporting. A recent survey by the Public Opinion Fund shows that only 24 percent of Russian adults use the Internet. With only a quarter of people wired into independent news sources and so much of the media presenting only the good side of government, it's no wonder that the majority of Russians receive an incomplete picture of what is happening in their country.
