#15
From: Ivan Safranchuk (isafranchuk@cdi.org)
Sent: Monday, December 23, 2002
Subject: new book: Contemporary Russian Military
Journalism
The full book (in Russian) can be ordered in electronic form (as pdf file)
from Moscow office (Moscow@cdi.org) or as
hard copy (though their number is limited (Also Moscow@cdi.org).
Nezavisimoy Voennoe Obozreniye
6 December 2002
A book on the achievements and challenges of contemporary military journalism in
Russia.
Pogorelyi, Mikhail and Ivan Safranchuk, eds. Contemporary
Russian Military Journalism: Experience, problems, perspectives.
(Moscow: Gendalf, 2002) 254 pp.
This is a book about the experience, current challenges and perspectives for
the development of Russian military journalism. It is the result of a joint
project by the Russian office of the international Center for Defense
Information and the Center of War and Peace Journalism. Featured authors include
journalists, experts, researchers and active and retired military men who are
all familiar to the readers of Nezavisimoe Voennoe Obozrenie through their
articles in the weekly, as well as in other Russian publications.
"Contemporary Russian Military Journalism: Experience, problems,
perspectives" reveals the patterns of the formation and development of
military journalism in Russia. It describes not only the journalistic community,
but also more general problems, such as military-civilian relations, the freedom
of speech, civil society and the media business. The volume has three sections
(The Development and Present State of Military Journalism," "The Press
and the Power Organs: Both trapped by incompetence, vested interests and
censorship," and "From Information to Propaganda, from PR to
Cash-for-Editorial"), a conclusion and six appendixes, including documental
ones.
Gathered together, the materials show -- perhaps for the first time in
Russia's history -- the ten-plus year-long period (late 1980s to 2002) of the
development of "civilian" military journalism in our country, i.e.,
the coverage of military subjects in non-departmental, public media sources.
From total secrecy to partial secrecy -- and yet partial openness; from obvious
illiteracy to professional quality; from tabloids to thoughtful analysis. This
is the road taken over those years by the Russian media community that focuses
on covering the Armed Forces, defense policy and the defense-industrial complex.
The development of military journalism in Russia in the period after 1992
reflected all of the contradictions between the development of civil society and
independent media. In the 1990s, and especially in the early 1990s, politicians
were suspicious of military officers, who had pledged allegiance to the Soviet
Union. Many officers remained loyal to the familiar system of moral and
political values, if not to the Soviet Union itself (whether or not they made
their loyalties public). The government feared them. At the same time, they were
also distrustful of those who were quick to side with the Russian reformers.
This foundation of military-civilian relations ruled out effective reform of
the Armed Forces. At the same time, no one, except select professional soldiers
was interested in reform. Politicians purchased the loyalty of the high brass
with awards and titles (the number of generals grew steadily) and ignored
questionable financial and economic decisions, which quickly led large-scale
corruption. At the same time, the attention of the public and the press was
directed to the Armed Forces. The military and all its problems came under
criticism and attacks. It was neither reformed nor protected. On the contrary,
through their rhetoric on military reform, politicians washed their hands of the
responsibility for the problems of the military, transferring the weight of the
criticism to the men in epaulets as well.
Was this spontaneous and intuitive, or deliberate and planned? There is no
simple answer. It was probably a combination of factors, with intuitive
decisions prevailing. The government came to believe that an unpopular army was
the best remedy against a military coup. This may be true for short-term
political goals -- but as far as long-term interests and national security go,
it's a tragic mistake.
Everything possible must be done to protect Russia's policies from the vise
of a similar dilemma in the future. Only then will the interest in a
professional and modern military (modern in spirit as well as in equipment and
training) go beyond rhetoric. The present-day attention of the political
leadership to the country's military problem and the willingness to conduct
reforms that are necessary, albeit unpopular with the Armed Forces makes room
for moderate optimism.
The optimism is moderate because there is a risk of falling into the other
extreme. Russian power organs express serious interest in propaganda -- now
described as PR campaigns. This "new" phenomenon is, in part, the
"well-forgotten old" phenomenon of Soviet propaganda. It is also the
desire to exploit current public attitudes -- above all, patriotism. But the
primary drive -- and here the first two factors also play a role -- is the
obvious success of PR campaigns in the political, economic and social spheres.
If PR campaigns can be used to elect a president or distribute financial and
natural resources, why can't they be used to raise the prestige of the army?
This is the logic used.
The second Chechen campaign probably played a decisive role in the
development of the attitude to propaganda in military circles. In its first
stage, the use of information and propaganda about military actions by
professional civilian political analysts was so successful (in all aspects,
including a certain increase in the prestige of the military), that the generals
decided to keep PR in mind.
There is no doubt that power organs must support their work with relevant
information and propaganda. But there is no reason to overestimate the power of
propaganda. In the end, if reality is very different from the pretty words about
it, outside of the short-term perspective (when it is possible to change
perception with a powerful and expensive PR campaign), reality will triumph.
