#6521 #6522
#5 - JRL 6521
gazeta.ru
October 29, 2002
Russian media to talk less about terrorists
By Natalia Rostova
During the 3-day siege of the musical theatre in Moscow's Dubrovka Street, where a group of Chechen rebels held hundreds hostage, leading national media outlets proved incapable of providing competent and tactful coverage of the drama. Now, as the dust settles on the national tragedy, Russia's media are admitting their mistakes. Many of them have even moved to forestall sanctions from the authorities by taking internal action.
The management of many television networks now admit that in the first few hours of their coverage they committed a whole series of crucial mistakes, openly informing the terrorists of the actions taken by the security services. However, it appears that later on TV reporters gained a better understanding of the situation and of their role, with some of them even calling for certain restrictions on press freedom until after the hostage crisis was over.
This awareness came not without the help of the Press Ministry. As Gazeta.Ru has already reported, last Friday the ministerial officials simply unplugged the Moskovia Channel (it returned to the air some time later after a lengthy discussion between the ministry and the company's director); said it would close the web-site of the Ekho Moskvy radio station after it published an interview with one of the hostage-takers (the Ministry withdrew its claim after Ekho's web-master erased the hyperlink to the page), and threatened Rossiiskaya Gazeta with punitive measures, after it published a photo of a female hostage, shot dead by the terrorists, on its front page.
Of all those moves, the closure of Moskovia caused the biggest uproar. Director-general of the Russian Television and Radio-Broadcasting Network (RTRS) Gennady Sklyar told Gazeta.Ru how that decision was taken.
He confirmed that it was the Press Ministry who took the decision on the immediate suspension of Moskovia's broadcasting. The peculiarity of the situation, says Sklayr, was that the frequency, on which Moskovia broadcasts, is shared between two channels -- Moskovia and TV Centre. Namely, that is why the RTRS chief managed to solve the problem "diplomatically", ''in the interests of TV viewers'' -- Moskovia programmes were replaced by those of TV Centre.
''We were facing a choice: either to leave the transmitter on and to run the programmes of TV Centre, or to arouse the obvious displeasure of the viewers,'' Sklyar admits. ''I decided not to interrupt the broadcasting in the interests of TV viewers and not to vex them. I could have switched off the transmitter, but I did not. It is not my duty to evaluate who broadcasts what, my task is to ensure continuity of the broadcasting signal.''
Nonetheless, most of the leading TV and radio networks got the Press Ministry's message right, and by the next day NTV decided against broadcasting the exclusive interview that hostage-takers granted to the channel's reporters. The terrorists' demands were retold by the newsreader. Ekho Moskvy's editor-in-chief Alexei Venediktov told Gazeta.Ru that the editorial staff of his radio station had also decided on a more careful approach towards the hostage drama coverage.
And then, in the early hours of Saturday, just as security forces were getting ready to storm the theatre building in Dubrovka, all the Russian TV channels submitted to requests from the operational headquarters and stopped live reporting. As a result, many TV viewers watched the storming on CNN.
Nonetheless, on Monday the Press Ministry said in an official statement that it would thoroughly scrutinize all media reports pertaining to the Moscow hostage drama and make its own evaluation of the media's activities.
Naturally, the question emerges as to how the media would cover similar incidents in future if they were ever to take place again. In this context it is worth noting that literally one day before the terrorist attack, the State Duma approved, at the second reading, amendments to the law on media and the law on combating terrorism pertaining to the mass media, in particular, prohibiting dissemination of extremist and terrorist opinions.
According to the prominent Kremlin spin-doctor and director of the Effective Policy Foundation, Gleb Pavlovsky, ''during the crisis there were flagrant violations of journalist ethics by certain journalists and media outlets, and there actions traumatized the population, constituting a real threat and aggravating the situation''.
''By no means can such actions be justified by the extreme stress, to which the media outlets, too, were exposed,'' Pavlovsky told Gazeta.Ru. As a result of the conduct of just a few journalists, claims Pavlovsky, the public grew embittered against the entire media profession.
In his opinion, the unethical conduct by some editorial teams and journalists must undergo an impartial evaluation by influential journalist groups, such as the Union of Journalists, the Glasnost Defence Foundation, and Mediasoyuz.
In the opinion of another spin-doctor, deputy director general of the First Channel (ex-ORT) Marat Gelman the crisis showed that ''no-one was ready for such a situation''. However, ''media outlets handled it faster than the security services''.
''Even before the special services addressed out channel, we already knew how that tragedy must be covered,'' claims Gelman. ''For obvious reasons our interlocutor refused to reveal the details of that address, but noted that the most important demand was that we stop live coverage prior to the storming.''
Gelman believes, given the new terrorist threat and the role as a propaganda weapon for terrorists that TV channels may play in future attacks, it is crucial for the state to elaborate a new set of guidelines for information security that would determine the code of conduct in similar situations.
When asked whether, in his opinion, the state authorities will now move to restrict media freedoms, Gelman noted that "the authorities have always desired that", though it is unnecessary: ''This situation has shown that our media outlets are able to handle these incidents without any restrictions.''
Director-general of the Union of Journalists of Russia Igor Yakovenko, too, ''is categorically opposed to censorship''. However, he maintains that press freedom and war are absolutely incompatible, and the evidence of that is seen around the world, including media restrictions in the US during the war in Iraq, and in Great Britain during the Falkland Islands campaign. In our country it is the Chechen issue, holds Yakovenko.
''One of the reasons why first NTV, and then TV-6 were shut down was the position of Yevgeniy Kiselyov's team on the Chechen war,'' Yakovenko is convinced.
''If, in the Nord-Ost situation, all the TV channels had shown every move of the security services, I would not be in the least surprised, and, perhaps, would even have justified the closure of TV channels and newspapers for a week,'' the head of the Union of Journalists noted. In his opinion, even if only one life could be saved through such measures, it would be worth doing -- ''the price would not be too high''.
At the same time Yakovenko does not relieve the security services of its responsibility either, noting that it is their job to ensure the confidentiality of operations. ''This is a question of the professionalism of the power agencies' press-services,'' asserts Yakovenko.
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