Journalists, Heal Thyselves

How low the standards of Russian dissidents have fallen. In Soviet times, dissidents protested on Red Square against the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, only to end up in prisons or psychiatric asylums. Nobel laureate Alexander Solzhenitsyn was forced to emigrate for publishing abroad; physicist Andrei Sakharov went on a hunger strike when he was exiled to Gorky.

Today, Russian “dissidents” are of a different stripe. In the recent, widely-publicized brouhaha over NTV, which has many ill-informed intellectuals lamenting the loss of freedom of speech in Russia, one cannot discern even a pale shadow of the noble Sakharov or Solzhenitsyn.

Dismissed NTV General Director Yevgeny Kiselyov and his loyalists staged spectacular “show-meetings” against the “hostile takeover” of NTV by Gazprom (which swapped debt owed it by NTV’s parent company for shares in the company). But their true motivations were revealed when it became clear that the new ownership might make the old managers and top journalists repay $100-200,000 in interest-free loans that former owner Vladimir Gusinsky had extended them.

The takeover did not lead to tent cities being erected in protest around the base of Ostankino TV tower. There were no 1993-esque “samizdat” publications. And no one fled into emigration (to join Gusinsky, who remains abroad, a fugitive to Russian justice). Instead, Kiselyov & Co. took a New Russian Dissident tack.

First, they found a surprisingly sympathetic ear in Gusinsky’s chief rival among the oligarchs, Boris Berezovsky, who owns 75% of the modestly independent TV-6 channel. Second, Kiselyov and his 3-400 staffers undertook a hostile takeover of TV-6 after Berezovsky agreed to take the NTV squad under his wing.

Despite Berezovsky’s and Kiselyov’s promises that no one at TV-6 would be forced to resign, that there would jobs for everyone, and despite claims that Berezovsky took the “uneasy” decision only to preserve NTV’s “unique” team, many TV-6 journalists were forced out, including editor in chief of the TV-6 information program, Mikhail Ponomaryov.

True enough, no one was fired after the arrival of the NTV team. But then it did not have to come to that. Ponomaryov, a journalist of the highest calibre, offered Kiselyov a plan for how the two TV companies could unite expeditiously and peacefully. But Kiselyov reportedly announced that TV-6’s news program would be handled by NTV, tossing out a soccer analogy: “When stars join a team, they take over the attack positions.”

Any serious Russian journalist today knows that the NTV “scandal” has nothing to do with freedom of the press. It is, plain and simple, all about money. Gazprom lent money to NTV parent company Media-Most, the loan was overdue, and Gazprom called in its collateral. Of course, Gazprom boss Alfred Kokh, who made a bundle on privatization, is a shrewd political insider, and he knows the score. He knows that you don’t bite the hand that feeds you (the Kremlin), or at least you don’t bite it just for the sake of showing that you can. Such “realism” is a well-understood rule of the journalistic game anywhere in the world, including in the US, where television, radio and newspaper outlets routinely handle stories about their top advertisers with kid gloves.

But if Kokh—who never pretended to be a dissident—bowed overtly to the Powers That Be, Kiselyov bowed to another idol: the Golden Calf. Some local commentators have even suggested that Kiselyov used his loyalists as a shield against Gazprom, so as to make a defensible escape. From which he, and they, ran into the embrace of the enemy—for years Gusinsky and Berezovsky have fought vehemently via their media empires.

As one local commentator said on the condition of remaining anonymous: “the euphoria of the first days [of meetings near Ostankino TV center] passed. Now the guys need to feed their family.”

What is more, Kiselyov & Co. adopted a selective notion of “freedom of speech.” When TV-6 invited TV journalists to cover the meeting between TV-6’s collective and the NTV intruders, an outraged Kiselyov demanded: “Who allowed the cameras in here?” The cameramen were forced out. Apparently, for Kiselyov, cameras are welcome only when NTV is being raided by masked OMON officers.

Understandably, TV-6 journalists now confess regret at having supported NTV in their stand-off with Gazprom (i.e. the Kremlin). Gusinsky’s NTV refugees are now supplanting their TV-6 hosts, showing no gratitude for the hospitality extended them, but preferring to flaunt their star qualities at the expense of colleagues who thought they were all fighting together for a noble cause.

One of the true marks of character of most Soviet-era dissidents was the fact that they sought no special treatment. They illuminated the lies of the system by showing how normal democratic actions were ruthlessly suppressed. Their selfless actions thus chipped away at the foundations of the dictatorship.

When NTV journalists, now on TV-6, attempt to secure benefits and privileges on the grounds that they are “geniuses,” the public at large will deduce that all Russian journalists are arrogant and selfish.

We have seen such faux-heroes before. Soon after the communist party was ousted from power, Russian “democrats” tarnished the very notions of democracy and the free market with their self-interested actions. Now some Russian journalists would tarnish the principles of freedom of speech and freedom of the press by crying wolf when it is only their personal prerogatives that are threatened.

The real danger is that, when a real “zhdanovschina” begins, fed-up and disenchanted Russians won’t even notice.

— Mikhail Ivanov & Paul Richardson