While the PR campaigns can be necessary and useful for making genuine military
reform more effective, attempts to substitute propaganda for military reform are
worthless. But it is difficult to resist the temptation to use PR for
"selling" the military to the public "as is," instead of
conducting reforms. The only way to remove this temptation is to keep the power
organs under the watchful but proper attention of national leaders, politicians
and the media to military affairs and the state of the Armed Forces.
As the power organs begin to use modern PR techniques more and more
skillfully, they will occasionally face the need or the temptation to manipulate
the press and military journalists. There is nothing bad about the concept
itself, as long as it is limited in scale and exists within the framework of the
freedom of the press. The main goal is ensuring that this does not destroy
professional and independent military journalism as a whole.
All of the preconditions exist -- not only for military journalism, as we
know it, but also for its development: interest in national security and the
state of the armed forces as well as the international environment and the
problems with terrorists. A community of military journalists who can answer
these questions professionally and accurately has been formed.
And yet all this might not be enough for the survival of military journalism,
for ensuring that it does not simply become a PR instrument for the power organs
themselves. Military journalism has to find its place in the media business --
and the media business itself has to become stronger. In turn, the power
structures must learn to not only disinform the enemy, but also to adequately
inform their own countrymen and work in a democratic society.
And yet, for now, Russian authorities dislike military journalists not for a
lack professionalism or inquisitiveness, not for simplifications that injure
deep analysis, but, on the contrary, for excessive -- in the opinion of military
administrations and special services -- professionalism, for the desire to
understand the essence of the problem instead of stopping at superficial
commentary. This is not surprising, considering the fact that almost all leading
Russian military journalists are themselves former employees of the Ministry of
Defense, who have deep insight into the subject matter.
Separate articles and the book itself were finished in early October, so the
discussion of limitations on the work of the media in emergency situation, which
followed the hostage-taking on 23 October 2002, is not reflected in the volume.
This book is devoted to the cooperation of the press and the Ministry of Defense
(other power organs are also mentioned, but primarily in connection with
defense). Questions of the access journalists have to information from power
organs, censorship and secrecy are covered, but in a more general context.
This is because censorship and secrecy are now becoming the primary factors
in the work of military journalists. And yet, even the way the question is posed
in view of such a dilemma is incorrect -- effectiveness of special services at
the expense of limiting the freedom of the press (and suffocating military
journalism in particular). Special services responsible for protecting state
secrets will have to carry out their work -- which is difficult and vital to the
nation -- in a society with a free press. And military journalists have their
own professional obligations -- informing the public about important defense
problems and presenting diverse points of view. What it comes down to is that
the existing antagonism between military journalists and special services
benefits no one.
No one doubts that temporary limitations on the work of journalists in
conflict zones or crisis situations must be imposed. But these should be
temporary limitations, rather than total prohibitions. And the legislative and
procedural forms of these limitations are also very important. In Russia, the
reality is that subordinate legislation is always stricter and less favorable to
journalists than laws themselves. Officials who make subordinate legislation
usually do not care about public opinion -- they are not affected by it. The
legislators, on the other hand, the people's deputies, they have to deal with
the press -- for them, public opinion and the attitude of the media are
important. The answer appears to be simple -- legislators should make laws that
are as clear as possible, leaving minimal room for interpretation in subordinate
legislation. And yet, what we have is a situation in which marginalizing all
opposition (ideological as well as institutional) is the leading form of
"consolidating the society," and legislators are starting to believe
that their political careers depend less on the public and the electorate than
on the executive branch and, above all, the power organs. In the end, this is
not a step towards "controlled democracy," but a leap to the rejection
of democracy as such.
The experience of adopting the latest amendments to the law on the media in
the State Duma and the Federation Council shows that this tendency makes
amorphous and inaccurate laws the most advantageous ones for the legislators.
Such laws allow them to give up their legislative functions and hand over their
powers to various administrations. Legislators can decline responsibility for
further subordinate legislation, which is not made by the parliament. And those
who do make the subordinate legislation care little for public opinion. The
circle is thus closed.
Even more alarming is the fact that unwritten laws appear -- not de jure,
even if subordinate, legislation, but simple taboos. And these are not the moral
and ethical principles every responsible journalist, editor or organization must
take on, but guidelines that are imposed with the calculation that journalists
will find it easier not to get involved. Russian journalists and experts used to
joke a lot about political correctness in the US, which was originally based on
securing unconditional human rights, but was then saddled with various taboos
and unwritten prohibitions. Now, a no less tabooed system of political
correctness exists in Russia about the authorities and power organs, the
absolute development of which leaves no room for independent journalism and the
community of experts.
Mikhail Pogorelyi
Ivan Safranchuk
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