#1
Asia Times
January 24, 2002
Press freedom a non-issue for Russians
By Sergei Blagov

MOSCOW - When Russia's last remaining independent national television station, TV6, abruptly went off the air recently, the event was met by a somewhat muted public response.

Thanks to a court order, Russia's Press Ministry abruptly shut down TV6. At midnight, a talk-show host on TV6 was interrupted in mid-sentence and replaced with multi-colored test-pattern stripes. Power was shut off at the studio and telephones and Internet links were cut, TV6 general director Yevgeny Kiselyov said. The order called for the Press Ministry to suspend TV6's license immediately, as required under a court ruling on January 11 liquidating the station.

The end of TV6 marks the first time all news agencies have been under Kremlin control since the fall of the Soviet Union. Kiselyov said TV6 will contest the court order. "Lawyers are already working on it," he said.

In recent days, President Vladimir Putin, Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov and Press Minister Mikhail Lesin have all publicly stated their support for the TV6 channel and its staff. The demise of TV6 was also criticized by the United States and German governments.

Kiselyov continued to argue that the Kremlin was behind TV6's demise. But the Russian government does not see any political agenda in the TV6 closure. Alexey Volin, the cabinet deputy chief of stuff, was quoted as saying, "It was just an accomplishment of a court order."

Lesin, who gave the order to switch off TV6, said that a tender for the channel will be held on March 27. A failure on the part of TV6's existing team to secure a broadcasting license under the tender will bode ill for the rebirth of the channel.

Meanwhile, speculation continues that the government-imposed shutdown was politically motivated. Guennady Seleznyov, Speaker of the State Duma, the lower chamber of the Russian parliament, says TV6's shutdown was caused by the badly thought-out confrontational moves of the company's management.

A pension fund for Russia's biggest oil company, LUKOIL, held a 15 percent stake in the station and, under an obscure and now-rescinded law allowing a minority shareholder to ask for liquidation in the event of bankruptcy, won a court case to close the station.

By pulling the plug, authorities silenced a team that, first at NTV and then at TV6, dared to criticize military tactics in Chechnya and expose alleged corruption scandals in the Kremlin.

NTV journalists refused to accept government pressure to tone down its high-profile protests against the government, arguing it was illegal and had the ulterior motive of establishing political censorship over the station. Consequently, the NTV logo in the left corner of the TV screen was stamped by the word "protest" in red letters.

Early last year, NTV journalists seemingly enjoyed broad public support. A sanctioned rally in downtown Moscow to support NTV attracted 10,000-15,000 people, and thousands came to Ostankino, Russia's main television headquarters, to support NTV.

However, public protests failed to change the fate of NTV. After NTV's takeover by state-controlled natural-gas monopoly Gazprom, most NTV staff moved to TV6. But TV6's owner, billionaire and former Kremlin insider Boris Berezovsky, is unpopular among ordinary Russians, and many consider him a relic left over from the days of former president Boris Yeltsin.

Indeed, many blame the now-exiled Berezovsky as the reason the Kremlin's unwanted attention fell on the station in the first place, citing him as an example of the "oligarchs" that Putin declared had to be removed from media control.

As a result, it's no big wonder that many Russians tend to shrug off the TV6 shutdown. According to an opinion poll by ROMIR-Gallup International, 26 percent of the Muscovites polled said they viewed the conflict over TV6 as an economic dispute. Only 15 percent of those polled regarded the conflict as the Kremlin's onslaught on press freedom.

Therefore, in the eyes of many Russians the media-freedom agenda may have become less important and relevant. Thus, while the fate of the only independent national television station has been decided, it is unclear whether the other media outlets that dared to challenge the Kremlin's policies can survive in Russia. (Inter Press Service)

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