CRISIS FAINTLY BOOSTS PRESS FREEDOM; PUBLIC SNOOZES

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 MOSCOW 001505

SENSITIVE
SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: PGOV PHUM KDEM ECON SOCI RS
SUBJECT: CRISIS FAINTLY BOOSTS PRESS FREEDOM; PUBLIC SNOOZES


1. (SBU) Summary: Criticism of GOR policy in some print and
internet media has sharpened as the financial crisis has
taken hold. This has raised hopes among some liberal
observers that the financial crisis will improve press
freedom in Russia, by forcing GOR officials to be more open
to criticism as a hedge against popular discontent.
Criticism of the GOR comes from largely the same sources as
it did pre-crisis, and liberal stories are aimed at a small
audience of highly-educated readers who lack the ability to
influence GOR policy. Outside of elite groups concentrated
in large cities, Russians largely continue to ignore
political issues in favor of stories about business,
entertainment, or sports, and they continue to derive the
majority of their information from state-run television.
Prospects for the media to perform their traditional duty of
holding government accountable on behalf of an active,
educated citizenry remain small. The financial straits
imposed on media entities by the crisis may ironically help
press freedom by severing their ties to "sponsors," and thus
rendering them more independent. End Summary.

Criticism in print and internet media; none on TV
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2. (SBU) As the financial crisis has deepened, criticism of
the GOR in print and Internet media has sharpened. In
addition to obvious examples such as Novaya Gazeta and the
New Times, three staid, respected dailies -- Kommersant,
Vedomosti, and Nezavisimaya Gazeta -- have consistently and
explicitly criticized the GOR for, among other things,
preventing opposition marches, the Khodorkovskiy trial, and
GOR handling of the March mayoral elections in Sochi.
Vedomosti, which is published in conjunction with the Wall
Street Journal, has printed articles written by
Khodorkovskiy; Kommersant praised the most recent U.S. Human
Rights Report which took Russia to task for a variety of
rights abuses; and Nezavisimaya Gazeta -- whose owner,
Konstantin Remchukov, is a former member of the Union of
Right Forces -- recently ran an editorial entitled "The
Training of Responsible Citizens to be the Guarantors of the
Country's Future," which calls for the formation of a genuine
opposition to the government.


3. (SBU) The Internet also contains numerous examples of
uncensored airing of views in opposition to the government or
to prevailing national symbols. In perhaps the most extreme
example of free rein for an oppositionist, Kremlin irritant
Valeriya Novodvorskaya wrote on May 8, in response to the
State Duma proposal to criminalize the questioning of the
Soviet World War II victory, that the Western allies should
have defeated Stalin along with Hitler. (Note: Novodvorskaya
has not always escaped Kremlin wrath in the past; in August
2008, Ekho Moskvy removed her from their rolls under GOR
pressure after she defended the actions of the terrorist
Shamil Basayev. End Note.) The website that published this
posting, grani.ru, contains daily examples of anti-GOR
vitriol, but thus far has received no adverse reaction from
the authorities. The same may also be said for other
independent websites, such as gazeta.ru; the websites of
well-known rights defenders such as Memorial, Oleg Panfilov's
Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations, or Human Rights
Watch; or even Khodokovskiy's website.


4. (SBU) Broadcast media, however, from which most Russians
get their news, have largely remained tightly controlled
during the financial crisis, with brief reports parroting the
party line, and an emphasis on bland entertainment.
Independent journalist and human rights activist Svetlana
Sorokina told us May 19 that she sees such entertainment as
specifically designed to distract viewers from social and
economic problems. She added that she considered the radio
station Ekho Moskvy and occasional investigative reports on
REN-TV -- an independent channel that only appears in major
cities -- to be tiny drops in an ocean of otherwise compliant
broadcast media.

Most Russians ignore political issues
--------------


5. (SBU) Even as criticism of the GOR has sharpened, most
Russians continue to show little interest in political
issues, favoring instead stories about business,
entertainment, or sports. As the quantity of information has
increased, the quality has decreased. Sorokina said that
readers and viewers are drawn to "yellow" journalism and
tabloids over substantive news reporting. Government
accountability has morphed into interest in scandals about
the personal lives of public figures, and only "sanctioned
scandals" touch upon any political figures. Sorokina also
noted that, as Russians have done historically, many still
follow the model of the "good tsar and the bad boyars,"

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leaving some people beyond criticism. Broadcast media have
repeatedly portrayed Putin personally "solving" economic
problems around the country. As Sorokina noted, it is a
common tactic for politicians in any country to define an
attack on them as an attack on the country. In Russia,
however, Sorokina calls it "the eternal story."


