"Managed democracy" in the US of A?

If we can all agree that a free press is one of the pillars of a truly democratic society - not part of the textbook definition about one person, one vote, but an institution that allows people to make the informed decisions which are critical to a society being considered democratic - then isn't a country where the media are managed, more and more, by those in power drifting away from the democratic ideal?

I saw a couple of articles last month that made me wonder whether good friends George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin have been comparing notes on how to deal with the pesky press. First was a Michiko Kakutani's review, "After Years of Taking Heat, Spokesman Takes Potshots," of former Bush Press Secretary Ari Fleischer's recent book, The President, the Press and My Years in the White House, which gave the book a thorough trashing and provided a nice synopsis of the Bush Administration's efforts to deceive American media consumers:

[...] In fact, the main usefulness of this book may be that it sheds more light on this White House's mindset vis-а-vis the press. This is an administration, after all, that has preferred carefully choreographed photo ops and stage-managed town hall meetings to regular press conferences (the current President Bush has held fewer than 20 solo news conferences since taking office, compared with 83 held by his father during his four-year term), an administration that has tried to circumvent what it calls the ''filter'' of the national press by courting regional media and having soldiers send form letters to local newspapers asserting that American troops had been welcomed ''with open arms'' by Iraqis.

During the current Mr. Bush's tenure in the White House, federal agencies have been caught distributing videos using paid spokesmen acting as newscasters to promote administration agendas; at least three conservative commentators have been paid to promote or consult on administration policies; and a conservative correspondent using an alias (presumably to camouflage reported links with pornographic Web sites) gained access to the White House and was allowed to ask softball questions at press briefings.

In what seems meant as praise of his boss, Mr. Fleischer writes that President Bush ''was disciplined, knew what he wanted to say and was seldom 'off message'''; he ''would often repeat the same statement to the press, no matter how many different ways they asked their questions.'' The same might be said of Mr. Fleischer. In the case of the former, it has made for an administration accused by its critics of being secretive, insular and defensive. In the case of the latter, it has made for a book that feels insular, defensive and wholly predictable.

The NYT had another excellent and more detailed story about one of the phenomena mentioned by Kakutani:

Under Bush, a New Age of Prepackaged News
By DAVID BARSTOW and ROBIN STEIN, New York Times, March 13, 2005.

It is the kind of TV news coverage every president covets. "Thank you, Bush. Thank you, U.S.A.," a jubilant Iraqi-American told a camera crew in Kansas City for a segment about reaction to the fall of Baghdad. A second report told of "another success" in the Bush administration's "drive to strengthen aviation security"; the reporter called it "one of the most remarkable campaigns in aviation history." A third segment, broadcast in January, described the administration's determination to open markets for American farmers.

To a viewer, each report looked like any other 90-second segment on the local news. In fact, the federal government produced all three. The report from Kansas City was made by the State Department. The "reporter" covering airport safety was actually a public relations professional working under a false name for the Transportation Security Administration. The farming segment was done by the Agriculture Department's office of communications.

Under the Bush administration, the federal government has aggressively used a well-established tool of public relations: the prepackaged, ready-to-serve news report that major corporations have long distributed to TV stations to pitch everything from headache remedies to auto insurance. In all, at least 20 federal agencies, including the Defense Department and the Census Bureau, have made and distributed hundreds of television news segments in the past four years, records and interviews show. Many were subsequently broadcast on local stations across the country without any acknowledgement of the government's role in their production.

This winter, Washington has been roiled by revelations that a handful of columnists wrote in support of administration policies without disclosing they had accepted payments from the government. But the administration's efforts to generate positive news coverage have been considerably more pervasive than previously known. At the same time, records and interviews suggest widespread complicity or negligence by television stations, given industry ethics standards that discourage the broadcast of prepackaged news segments from any outside group without revealing the source.

Federal agencies are forthright with broadcasters about the origin of the news segments they distribute. The reports themselves, though, are designed to fit seamlessly into the typical local news broadcast. In most cases, the "reporters" are careful not to state in the segment that they work for the government. Their reports generally avoid overt ideological appeals. Instead, the government's news-making apparatus has produced a quiet drumbeat of broadcasts describing a vigilant and compassionate administration.

