In contemporary Russian politics, it may seem that "you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows." Political events are unfolding according to a scenario predicted by many (i.e., Putin is retaining influence, at least for now), and no matter what eventually happens between Putin and Medvedev, given the array of predictions flying around, odds are someone will have predicted it. Sometimes, though, mediologists, not meteorologists, are the best way of trying to figure out which way the political winds are blowing on a given week.
Heavy coverage was given by Russian online media during the last election cycle to statistics charting TV appearances by major politicians. These figures have long been covered by some newspapers and online news sites, but the coverage by Lenta.ru last fall, in cooperation with an outfit called Medialogia - which included not only weekly statistics but also analytical reports interpreting the numbers - seemed more thorough than in the past.
Сравнительная динамика количества упоминаний ТВ-каналов в федеральных печатных СМИ [source] 
Lenta also recently covered the release of
a report by Mediaguide.ru (a portal which appears to be related to Medialogia) analyzing how frequently the TV networks with nationwide reach are cited in the print media - it appears this report will now be available monthly. Although it doesn't seem to analyze whether the mentions are positive or negative, the figures may be of interest to those who argue that the Kremlin's dominance of Russian TV airwaves does not stamp out the free press because of the existence of alternative print sources of news.
Masha Lipman recently
made the following observation (in the Washington Post, natch) about Russian TV under Putin:
During Putin's tenure, television broadcasting was honed to perfection -- as a tool to shape public opinion. Coverage of political and public affairs is now tightly controlled through a coordinated effort of the national channels' top managers and Kremlin aides. The result is that any event, person, group or movement may be boosted or played down in the public eye in a way that would best suit the Kremlin's desires and designs; anyone deemed an adversary of the government may be discredited or vilified.
Polls indicate that the public is highly responsive to television brainwashing -- whether the campaigns are against Georgia, Ukraine or the West, or are intended to influence voting preferences. In contrast to Soviet times, the government's most effective media tools are also highly profitable. Each of the two biggest channels reaches almost all Russian households. While stations don't compete in news coverage -- news shows differ little from channel to channel -- other competition for viewers and advertisers is fierce. The result: first-class soap operas and other entertainment programs that keep people glued to their screens. Advertisers, attracted to large audiences, eagerly commit their budgets to state-controlled television.
This business model and the controlled political content are inseparable and mutually beneficial. The Kremlin-designed television diet is easily digested: Bland information is supplemented by exciting entertainment shows. As he completed his second term, Putin granted special letters of commendation to the top managers of the national channels.
The government has radically curtailed broadcast freedom, but it does not totally control speech. Some broadcast, print and online outlets with smaller audiences have maintained relatively independent editorial lines, which serves to let off steam. These outlets may create an appearance of media freedom, but they are tightly insulated from national television, effectively marginalized and kept politically irrelevant.
The
huge role played by the media in shaping - and reflecting, although a chicken-and-egg question arises if you want to determine whether it molds or reflects more - the country's political climate might tempt one to call Russia a "media-cracy," though I'd probably avoid the term, as it's too much of a simplification, it sounds too much like "mediocrity" (which Russia is certainly not at the moment, no matter how one wishes to see the country), and the term was already being used
over 30 years ago - and continues to be used, albeit informally - in reference to
American domestic politics. It's interesting to see how
one online source defines "mediacracy" in the American context:
(mē'dē-ə-krə-sē) 1. (n.) Government, usually indirectly, by the popular media; often a result of democracy going awry. A system in which politicians stop thinking and begin listening exclusively to the media regarding what the important issues are and what they should do about them. Origins: A play on democracy and news media; possible reference to being mediocre.
The suggestion is that media elites are invested with a disproportionate amount of independent political power. In today's Russia, the term would probably have to be defined slightly differently - the use of the media, in particular those controlled by the state, as an instrument of government rule through the shaping of opinions.
[image source]Actually there is an online project named Mediakratiia (
Медиакратия), or Mediacracy, which seems to have the goal of unifying young Russian journalists in covering issues in a "socially responsible" way, with what appears to be a particular emphasis on journalists working in the regions. Since the project
was set up in part by United Russia and is funded by the Press Ministry, it is not difficult to conclude that the organizers have "state-friendly" in mind when they say "socially responsible."
The Mediakratiia effort from the United Russia side was spearheaded by Aleksandr Shkol'nik, one-time (and perhaps current, I'm not sure) head of children's and youth programming at Channel One and later the director of the Russian News Service under whose tenure Gazeta.ru called that radio service "
Russian Brainwashing Service" after
Shkol'nik's infamous attempt to introduce a rule that 50% of news coverage must be positive. The website publishes a monthly list of the "Golden Hundred" participants, young journalists who compete with each other to earn points
in the following manner:
"The Golden Hundred" is a system under which the mediacrats earn a certain amount of points every month (from 1 to 15) for various types of activities, including participation in online conferences, discussion of current topics on the project's online Forum, publications, news for the "Regional Time" page, and cooperation with Mediakratiia's partners, for example the Russian News Service and the National Projects magazine.
