Broadcasting chief resigns over Putin documentary

The great lesson from the recent Russian Parliamentary election campaign is very simple: expect the expected. Russian media was, at best, compliant and, at worst, complicit. But who would expect Russian influence on media to drive into the European Union?

Latvian Television (LTV) General Director Janis Holsteins resigned (December 5), accepting responsibility for postponing the showing of the documentary, Putin’s System, scheduled to air December 1st, the day before the Russian Parliamentary elections.  The film was shown, rescheduled, December 4th.

Putin’s System (Le Système Poutine) is a documentary film by French producer Jean-Michel Carré. It debuted in mid November at the Rencontre Internationales Du Documentaires De Montreal. It’s been shown on Canadian public TV and France 2. It was not shown on LTV7 after objections, according to Latvian news agency LETA, from the Russian Embassy and the Latvian Foreign Ministry. The documentary has been reviewed as less than complimentary to President Putin.

Latvia has a substantial Russian population, like Lithuania and Estonia, now middle aged who either opted for Russian citizenship or became officially state-less. Latvian media is almost equally divided between Latvian and Russian language. As expected, Latvian language media was generally critical of the Russian Parliamentary election results as the Russian language media was supportive. According to Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa) about 30,000 Russian citizens in the three Baltic countries voted in the Russian Parliamentary elections Sunday (December 2).

Holsteins originally said the broadcast of Putin’s System would be delayed to double-check the translation. Russian citizens in Latvia would be “brainwashed” if the documentary were shown, said National Radio and Television Council (NRTP) Chairman Abrams Kleckins. Latvian President Valdis Zatlers was asked (December 5) if Kleckins should also go. “The most important thing is to make sure that there is no censorship in Latvia,” he said.

Yesterday (December 5) Latvian Prime Minister Aigars Kalvitis and his entire cabinet resigned amidst corruption scandals. - Michael Hedges December 6, 2007

ftm gratefully acknowledges the contributions of media sleuths in Latvia, Russia, France and Canada for this report

Keywords:broadcasting in Latvia, Vladmir Putin

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