Some reports were produced to support the administration's most cherished policy objectives, like regime change in Iraq or Medicare reform. Others focused on less prominent matters, like the administration's efforts to offer free after-school tutoring, its campaign to curb childhood obesity, its initiatives to preserve forests and wetlands, its plans to fight computer viruses, even its attempts to fight holiday drunken driving. They often feature "interviews" with senior administration officials in which questions are scripted and answers rehearsed. Critics, though, are excluded, as are any hints of mismanagement, waste or controversy.

Some of the segments were broadcast in some of nation's largest television markets, including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas and Atlanta.

An examination of government-produced news reports offers a look inside a world where the traditional lines between public relations and journalism have become tangled, where local anchors introduce prepackaged segments with "suggested" lead-ins written by public relations experts. It is a world where government-produced reports disappear into a maze of satellite transmissions, Web portals, syndicated news programs and network feeds, only to emerge cleansed on the other side as "independent" journalism.

At least in the Russian media the government influence is transparent. In the US, it appears, you have to look much more closely to discern the hidden hand of the White House. Consume your media carefully... come to think of it, this is a pretty appropriate topic for April Fool's Day.

Bliny and Change - part 2

Late last year there was a discussion in this space of Teremok bliny (pancake or crepe) stands and of the company's interesting on-line presence (here at Scraps of Moscow, we cover the REALLY important issues). I went onto their customer forum and asked about getting the cheese in my blin a little more melty, and one of their managers responded that a surprise would be forthcoming in the near future.

Well, I have seen the surprise, and I'm disappointed. They replaced the grated Russian-style cheese with something that looks and tastes like Velveeta slices. It does melt more quickly, but surely there was a better way... Teremok is still better than any of its competitors, though.

SPB Times - "Citizens Cool on Outsiders"; beat them

The story I posted about earlier this week here and here was indeed covered in the SPB Times as I had hoped/expected it would be. I didn't think their headline was quite appropriate, although to be fair the article was about a survey taken St. Petersburg, and the recent attacks were used to illustrate the problems faced by non-ethnic Russians in that city. You might have thought that another such spate of attacks would have inspired a more serious-sounding headline, though.

Citizens Cool On Outsiders
St. Petersburg Times, Tuesday, March 29, 2005
By Galina Stolyarova And Irina Titova STAFF WRITERS

[...]The three foreign students who had non-Slavic appearances were injured in separate attacks in the city over the weekend.

Manuel Bernard, 26, an Angolan student of the Agriculture Academy in Pushkin, was attacked by several young people in metro wagon at Nevsky Prospekt metro station on Sunday night. Desire Deffo, deputy head of the African Union in St. Petersburg, said Monday in a telephone interview that Bernard had been hospitalized with head injuries and slash wounds from a knife. He was in a satisfactory condition. A St. Petersburger and a Muscovite were detained in connection with the attack, Interfax reported. Deffo said Bernard had described the attackers as skinheads.

Saiful Islam, 26, a fifth-year medical student from Bangladesh, was attacked near Lesnaya metro station on Saturday afternoon. About seven young people attacked him from behind and gave him head injuries that required hospitalization, Mozibul Haque, head of the city's Bangladeshi community, said Monday. Islam said his attackers did not look like skinheads - they were dressed in ordinary clothes and didn't have shaved heads, Haque added.

Also Saturday, a group of people on Nevsky Prospekt beat up a Chinese student of the St. Petersburg Conservatory. He was hospitalized with head injuries, Interfax reported.

Deffo said the city government is taking too little action to deter the attackers from striking again. "Many attackers get away with these attacks without punishment and feel they can keep doing it," Deffo said. Most of the attackers are skinheads, he added. [...]

Moldova and US-Russian Relations

This is an excellent column from Tuesday's Moscow Times. It's especially insightful on the topic of media hostility on both sides of US-Russian relations.

Moscow Times, March 29, 2005
More Missed CIS Opportunities
By Ira Straus

From Ukraine to Moldova to Kyrgyzstan, there is a pattern of rapid learning by Russia and the United States. It is hopeful, but as yet artificially limited. In Ukraine there was mutual opposition and in Kyrgyzstan mutual caution, to avoid tearing the country apart. Both Russia and the West perceive a need to go further and cooperate to stabilize Kyrgyzstan, but have yet to do so. Moldova is the missing link, indicating where the obstacles lie.

A strange thing happened in Moldova earlier this month. Russia and the West were essentially on the same side regarding the elections there March 6 -- a remarkable fact, considering their real differences over Transdnestr. Yet no one heard about this. Just the opposite: A fair amount of noise was made, particularly in the media, as if the two sides were adversaries on Moldova, just as they had been a few months earlier on Ukraine.

