The Press

Stanford lawyer Rob Gaudet and his friend Gene Mazo have sent comments on the media postings. Gene Mazo is like Cameron Sawyer in that he is at least trilingual (Russian, German, English), but he disagrees with Cameron's assessment of the Russian media: "I would disagree with the statement that in Russia TV journalism is "noisy, critical, and highly intelligent" and "if there is any manipulation, it must be pretty subtle." First, although TV journalism in Russia is noisy, it is far less "critical" now than in the mid-1990s, precisely due to manipulation by the Putin regime; its "intelligence" is also to be questioned. Two years ago Putin's forces closed down NTV, an independent TV channel, signaling the end of a free press. Putin had gone after other media as well. These independent outlets were not only critical of the government but also controlled by some of Putin's most powerful oligarch enemies -- namely, Berezovsky and Gusinsky. The American equivalent could be if George Bush tried to prosecute Ted Turner (because he didn't pay his taxes) and, as a result, shut down all of his media holdings, including CNN. Although the Russian government claimed its actions had ulterior motives (NTV owed debt on its loans to a government-controlled company), most ordinary Russians understood what was going on -- the government was trying to silence dissent and control the airwaves. The result was that Russians were left with only government television -- Americans cannot even imagine an equivalent to this, but perhaps it is akin to waking up one day to find only two channels to choose from: C-SPAN and PBS!! Those WAISers interested in looking at this issue in more depth should read the piece we recently published on it in the Stanford Journal of International Law. The cite for that is: Laura Belin, "The Rise and Fall of Russia's NTV," Stanford Journal of International Law, Vol. 38, No. 1, p. 19 (2001).

Ronald Hilton - 10/27/02