#10
Moscow Times
December 11, 2001
Election Cash Blocks Media's Development
By Alexei Pankin
In the November edition of my magazine, Sreda, I published a "Declaration of Ethical Norms for Journalists During Elections." The declaration which comprises seven clauses, was signed by a number of leading Krasnoyarsk media outlets, a region currently in the thick of a gubernatorial election campaign. The signatories state their responsibility to the public, condemn the use of smear tactics and promise to be objective and impartial.
Several days ago, I met with one of the authors of this document. "How is the declaration's implementation going?" I asked. "The hidden advertising revenues have increased sharply," he joked weakly. "Now clients have to pay extra to the press as compensation for them having to break their promises."
In the December edition of Sreda, I am carrying news of the decision by the Siberian regional branch of Mediasoyuz -- one of the public associations uniting media industry employees -- to support the Charter of Honest Journalism, one of the codes of journalistic ethics. This news item serves as an ironic illustration to an article about the role of the press in the scandalous Sakha-Yakutia presidential election campaign. The title of the article is: "It's more profitable to elect a president than to mine diamonds."
Here are a few examples. Two local private newspapers have a print run of 20,000, considering this the optimal level.
The overall print run of newspapers supporting incumbent President Mikhail Nikolayev is almost half a million copies, while the republic's electorate is 550,000 people. The print run of publications supporting Nikolayev's opponents varies between 50,000 and 140,000 copies. Add to this the fact that many publications are distributed for free. How can honest journalists compete? All they can do is join the rest in the queue for election money.
One of the main and, I'm not afraid to say, tragic paradoxes of Russian life in this period of democratic transition is that elections have become one of the chief impediments to creating a truly free, independent and commercially viable press.
A huge amount of money is poured into the press during federal, regional and local elections. Neither legislative restrictions nor the state of the economy have any effect on the "golden rain" that pours down on the press during election campaigns. Provincial journalist acquaintances tell me that during the federal Duma elections in post-crisis 1999, the money spent was of an order of magnitude greater than in prosperous 1995. Journalists and the political consultants think up highly refined gray and black schemes for getting their share of the cash.
As a result a general system of corruption takes hold, with the attendant effect of journalists, politicians and the public becoming very cynical.
In Yakutia, for example, the local prosecutor general arrested several political consultants from Moscow at the end of November. Speaking in their defense, the Russian Public Relations Association in a carefully worded statement did not even try to claim that they had done nothing wrong. All they said was that arrest is too strong a measure in the fight with dirty political campaigning.
Alexei Pankin is the editor of Sreda, a magazine for media professionals (www.internews.ru/sreda)
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