Free speech on TV in Putin's Russia

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Monday, February 7, 2005. Issue 3100. Page 8.
Free Speech Does Not Fit the Script
By Yevgenia Albats

It was a rather unexpected phone call for these days. The producer of a talk show at one of the major television channels called to invite me as an expert on an upcoming program. "Are you sure? Did you run my name by your boss?" I asked. I know where I live, and I'm aware that there are lists of those who are allowed on national television and those who are not.

The young woman was confident: "I never cancel guests. The topic to be discussed is the increase of violence on television. So what is your take? Do we need a law banning violent scenes from television?" No, we don't, I said. There is no need to get the state involved in the realm of people's personal choices. Obviously, she didn't remember the Soviet era, when the state chose to play "Big Father" to us all, cutting sex, violence and, of course, unwelcome politics from television screens and feeding us a boring diet of the better world of communism to come. It never came, however.

"Sure, but violence is even on the evening news. Some say that those who run the networks are pushing violence to get higher ratings and more ads. Do you agree?" she asked. Yes, I told her, I did think that television should be socially conscious and responsible. Yet the reason why there is a constant supply of corpses on the news is not just because journalists lack taste, but also because the news menu is far too short nowadays. This, in turn, is because the Kremlin allows too few things to be broadcast by the major television channels. Chechnya is off-limits, for example, yet people are dying there on a daily basis. To cut a long story short, I said, if all television moguls care about is what President Vladimir Putin said, where he went and whom he handed out awards to -- of course, I was exaggerating a bit -- then you have no choice but to show police blotters on the news.

She said she needed to talk to someone and would call me back. She did. "You know, your point of view doesn't fit the script," she said. "No kidding. It doesn't?" I replied sarcastically. "You had better be careful when acknowledging such things to a journalist," I warned her. She didn't get me: "This is what we always do. We have to call several people before we find someone whose point of view fits the script." I laughed. After all, you had to give her credit: At least she was straightforward.

Another young woman from another major television channel who called me a couple of months ago was not. The topic of her show was a hot one, the new law that the Moscow City Duma was about to pass that would free the hands of confidential informers in a way reminiscent of the Soviet era. Sure, I was interested, I said, and asked right away if she had checked my name with her superiors. Her answer was an unexpected pleasure. She said she had read my book on the KGB, which came out in Russia in the early 1990s, and she believed I was the right person for the discussion. I asked her to e-mail me the legislation, so I could do some homework before the show. And, yes, I asked her to consult her superiors again, just in case. She was confident: Everything was set, and all I had to do was come into the studio in the next couple of days.

She did e-mail me the bill the next morning. But she never called back.

I wasn't and I am not surprised. Yet there is always room for curiosity. For instance, last Thursday, NTV ran the pre-recorded debate show "K Baryeru!" It featured zealous anti-Semite and member of the State Duma General Albert Makashov ranting about Jews for more than an hour.

Much of what he said was in direct violation of the Constitution and in any court would be declared the fomenting of ethnic and religious intolerance.

My question is a simple one: Why did that view fit the script? And who authorized it?