Putin pressures the press

Last week the editors and managers of Russia's last independent national TV station were ousted by a state-owned shareholder. Jasper Thornton asks what is happening
There is a joke Russians tell about themselves. An American goes up to heaven and asks God: "how long until my country is OK?" Ten years, replies God. The disheartened American bursts into tears. Next a Briton steps up. "Well, how long until my country is all right?" he asks. A hundred years, I'm afraid, says God. The Briton weeps. Finally a Russian approaches the heavenly seat. And when will Russia be OK? he demands. After a moment God begins to cry. Such black humour seemed out of place only a year ago. Observers hailed the progress that Russia had made. Vladimir Putin seemed ready to tackle corruption. He claimed to value a free press. The economy was growing seven percent a year. But lately these totems have begun to wobble. Last week's assault on one of the last redoubts of the independent media in Russia is giving observers of all stripes plenty to lament.
On Friday, 13 April, Russia's last independent TV station Nezavasimove Televideniye (NTV), along with two sister newspapers, crashed firmly into the orbit of the state. Gazprom, the national energy company, which owns just under half of NTV, gathered the votes it needed to take over the management from a private company, Media-MOST. Gazprom swiftly dismissed Media-MOST from further involvement in the affairs of the station. Media-MOST is owned by Vladimir Guzinsky, the founder of NTV. Guzinsky is now in Spain fleeing fraud charges made by the Russian authorities. In Madrid, a distressed Guzinsky announced, "NTV does not exist anymore."
Gazprom recruited unlikely allies for its coup in the form of a small brigade of international financiers, led by Boris Jordan, a US citizen of Russian parents. The group, which also included US mogul Ted Turner and capitalist George Soros, owned a handful of shares in NTV, but enough to give Gazprom the 50 per cent of votes it needed to wrest control of NTV. The sweetener for Jordan was his installation as new director general of NTV. Despite a sprint exodus by NTV journalists; despite doubts over the legality of the move; despite hopes of a haul back from the precipice by Ted Turner, Gazprom had its hands firmly on NTV by the beginning of last week. Jordan vowed that the Gazprom takeover would improve NTV's finances but leave "its editorial independence untouched." Three out of four NTV journalists, including the chief editor, showed what they thought of that pledge by stampeding for the door. Meanwhile human rights liberal law-maker, Sergei Kovalyov, thundered, "This is the KGB at the helm."
The brittle finances of NTV are a chimera. For a while, the Russian state has been stifling press freedom. Making independence financially unviable is a favoured method. For example, most of the exiled NTV journalists went straight to local TV station TNT, which is still managed by Media-MOST. That very day, the taxation department turned up, claiming all sorts of tax evasions and dues which TNT furiously refuted. Such ploys are commonly used by authoritarian regimes the world over who offer the olive branch of press freedom with one hand for the benefit of international watchers, only to snatch it away with the other by charging financial impropriety. In the case of NTV, the company was harassed repeatedly over its indebtedness by the authorities. In a brilliant bit of reporting, the Moscow Times, last February got hold of and published the audits of ORT and RTR, NTV's state rivals. Their financial mismanagement well surpassed that of NTV. But the state auditors merely called for unnamed "improvements," then offered the companies a state loan.
Yevgenia Albats, a Moscow journalist, recalls another scam. She worked for both NTV and RTR at different times. NTV paid her salary into a bank account with full records sent to the tax office. At state rivals RTR, Albats tells how accountants paid her almost three quarters of her wage in a brown envelope. She and other journalists complained to bosses that they were being dragged into a tax dodge. Their bosses ignored them. Two of those bosses are now in Putin's cabinet. All these tactics made running an independent media company fiendish. But now, the authorities do not care to maintain even the illusion of press plurality. The state has finally hooded independent scrutiny of its conduct.
Commentators report that the treatment of NTV derives from its coverage of the war in Chechnya. The station has criticised government policy, even interviewing Chechen leaders on one of its programmes. Chechnya is a delicate nerve for the Russian government. Putin has found his campaigning in the province useful. Reported war successes boosted his standing in the polls at election time. Killing a few pesky Muslims nicely brought the rest of the country together. So any exposure of the human rights abuses, the military setbacks and the sheer dirtiness of the campaign, not to mention allowing Chechens to make their case, infuriates the Kremlin.
Not everyone is unhappy with events at NTV. Commentators like Boris Kagarlitsky, a political liberal who objects to free trade, charge NTV with being in thrall to moguls, if not to the state. He claims that the station promotes the interests of big business without regard to the needs of huge swathes of the Russian people. For that reason, Kagarlitsky, a Moscow-based sociologist, refused to mourn the state's seizure of the TV station. The turnouts at demonstrations for the beleaguered station were low -- far less, for example, than occurred in Prague when authorities tried to truncate TV freedom there. Only 5,000 went to a Moscow demonstration for NTV: a tiny number for a station supposedly enjoyed by 125 million, and a sign that NTV was indeed out of touch with the aspirations of many Russians.
But that is no excuse for choking NTV's independence. A healthy free press articulates a range of views, and distasteful as some may have found NTV's neo-liberal majorettes, the station's line was not the government's. Russia is at a delicate stage. Its economic progress, underpinned by a high oil price, is beginning to look unsure. When the oil price falls, Putin's failure to make any structural changes to the Russian financial and economic apparatus will become plain. Already the wagons are being circled: the sudden spate of spy charges against American students and the harassment of businessmen with contacts to foreigners, is a sign of an incipient intolerant nationalism. In such circumstances a free press can ensure that the country, and indeed the state, is alerted when wrong headed policies go perilously awry. Now, with the dumbing of NTV, independent commentary will be harder to find.
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