...but this time, was it justified?
Francesca Mereu of the Moscow Times reports while, "[...] the world was holding its breath about the North Ossetian children held hostage, the two main state-owned Russian television channels did not interrupt their regular programming."
Instead, "Channel One and Rossia continued showing a film and a documentary while CNN, the BBC and EuroNews were broadcasting live pictures of half-naked and bloodied children running terrified through the streets of Beslan, thirstily grabbing water bottles [...] Russian viewers had to wait almost an hour before getting news from the two main state channels."
Anna Kachkayeva, a media analyst for Radio Liberty, exclaimed, "It is ridiculous that the first pictures of what happened in Beslan were broadcast by international media, while our state channels did not stop their programming,"
NTV owned radio station, Ekho Moskvy, resorted to translating live reports from CNN.news and Interfax.
"By Saturday, all channels restored their usual programming and the events in Beslan were already old news," Mereu reports.
NTV's live footage was stopped at 1:54 p.m. when special forces started moving toward the school. The station apparently decided not to risk a repeat of the criticism it took after showing the special forces raid on the Dubrovka theater in October 2002.It is important to note NTV was the only media station openly critical of the government's war in Chechnya from 1994-96 and the conflicts that ensued. According to the MT, "NTV spent much of 2000 battling its state-controlled creditors for survival." (emphasis mine)NTV was accused of jeopardizing the operation to free the hostages, although it insisted the footage was shown with a delay. This was considered the main reason for NTV general director Boris Jordan losing his job in January 2003. (more...)
According to Robert Coalson (a program director for the National Press Institute of Russia), in a piece published by the Committee for the Protection of Journalists,
Although no one knows for certain, experts estimate that at least 80 percent of the newspapers in Russia are formally controlled by state organs. A significant proportion of the remainder are informally controlled by the state through "private" commercial structures.According to the best estimates of the National Press Institute of Russia, as many as 50 percent of the Russian population have no access to information that is not generated and packaged by the state.
"Raf Shakirov did not immediately give the reasons behind the move, Interfax news agency reported. But sources close to Izvestia's owners told MosNews that Shakirov's firing was initiated by the Kremlin, infuriated by the newspaper's coverage of the Beslan hostage drama."
Shakirov has a history of "resignations" and firings as a result of his criticisms. As editor-in-chief of the Kommersant-Daily newspaper, Shakirov was "dismissed in connection with an article criticizing the then Russian prime minister, Yevgeny Primakov."
Putin is unlikely to quickly ward off increasing domestic and international media criticism as contrasting reports and alleged lies and coverups emanating from the Kremlin continue. Mosnews.com briefly describes the growing anger,
The popular daily tabloid Moskovsky Komsomolets blasted the government for what it called "lies" over the latest terror attacks. "We are constantly being lied to," the paper wrote, referring to the latest crashes, as well as earlier blasts on a Moscow street that preceded them.Meanwhile... the media repression continues..."I will never believe," the article goes, "that special forces did not know how many hostages were being held in Beslan." Official statistics put the number at 354, but witnesses said well over 1,200 were being held.
The daily Kommersant, however, wrote that blaming such events on international terrorism, as the Kremlin has done, "allows governments all over the world not to assume their responsibilities for the deaths of their citizens," joining a number of papers that expressed surprise and concern that Putin did not mention the conflict in Chechnya when talking about the recent events.
"It's as if all the children did not die because of a war in Chechnya that has been going on for 10 years, but because international terrorism has been on the attack," the newspaper wrote.
Under suspicious circumstances, two prominent Moscow journalists known for their critical coverage of the military campaign in Chechnya failed to make it to North Ossetia to cover the hostage crisis in Beslan.The detainment of Andrei Babitsky appears better organized then the special forces plans to storm the school building. Anyone familiar with state-sponsored media censorship in throughout the former USSR can attest to the blatant and unabashed mistreatment of Radio Liberty's Andrei Babitsky.
