Television News: Form And Content

Michael Hedges November 29, 2010 Follow on Twitter

Television news is like fruitcake; looks good, cooks debate the best recipes and nobody really likes it. Endlessly, mercilessly critics skewer both. There’s too much sugar, not enough booze and the nuts rise to the top.

“This is someone with whom I have had a long, never-ending argument over which is more important, form or content,” said Vladimir Posner introducing the recipient of a distinguished award for Russian television news, reported Kommersant (November 27). Accepting this recognition well-regarded television news reporter Leonid Parfyonov then ripped an emotional seven-minute critique. In the audience were almost every Russian media heavyweights, including All-Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company (VGTRK) Chairman Oleg Dobrodeev, CTC Media CEO Anton Kudryashov, Russia Today chief editor Margarita Simonyan and REN TV CEO Alexander Ordzhonikidze. Had the luminaries of Russian media known the content of Parfyonov’s remarks prior to the event, suggested Kommersant, none of them would have showed up.

“This morning I was in the hospital with Oleg Kashin,” began Parfyonov, clearly setting the stage. Oleg Kashin, a newspaper reporter, recently received an award for investigating touchy subjects – a savage beating. “Those who say, ‘so what, a journalist's been beaten up, it happens all the time’ don't understand that when a journalist takes risks in his professional work, it's for the sake of his audience.”

After recognizing and thanking the dignitaries Parfyonov pointed out that Russian television news is “familiar to anyone who remembers the Central Television of the USSR.” Parfyonov has worked for several Russian television channels, often producing documentaries, as well as Russian Newsweek as chief editor. He’ll never work again, suggested a commentator on radio channel Ekho Moscvy (November 26). “Maybe in Georgia.”

Russian television news, he continued, “is not news, not information at all, but masterful PR or anti-PR. It’s just old stuff that becomes habitual. The correspondent is then not a journalist but a bureaucrat following the service and logic of obedience.”

“The highest authorities are beginning to look like the dear departed,” said Parfyonov, “of whom one says good things or nothing at all.” Russian State Channel One organized the event with the Russian Academy of Television to honor the memory of television reporter Vladislav Listyev, whose conspiracy laden assassination in 1995 led to a reorganization of Russian State broadcasting. The Channel One video, available on YouTube (see here - in Russian), shows an uncomfortable Parfyonov reading his speech with cut-aways of very nervous dignitaries. Along with the symbolic statuette, Parfyonov receives RUB 1 million, about €25,000.

Media watchers, inside and out, have voiced criticism of Russian media for years. Inside Russia there’s been the sense that the brief perestroika period in the early 1990’s when reporting in all media was robust is gone forever. Leonid Parfyonov cut his TV chops then with NTV, before getting fired. Western media watchers, generally, peg the decline of Russian media to the rise of Vladmir Putin. Criticism of Russian media, by Westerners, comes with a certain irony. Not only in Russia is television news “not news… but masterful PR or anti-PR.”

“Telling the truth (in Russia) means putting your life on the line,” said Fritz Pleitgen to DW-World (May 3). “Regularly on Fridays, television managers are called to the Kremlin and afterwards, they know exactly what is demanded of them. It works its way down the chain and in the end, everyone engages in self-censorship.” Pleitgen’s distinguished media career includes Westdeutschen Rundfunks (WDR) director, European Broadcasting Union (EBU) president and ARD chairman in addition to Moscow and Washington DC correspondent for ARD.

The sycophancy of Russian media is so often reported it’s become a ‘dog bites man’ story. The exceptions – radio station Ekho Moscvy, Kommersant, Novaya Gazeta and many websites – attract far less attention outside Russia.  Inside Russia tabloid fare is the norm, both in broadcast and print, and headlines a distraction. At least in Soviet times Russians used irony to describe their media: “In Pravda there is no news and in Izvestia there is no truth.” Before 1991 newspapers Pravda and Izvestia were, respectively, Communist Party and official Soviet government organs. In Russian, pravda means ‘truth’ and izvestia means ‘news’.

Concern within Russian leadership over message control has taken an almost comical tone when presented internationally. During the Soviet days Radio Moscow became a parody of itself. Everybody understood the spin. The latest incarnation, international television channel Russia Today, is different but then again not.

Russia Today, launched by then Russian President Putin, was one of many international, government funded television news channels designed to counter dominant Western news channels, such as CNN, BBC World and the upstart Al-Jazerra. RT, the new brand name, would be for Russia what France 24 would be for France and Press TV would be for Iran, “presenting an unbiased view,” said chief editor Margarita Simonyan.

In five years Russia Today has grown to about 2,000 employees, studios in Washington DC, Tel Aviv, New York, Paris, Delhi and London, cable and satellite coverage in more than 100 countries and ad campaigns to boot. RT presents news from Russia in the rose-colored-glasses vain similar to the bias of other international TV news channels. The feature material is well-produced – recall Posner’s introductory comment about form versus content.

Earlier this year two highly respected US-based institutions reported critically on an unusual turn at Russia Today.  The Southern Poverty Law Center, established in 1971 “to ensure that the promises of the civil rights movement became a reality for all,” monitors hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan and so-called ‘patriot’ militias. It’s Intelligence Report (Fall 2010) detailed airtime on RT for conspiracy theorists and extremists, fringe viewpoints not challenged while the channel begs for credibility. “Sometimes Russia Today seems to want to have it two ways,” said the article.

The Columbia Journalism Review (CPJ) picked up on the same theme (September 2010), noting RT’s schizophrenia. At one moment American fringe elements – from teabaggers and ‘9/11 truthers’ to climate change deniers – would be elevated to newsworthiness then criticism would be leveled at the American infotainment channel most aligned with those fringe groups – News Corporation owned Fox News. Coverage of the US deportation of ten Russian spies was pure tabloid with “very colorful details.”

“This can be effective,” wrote Julia Ioffe in the CPJ, “until you talk your way into a corner.”

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