NOTE: I have no verification that this image and the news stories captured are real. But even if fake, you get the idea…
Western media’s coverage of the evolution of civil and political liberties in Russia can be rather misleading. The predominance of negative news on the matter can lead to the paradoxical question: how can the violation of the freedom of press occur in a society where – we are constantly told – there is no freedom of press to begin with?
The press and media landscape in Russia has many more gray zones than the Western media leads us to believe.
(By EM Bits reader TM)
It is undeniable that since the beginning of the Ukrainian crisis, the State’s grip on the media has indeed tightened. Most notably, the Parliament approved in record speed new legislation that limits to 20% of the total value of the entrepreneurship the foreign control of means of communication. The most obvious aim of the new law is the prestigious daily paper Vedomosti, a joint venture of the Financial Times Group (UK), Dow Jones (US) and Sanoma (Finland), but other important international media conglomerates such as Walt Disney and Bauer Media might also be forced to sell assets. The Kremlin also determined de shutting down of local independent television “dozhd” and a couple of websites on apparently politically motivated allegations of breaching internal regulations.
But the results were certainly disappointing from the government’s perspective. Those enterprises rapidly reopened in Latvia and Lithuania’s jurisdictions (including “dozhd” which metamorphosed into an internet TV channel).
However important, those violations on freedom of speech often lead to incorrect perception by foreign observers. This is because the information war inside Russia is not fought by the Kremlin using blatant censorship as its main weapon. Comparably, the Kremlin has already proved that is capable of fixing elections if necessary, but they know the cost in terms of possible public outcry. That’s why they usually they resource to much more subtle means of political management. The same goes for the media: there is censorship, but also a lot of freedom.
This chart above was created by the London based The Calvert Journal.
The key point to understand in the Russian media landscape is than 90% of the population use television as the primary source for information. And regarding television, state channels are by far the most popular – although not the only ones available for the public. Sure there have been growing antagonism against tech companies (see FT articles here and here), but the truth is that the elites have virtually unlimited access to as much independent information as they want – though this does not mean that all of them agree with prevailing views in the Western world.
A centuries old mistake (for which some have paid really dare) is to underestimate the depth and sophistication of Russian society.
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