#19 - JRL 7300
RIA Novosti
August 22, 2003
FACT FILE: THE MEDIA IN RUSSIA
By Marina SHAKINA, RIA Novosti political analyst
Since the collapse of the USSR, Russia's media has undergone striking changes: thousands of new newspapers and magazines have emerged and hundreds of radio stations and television channels, and dozens of news agencies have opened. Since 1992 the state has issued more than 2,000 radio and television broadcasting licences. Today Russia has everything; apart from the traditional press these are Internet publications, and Russian versions of well-known foreign information products. Russians have access to foreign media, such as television channels, radio stations and print media. The Russian press is no longer in isolation, it is part of the world-wide information flow. The overwhelming majority of mass media is non-state owned.
The evolutionary path covered by Russian media in the past 12 years has been tortuous. For certain historical reasons the press has never been viewed as a business, and so the price liberalisation launched by the government in the beginning of 1992 came as a shock for many publications. The market reform highlighted the true state of the economy, and it turned out that the state was bankrupt, the public, if a reading one, poor, and the press was faced with the necessity of making money itself.
As a result, many of the newspapers and magazines that survived changed ownership, image and, occasionally content. Many closed down. Journalists and managers of the surviving press had to address readers' requirements and advertisers' requests. Over the 12 years the media market in Russia has substantially changed, spawning a huge segment of the tabloid press. Specialised publications are increasingly gaining in popularity with men's and women's magazines are being put out in growing editions. In the 90s, emerging Russian capital showed a specific interest in the press, as media were regarded as above all a means of political clout and not as a commercial project. Wealthy entrepreneurs bought television channels, radio stations, newspapers and magazines in order to shape public opinion in their favour. The mid-90s saw two leading information empires emerge in Russia belonging to Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky, respectively. Each of them boasted a television channel, a daily newspaper, and a weekly magazine. The empires, which maintained close financial and political links with the authorities, in no small way contributed to Boris Yeltsin's victory at 1996 presidential elections.
But in 2000-2001, both empires ridden by debts collapsed, helped by the advent to power of a new president and his team. Vladimir Putin set the course towards limiting the influence of business on politics and on expelling the oligarchs from the corridors of power. Gusinsky-owned media, not without state assistance, passed to the main creditor of the media empire, the gas concern Gazprom. Boris Berezovsky, who emigrated to London, was stripped of his main information resource, i.e. ORT, Russia's biggest television channel.
Today there are several large news and publishing groups in Russia, which, as a rule, are associated with some major business. Gazprom-media, which inherited Gusinsky's legacy, is the most diversified of them. It controls one of six federal television channels – NTV, the popular newspaper Trud, the well-known liberal Ekho Moskvy radio station, and some other media.
Vladimir Potanin, the owner of the Interros industrial holding, controls the biggest-circulation and influential national dailies Izvestia and Komsomolskaya Pravda - the traditional Soviet brands which have managed to find their niche in the new market conditions. His news group also includes the popular Evropa-Plus radio station and the Ekspert weekly.
If we are to talk of such a media magnate as the state, in today's Russia its positions are strong mainly on television, with four of the six national television channels owned partly or wholly by the state. Two channels of the four are specialised. One is Kultura (or Culture), very popular among intellectuals and known for its total absence of advertising, and the other is Sport. The state has two more channels - the country's largest ORT and RTR. As for the print media, state presence is little felt there. State-owned radio stations can also hardly be called market leaders. On the other hand, of three big news agencies two are state-owned - ITAR-TASS and RIA Novosti. The third one - Interfax - is a private venture.
The market of daily newspapers is dominated by non-state media. These are, apart from the publications already mentioned, two relics of the Berezovsky empire, Commersant and Nezavisimaya Gazeta. After appearing in the early 1990s, they have maintained their influence. Intellectuals now also read the recently launched Gazeta newspaper, published with the support of the wealthy Novo-Lipetsk iron and steel works. The business newspaper Vedomosti, set up several years ago, has been making good progress and is gaining authority, as it is a project co-authored by The Financial Times and Wall Street Journal. The most popular radio stations are new ones, born in the 1990s and operating on the FM band, such as Russkoye Radio, Avtoradio, Serebryany Dozhd, and Militseiskaya Volna, concentrating on news, entertainment and music. The vanguard youth radio Dinamit-FM has forged to the fore recently.
The Moscow authorities run their own media - these are the TVC television channel, municipal newspapers, magazines for family reading, etc. Another group of publications gravitates towards the electric power monopoly, the national power grid Unified Energy Systems. These are the successfully developing decimetre TV channel RenTV and several newspapers.
Under Russian legislation, foreign investors have the right to own a maximum of 50 per cent of any of the national mass media. But a foreign presence on the Russian media market has been inconspicuous until now, because the professional influential Russian press is of little if any commercial interest. It is important mainly for its political, propaganda or image-building value. Only illustrated tabloids or newspapers carrying free advertising bring in profits, or rather token profits considering the poverty of the population.
The main problem facing Russian media is, according to analysts, the lack of a civilised model of relations with authorities and society. Corporate ethics of Russian media are still in their infancy and very often the target of sharp attacks. Many are exasperated by an abundance of blood and violence on the screens, tabloid journalism, importunate and aggressive advertising, a tendency to carry disputable facts, and to mass-produce rumours and false stories, or deliberately fraudulent information. Media are often used by the business community to promote its own commercial interests, to settle accounts with rivals, to attack authorities and political opponents. Public opinion polls point to declining public faith in media in Russia. The press is accused of being engaged, and voices are often heard calling for greater state control over the content of television programmes, radio broadcasts, and newspaper columns. The situation, however, need not be overdramatised: the Russian press, just as the whole country, is in a state of growth, searching for its place in the new democratic and market reality. Freedom of speech has come to stay in Russian life and is one of the main public values now.
Among media corporate organisations it is possible to mention the Union of Journalists, which has survived since the Soviet days and is dominated by the liberal press, the centrist Mediasoyuz, set up in 2000, the Media Industrial Union, established in 2002 and grouping press leaders, and the National Association of Television and Radio Broadcasters, which has existed since 1995. These are the organisations that seek to build civilised relations between the authorities, business, the press, and society.
The government watchdog concerned with mass media is the Ministry of the Press and Information of Russia.
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