Paul
Goble
Staunton, October 2 – There are many
ways to destroy media freedom, but members of the Russian Duma have come up
with a new one that may prove far more insidious than anyone may now imagine:
They are calling for legislation that would preclude media outlets from
carrying stories about subjects not defined as part of their focus.
If this measure were to be adopted,
sports magazines couldn’t cover political issues, and religious magazines
couldn’t have stories about anything but religion, bans that would seriously
restrict coverage of many issues and render a large number of Russian media
outlets distinctly less interesting than they are now.
When media outlets are given their
licenses, Vadim Dengin, an LDPR deputy says, they define the focus of their
coverage, but many of them then cover whatever they want to. As a result, he
says, Russian media law should be amended so that they cannot do so (znak.com/moscow/articles/01-10-20-33/103023.html
and slon.ru/fast/russia/v-gosdume-predlozhili-zapretit-smi-osveshchat-neprofilnye-temy-1165563.xhtml).
Dengin said that he “considers it
abnormal in an era of information war when a massed information attack on the country
is going on that people who specialize on entertainment media” don’t keep to
their stated purpose but act as social-political media are supposed to do and
cover broader topics.
Not surprisingly, journalists said
that such an approach would not work very well because no media outlet can
define with exactitude what it will cover. One of them with whom Znak.com
spoke, Oleg Kashin, said he assumes that any such law, if adopted, would be
applied in a highly selective and repressive manner.
Thus, Kashin suggested, the authorities
would use it only if they didn’t like a particular article. For example, he said, if “Esquire” were to
publish something critical of the powers that be, then “the government would
remember that this is a journal about male fashion and not a social-political
one.”
In speaking about his proposal, the
LDPR deputy made reference to Hearst Shkulev Media, which publishes “Elle,” “Maxim,”
“Psychologies,” “Schastlivyye roditeli,” and “Woman’s Day,” likely because its
head had given an interview to Slon.ru in which he criticized Dengin himself (slon.ru/russia/viktor_shkulev-1161348.xhtml).
Lest anyone think that the Russian
parliament will ignore such a proposal, it is worth pointing out that Deputy
Dengin was one of the co-authors of the law prohibiting foreigners from owning
more than 20 percent of the capital of Russian media, a law that was adopted by
the Duma on third reading on September 26.
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