| Failure of information
policy in Chechnya Official sources attempt to replace objectivity with lies. By Oleg Panfilov About Oleg Panfilov - he's the director of the Centre for Extreme Journalism In the ancient Soviet times, the Krokodil [satire and humour] magazine periodically reviewed articles published in the Western press, summing up a "stream of slanders about the Soviet Union" in a column called "Meyli Yemeyl." This is how Soviet satirists used the saying "Chatter, Yemelya, away - it's your day" [part of which sounds like column's name above, intended as pun on English-language newspaper names] to persuade their compatriots that all published in the West was nothing but lies. Succession is obvious. Recently, the number of articles criticizing the Russian domestic political situation has noticeably increased. Here are some of them published since early August: "Russia Has Lost Its Authority" (Berliner Zeitung), "Terrorist Act in Mozdok Disproves Putin's Words" (Liberation), "Criticism Aimed At Russian Prosecutors. They Are Accused of Negligence, Incompetence, and Corruption" (Die Welt), "Russian Detente Policy in Chechnya Is a Farce" (Die Tageszeitung), "Fear of Terror Becomes Commonplace in Russian Life" (Frankfurter Rundschau), "Chechnya: War Without Rules" (Sueddeutsche Zeitung). It stands to reason that an overwhelming majority of critical articles are devoted to the situation in Chechnya. Active state officials like to repeat that articles of this kind represent "interference in Russian internal affairs." Unfortunately, someone who is not lazy is forced to dig through the Internet or habitually tune in to a foreign radio station to hear news from this southern Russian republic. Why? After the Khasavyurt accords of 1996, there was hardly any military official who doubted that revenge was needed: Practically immediately, the Russian official propaganda launched a powerful information campaign. Most of the reports from Chechnya abounded in definitions such as "Chechen bandits" and all emergency situations were accompanied with opinions about a "Chechen connection." Since the beginning of the second Chechen war, Russian society has been held in an information blockade. The authorities started to intimidate journalists with the Law "On Fight Against Terrorism" already in late 1999, when a counterterrorist operation began. For those who agreed to be smart, they set up the Russian Information Centre, which quite soon discredited itself with open propaganda. In January of 2000, they created an apparatus of presidential assistant Sergey Yastrzhembskiy, who was put in charge of organizing journalists' tours of Chechnya under the escort of Russian Army officers. My colleagues said that those events look more like prison walks. Mostly foreign journalists with accreditation went with Yastrzhembskiy on such trips. Notably, many mass media representatives who covered the first Chechen war were denied a visa: a little dirty trick on the part of the Russian Foreign Ministry. Meanwhile, Russian journalists had quickly realized advantages of state patriotism over professional responsibility. Uniformed people started flashing on television screens: General Aleksandr Zdanovich, General Valeriy Manilov, and finally FSB [Federal Security Service] Colonel Ilya Shabalkin, dispatched to Chechnya from the UFSB [FSB Directorate] in Penza. They even attempted to convince society that (as the ITAR-TASS agency reported at the very beginning of the second war, citing one of the leaders of the North-Caucasian Military District) "the Chechen bandits themselves mine residential buildings and blow them up when federal aviation appears in the sky." Four years have passed since then. The military leadership has repeatedly declared that the war is over and peaceful life begins. Yet, the Chechen Constitution has been adopted and presidential elections appointed but the war is still under way. Terrorist acts are a continuation of the war. Predictions made in the first months of this campaign about a guerilla war, a war hurting the entire society, waged without rules or laws have come true. Rank-and- file citizens watching newscasts on Russian television channels do not know whom they should believe: officials, who keep talking about the unshakable settlement process, or events, which have kept society in stress in the past 10 decades? Even Colonel Shabalkin has become noticeably rounder and official information is becoming increasingly silly and improbable, but the war is still going on, people in Chechnya are still dying, and civilians are still being abducted - the information blockade has not saved the situation. A rhetoric question: Should society know the truth? If you recall the Russian Constitution, yes, it has the right to know it. Officials persistently claim that the war is over. Why, then, are journalists still not allowed to go to Chechnya? It is not true that it is dangerous for them to work in Chechnya. If you monitor carefully world press publications, you will see that foreign journalists go there now and then - even if fearing repression and at the risk of being denied accreditation. To them, the verbiage from official mouthpieces is no argument. They go and report that things totally different from what Russian television claims are going on there. Society should know why the war continues. Why huge money is spent in vain, why Nord-Ost and Tushino happened, and why Chechen girls and elders are kidnapped. One can recall traditions of the Soviet counterpropaganda and again hold the Western press up to shame. But times are different now, the information blockade cannot go on for a long time, and Russian society will sooner or later learn not to believe propaganda. http://www.ng.ru/politics/2003-08-11/2_chechnia.html |