6. (SBU) Although all of the necessary information for an
active populace holding its government accountable is there
for the taking among some newspapers and websites, few
Russians are interested. Expressing a commonly held view
among media commentators, Oleg Panfilov told us May 13 that
questions about censorship in Russia are "pointless," because
an authoritarian government does not need censorship in a
country where people "do not know how to live like free
people." He noted that Kommersant prints only 300,000 copies
in a country of 141 million people, and therefore that is was
logical that "Putin went after TV first." (Note: Senior
Kommersant correspondent Andrey Kozenko told us June 5 that
at the time of peresroika, Kommersant issued 1 million
copies, but that "yellow" publications had taken Kommersant's
market share. End Note.) Panfilov related a joke he had
heard in which one activist says, "We must change the
government!", and the other responds, "No -- We need to
change the population." In a June 2 conversation, Andrey
Rikhter of the Center for Media and Law Policy agreed that
thus far, the public has depended on television information
as much as it did before the crisis -- "it is cheap, simple,
and graphic." Kozenko told us that he had noticed an
increase of 20 or 30 percent in "hits" on politically
provocative stories on his paper's website, and added that
his father, who runs an opposition paper in Saratov, reported
a recent significant increase in sales. However, few
examples of this change in reader/viewer interest have
emerged.

The five percent solution
--------------


7. (SBU) Given that GOR criticism thus comes from largely the
same sources as it did pre-crisis, and given the high level
of apolitical sentiment among the Russian populace, it
follows that liberal stories are aimed at a small audience of
highly-educated readers who lack the ability to influence GOR
policy. Kozenko acknowledged that his elite readership
generally has pre-formed political opinions which it expects
to see reflected in Kommersant's articles. Panfilov asserted
that allowing freedom in print and Internet media neatly fits
with the Kremlin's political needs; people who gain their
news from these two types of media never exceed five percent,
which as it happens is below the seven percent barrier (under
proposal to be reduced to five) that a party must overcome to
achieve Duma representation. He acknowledged that Internet
access in Russia is approximately 25 percent (by some
measures, 30 percent),but said that most people are not
using it to learn any political information; if one looks at
the number of hits on gazeta.ru, he said, it stays within the
aforementioned boundary of five percent. (Note: Medvedev
recently floated a proposal to decrease the Duma barrier even
further, to three percent; but the proposal is still in its
fledgling stage, and would encounter huge resistance from the
dominant United Russia party. End note.)

More journalists under threat
--------------


8. (SBU) As pundits examine the prospects for media freedom,
instances of individual journalists under threat continue.
Kozenko told us that local papers vary widely in their
coverage, with a number of papers freely criticizing local
authorities and uncovering corruption; instances of violence
happen more rarely, but are egregious enough to capture
international attention when they do take place.
Nonetheless, according to Panfilov's latest data through May
31, so far in 2009 17 journalists have been beaten and/or
physically attacked, one has been killed, 17 have been
arrested, and 226 court cases have been opened against them.
While print and Internet media remain by and large
uncensored, press freedom advocates nervously keep an eye on
GOR policy, noting the occasional suppression of an
independent voice. On June 2, Volgograd reporter Yelena
Maglevannaya requested political asylum in Finland after an
article she wrote for the opposition paper Svobodnoye Slovo
("Free Word"),in which she quoted a Chechen man's
allegations that he was tortured in a local prison, earned
her unwelcome attention from both the GOR and from an extreme
nationalist group who advocated her murder on their website.
A court ordered her to publish a retraction, and her refusal
to do so could land her in prison for up to two years.


9. (SBU) In March, blogger Dmitry Solovyev, a member of the

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opposition movement "Oborona," was charged with inciting
hatred and "denigrating human dignity" after he questioned
the basis for the constitutional structure of the government
and state security. Several days after the Solovyev case, a
working group in the State Duma announced proposed amendments
to the media law giving the GOR greater control over Internet
media. Similar endeavors in the past have not moved forward;
however, the issue is likely to come to a head by January 1,
2010, when the proposed amendments would come into force.

No Money, No Problems?
--------------


10. (SBU) One area in which the crisis may ironically help
press freedom is in affording journalists greater
independence. People commonly assume that the crisis will
deal a devastating blow to the already tenuous budgets of
independent media dependent on a dwindling customer base or
donors' largess. However, some of our contacts believe that
independent media can flourish in an arid financial
environment. Rikhter told us June 2 that in his view, the
financial difficulties brought on by the crisis might, in
itself, be a catalyst for positive change. Rikhter
acknowledged that his "grand idea" needs to be proven.
Nonetheless, he argued that the crisis will bring a "golden
age" for Russian journalism by forcing newspapers and
magazines that depend on government or business "sponsors" to
fall back on their own means of survival, thus allowing
greater freedom in their editorial policy. Kozenkov agreed,
adding that if sponsors become financially weak, they will
stop "corrupting" journalists who mostly depend today on the
likes and dislikes of the sponsors, rather than those of
their readers/viewers/listeners.

Comment
--------------


11. (SBU) Public apathy and avoidance of political issues
remain a fact of life in Russia, largely undisturbed by the
financial crisis. Our contacts uniformly tell us, however,
that they are impressed by the level of flexibility,
curiosity, and open-minded thinking among the young people
with whom they interact. Since vast numbers of young
Russians take advantage of the modern freedom of travel to
visit the U.S. and other Western countries every year, it
would be impossible to completely control the information to
which people have access. The biggest problem with
information flow in Russia appears to be the public's lack of
interest in that information, meaning that a change in this
trend commensurate with this exposure to foreign cultures
appears the most likely way in which problems of "freedom of
the press" will improve.
BEYRLE