As for the project overall, here is part of its
mission statement:
"Mediakratiia" is not the power of journalism and certainly not the power of journalists - a journalist cannot and should not rule over [people's] minds. A journalist is not an "engineer of human souls" [a term
coined by Olesha under Stalin about Soviet authors], but is more like a gauge reacting to any changes in society and life.
When we say "Mediakratiia," we mean the power of information over any form of human activity. In the current media-driven society, in this era of informational technologies we live in, the old saw "forewarned is forearmed" should be rephrased as "he who is uninformed is helpless."
[...]
The mass media is a weapon of mass defense, not mass destruction. Journalism is a socially responsible activity.
We want to be and we can be responsible!
[emphasis in original]
Anyway, that's what the government and the party of power are doing to raise up the next generation of "socially responsible" journalists.
Luckily, some members of the profession in Russia still seem to have the level of irreverence which in my opinion is essential to good journalism. I say this based in part on a recent online find, what looks to be the start of an absolutely fascinating new blog. I think anyone who reads Scraps of Moscow will appreciate it. It's called
Newsinside.ru; here's
what its creators have to say about it:
Newsinside.ru reports on the seamy side of the news and the behind-the-scenes stories of wire services, internet projects and TV companies.
Newsinside.ru's professional detectives continuously investigate the news and write about the most interesting and important items.
Unfortunately, they haven't had any new posts since May 11, but hopefully they're just taking a holiday break and this isn't indicative of that too-common phenomenon of a well-begun internet project petering out rapidly. The folks behind Newsinside.ru say they are planning on launching an English-language version, but I can't wait, so I've translated a couple of their posts below:
NTV didn't notice the tanks in Moscow
April 30, 2008
The passage of heavy military equipment through downtown Moscow was one of the most popular news stories in the Russian-language blogosphere (according to Yandex). Human curiosity was evident on the city's streets - crowds of people stood along the routes taken by the tanks and armored vehicles.
The national TV channels devoted a great deal of attention to this truly unusual event. We observed that the round-the-clock channel "Vesti" devoted the most effort to reporting the procession of heavy equipment.
Their camera was the only one to meet the tanks at the picturesque spot entering the bridge by Belorussky station (pictured). "Vesti" set up live broadcast feeds of the military vehicles moving around Moscow from five (!) different locations in the city.Channel One limited itself to broadcasting footage on the following day. And on NTV in the day's final newscast at 10:40pm Aleksei Pivovarov didn't even mention the tanks which had attracted everyone's attention. Perhaps Pivovarov decided that NTV wasn't up to competing with Vesti's live broadcasts.
Echo of Moscow: Putin is losing his TV clout
May 4, 2008
[excerpted from this radio transcript, dated May 2]
A. VENEDIKTOV: Putin as president had another supremely powerful resource. That powerful resource was the state-run mass media. But now we see...
L. SHEVTSOVA: Whose side are they going over to?
A. VENEDIKTOV: Whose side is a good question. Here's one example: RTR, or VGTRK, which is headed up by Oleg Borisovich Dobrodeev, made a film called "Eight Years of President Putin," a rather pompous movie.
L. SHEVTSOVA: So, he's with the prime minister's vertical [of power]
A. VENEDIKTOV: And so it would seem that everything's in order: a departing president, a documentary - even a pompous one - because Oleg Borisovich has been with Vladimir Vladimirovich from the very first day and even before. I remember when [Dobredeev] left NTV, that was in January of 2000, when Putin was a presidential candidate, and Oleg called me and said, "I'm going to VGTRK, they offered me a job, you're the first to know," but that's not the point, the point is that this documentary is being aired on Saturday at 11:55am. And for people in the know, it should air in prime time. You understand? [...] It's a sort of signal: "We're with you, but we're not with you."
L. SHEVTSOVA: "We're with you, but we're standing in two different queues."
A. VENEDIKTOV: And it's the same thing now, I am absolutely sure of it, they'll start to calculate who to put on the air first and for how long. But the mass media, and first and foremost television, was a huge resource of Putin's....And Putin may start to lose them, because after all they have to put the president on the air - President Medvedev. So there's already a downside [for Putin]. [...]
L. SHEVTSOVA: It's a curious thing. We will probably yet see some very big movements and people dashing to and fro. By the way, Aleksei, I noticed these dashes - and fairly active ones - before Putin's February speech to the State Council. But after that and after he agreed to head up United Russia, people started moving in the opposite direction, back to Vladimir Vladimirovich. But, by the way, we have forgotten about the most powerful resource of Dmitry Medvedev - that is, after all, the power of the Constitution, the capability of the powerful presidency itself. And what do we have today? Today we have an attempt to embed, to implant a powerful prime-minister's vertical, which has already been created by Putin's team, to implant that vertical...
The
Newsinside.ru website looks like it could be a great addition to the RuBlogosphere - they have most recently posted some
coverage of the
coverage of Medvedev's inauguration, and - unless I'm reading too much into things, which has been known to happen - the blog even seems to be cleverly named: it is aimed at the "news insider" and addresses itself to that person by using "newsinside[.]r" in the dative case.
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barabanch (original is here):