Both Russia and the West called for freer campaign conditions before the elections. Both could have hoped for the moderate Democratic Moldova bloc to do as well as possible against the nationalistic Communist Party government. In the end, Democratic Moldova got 28 percent of the vote and the Communists 46 percent, much less than the large majority the Communists won during previous elections, when they had run on a pro-Russia platform. The change gives DM significantly increased bargaining power. But fairer elections would have given it even more votes and bargaining power.

Russia and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe both criticized a string of unfair campaign practices. It would have made sense for them to apply pressure together: As a joint force, this pressure would have been hard for the Moldovan regime to resist.

Yet there was no active or visible Russia-West solidarity. Instead, there was the appearance of friction, which to a slight extent reflected reality. The Russian and U.S. media portrayed their two countries as somehow on opposing sides in Moldova.

Russia, trapped by its own polemic against OSCE interference in CIS countries, simply didn't think of joining hands with the OSCE on Moldova. The Russian media polemicized against supposed Western designs for the next Orange Revolution, even though such a revolution would have been Russia's best hope due to its rocky relations with Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin. It did not help, to be sure, that the color orange was usurped in Moldova by the Christian Democrats, a small, anti-Russian, Romanian-nationalist party well to the right of DM.

Here we see in operation the way vicious circles are created. First, the Western and Russian media both pinned a misleading, oversimplified anti-Russian label on the Orange Revolution in Ukraine. Then, anti-Russian ethno-nationalists in Moldova proceed to take up the orange banner as their own. Finally, Russians attacked any prospect of anything orange in Moldova.

Some Western papers wrote, as if totally ignorant of the country, that Moldova was a Russian-controlled dictatorship. In this way, they managed to reconcile their anti-Russian sentiments with their distaste for the authoritarianism of the Moldovan Communist regime. Moldova was often lumped together with Belarus, and anything wrong in either country was blamed on Moscow.

The facts didn't seem to matter much to the Western media, perhaps because none of them really cared about Moldova. What mattered was to present data -- real or imagined -- in the form of arguing against the "other side" and creating the impression of a Russia-West conflict. That was, after all, more interesting to reporters and editors than internal Moldovan issues, and it fit within their pre-established storyline about U.S.-Russia relations.

In short, some of the basic facts about the elections in Moldova simply failed to register unless they could be fit into an anti-American or anti-Russian mold. [...]

The experience of the Moldovan election shows that the mere passive fact of shared U.S.-Russia interests is not enough to overcome old habits of conflict and confrontation. Solidarity would require a deliberate effort to work out a strategy in common, followed by a visible effort to implement it in common. Only then, it seems, will it be understood at the core of national institutions -- the media, the military, the state bureaucracy -- that the West and Russia really are in the business of cooperating, not competing. [...]

In Moldova, the two sides had a chance to gain election results somewhat better for both of them and, in the process, to repair their mutual relations after the Ukrainian revolution. In Kyrgyzstan, they had a chance to smooth the transition, in the process building positive mutual relations. The need is still there: The situation in Kyrgyzstan remains unstable, and difficult reconciliations are needed.

Russia and the United States missed their chance in Moldova. They need to ask themselves how many more opportunities they can afford to miss.

I would add (not entirely on-topic) that I see more anti-Americanism on the Russian media side and simply apathy on the US media side. Here, Channel 1 and Rossiia cover the US approach toward Russia as big news, or at least they cover some Kremlin spin doctor's idea of the way the US approach toward Russia should be portrayed as the sinister explanation for whatever the day's bad news is for Russia; in the US, on the other hand, not many people care about what the Russian government is saying, especially not about something happening in Moldova.

Nothing makes an average American's eyes glaze over like mentioning Moldova, let me tell ya - then you mention "former Soviet republic," and you can see them mentally categorizing it under "Russia." But I digress, and these comments are not really that relevant to the ideas discussed in the column above. To conclude the rambling, maybe if the Russian government was involved in promoting democracy in Canada or Mexico, Joe Sixpack would care, but I don't think the average American is as concerned about or interested in Russia as the average Russian is about America.

"Kyrgyzstan at the Crossroads"

The cover boy on the latest issue of Novosti, the newsletter of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University, is none other than Askar Akayev. It seems then-President Akaev addressed the Harvard community last fall, and a writeup of his speech was chosen as the front-page story for Novosti.