Radio Liberty reporter Andrei Babitsky was detained Thursday at Vnukovo Airport and prevented from flying to Mineralniye Vody while police, who said they suspected him of carrying explosives, searched his bags.After no explosives were found, Babitsky was released, but two men approached him and started provoking him. All three men were detained, and Babitsky was charged with "hooliganism." He was sentenced Friday to five days in jail.
In a separate incident Thursday, Anna Politkovskaya, who covers Chechnya for Novaya Gazeta, fell ill on her way to Beslan and had to be hospitalized. Her editor said she was poisoned.
Politkovskaya was flying from Vnukovo Airport to Rostov-on-Don and fainted on the plane. Immediately after landing, she was taken to a local hospital, where doctors found she had been poisoned, Novaya Gazeta editor Dmitry Muratov told the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.
Excerpts from an article I wrote in 2000 discussing the repression of media coverage of the Russian-Chechen engagements from the '94-96 war forward can be found below.
Journalist accounts of the 1994-96 Chechnya campaign devastated the morale of Russia's military prowess, as well as the public's faith, in what was realistically portrayed to the world as a disreputable defeat. The second offensive on Chechnya, was deployed with but one thing in mind, victory at all costs. Promising a punishing and unrelenting attack on the rebel province, Russia gradually overcame the scrappy, albeit strong-willed resistance, liberating the capital of Grozny, and moving on to the remaining mountain strongholds.
In noncompliance with their plan, were the media soldiers on a mission to expose what the world would later see as reminders of Soviet practices of past experience. Ruthless atrocities performed not only on rebel POWS, but of Chechen civilians as well surfaced from the battlefront, along with rumors of concentration or "interrogation" camps and random weapons searches of no intention other than to harass. Politically defiant members of the media are quick to face the wrath of the Kremlin's intolerance for meddlesome conflict. On March 16th, a Yak-40 jet, carrying nine passengers out of Moscow, including Western-sympathetic journalist Artyom Borovik who was known for his reports of the Soviet Army's defeat in Afghanistan, and also of the corruption in Yeltsin's cabinet, mysteriously plunged to the earth just shortly after takeoff.
Vivid accounts of horrific atrocities in Chechnya were helped brought to light by the Russian journalist, Andrei Babitsky, a widely-renown correspondent of the U.S. funded Radio Liberty organization. Babitsky operated dangerously in the face of the Kremlin as a security threat with each report he conveyed to the West. Constantly having to cover his tracks and disappear, only to allegedly resurface again in time, Babitsky was detained by Russian troops in mid-January, accused of being a guerilla unit. Moscow's disdain for the media was apparent when, by his own request, Babitsky was transferred to Chechen guerrillas in exchange for two Russian captives. However, much uncertainty to whether the exchange actually took place stood, as the two Chechen representatives were masked during the taped trade-off. Oleg Kusov, a Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe colleague recently spoke with Babitsky, who told him he refused to be traded to masked men, and told the Russians he'd not comply with the exchange.
Babitsky stated in an interview published on Radio Liberty's website, "I can say to you that at first I was not in the hands of the special security forces but of sadists who detained me at the Chernokozovo concentration camp," The Chernokozovo "filtration" camp, rumored instances of torture, rape, and beatings of soldiers, journalists, and citizens.
[Then] [a]cting President Vladimir Putin expressed his disapproval for Babitsky's containment in detention, and ordered officials to investigate the issue. Meanwhile, Babitsky declared himself on a hunger strike until he is freed. Interfax reports Putin speaking on Babitsky's case, "I don't think that the law enforcement organs should be holding him behind bars," and that obviously "[Babitsky] fell into a difficult situation, and got completely mixed up. It is inexpedient to hold Babitsky in custody and I asked him to deal with this case more carefully."
Source: "Russian Media Muzzled; Citizen support, main concern" Ultramark 2000
© whatsakyer?, 2000-2004.
Posted by Kyer at September 6, 2004 09:15 AM