The newsletter is available here in PDF format , but it takes awhile to download, so I've excerpted the best parts of the article below:

Kyrgyzstan at the Crossroads: President Askar Akaev of Kyrgyzstan Speaks at Harvard; By Erdin Beshimov [a 1st-year student in the REECA master's program], Novosti, Fall 2004

[...]The President explained the difficulty in finding an appropriate political model on which to build the country. At the early stages of its independence, Kyrgyzstan needed to develop new guidelines of development that would “approximate the Western model of public, social and economic life.” At that time, different developmental models were considered and tried—the Polish, Swedish, and Turkish, in particular—with the Chinese model continuing to be of interest to this day. But President Akaev realized that, as appealing as foreign models were, their implementation seemed internally defective. Instead, Akaev’s administration decided to develop its own model, taking into account Kyrgyzstan’s distinctive national characteristics. According to Akaev, this approach seems to have worked. [...]

Akaev went on to explain that democratization is a difficult process, and that it was naпve to expect a full-fledged democracy so soon after the fall of authoritarianism. He reminded the audience that America needed two centuries after the signing of its constitution to institute a true democracy.

“My democratic creed is based on the principle that there is not, and cannot be, a universal formula for democracy applicable to all countries and peoples.” Democracy, Akaev believes, “should ripen internally in the depth of society itself, and correspond to the historical practice and experience of a country. It should integrate organically into the people’s awareness, and only in this way will it take firm root in the public consciousness.” He reproached those people who “continue to attach labels of ‘non-free’ or ‘not completely free’ country to the Kyrgyz Republic,” warning that judgments of this sort are far from harmless political criticism. On the contrary, they have the potential to result in a discriminatory US foreign aid policy.

Yet Akaev’s speech did not address the issue of what has impeded democracy in Kyrgyzstan. The question remains, Is democracy being suspended in order to carry out painful, rapid and effective economic reforms and to conduct administrative structural changes, or to conceal corruption and mismanagement? [...]

Responding to a question about the pending transfer of presidential power in Kyrgyzstan, a crucial issue to democratization in Central Asia, Akaev announced that he will step down as president. “I am for the people choosing the next president. Therefore, I have not aimed to determine a successor. Our people are educated and wise, and I am convinced that they will choose a worthy next president.”

Altercation or hate crime? The jury is out...

Looking a round a bit more for information on the incident with the Angolan student in St. Petersburg, I found the Interfax wire item that probably served as the source for the Echo of Moscow report I heard this morning, or shared the same source (my quick translation):

Angolan Student Attacked in the Petersburg Metro
10:23am, 28 March 2005, Interfax Severo-Zapad
Late Sunday an Angolan citizen was hospitalized with knife puncture and slash wounds sustained in the "Nevsky Prospekt" station of the St. Petersburg metro, according to the St. Petersburg City Directorate of Internal Affairs. The victim is a student of the Agrarian University in St. Petersburg. According to preliminary information, several people attacked the foreigner in a metro train and stabbed him several times with a knife. Two youths were detained on suspicion of involvement in this crime, one of whom is a resident of Moscow and one of whom is a student in one of the St. Petersburg miliary academies, according to the CDIA.

Note that this is a somewhat different story of events from the RIA Novosti report I linked to earlier (also my translation):

An Angolan Student Was Wounded in an Altercation on a St. Petersburg Metro Train
St. Petersburg, 28 March - RIA "Novosti" - Severo-Zapad, Dina Danilova.
An Angolan student was wounded in an altercation on a St. Petersburg metro train. According to the St. Petersburg CDIA, the incident occurred last night at the Nevsky Prospekt metro station. According to preliminary reports, in the train during the altercation two youths - a Moscow resident and a student of one of the St. Petersburg military academies - stabbed the Angolan citizen, a student at the St. Petersburg Agrarian University, in the face with a broken bottle. In an effort to defend himself, the Angolan citizen injured the Moscow resident's hands. Both victims were hospitalized. An investigation is being conducted and a decision is being made on whether or not to open a criminal case.

Who knows what the real story is? I am sure it will be reported eventually in the St. Petersburg Times if it really was a hate crime.

Hmmm...

RIA Novosti confirms (at 11:03am MSK) that there was an "argument" in the metro in which a Muscovite and military academy student wounded an Angolan student with a broken bottle. The Angolan then defended himself, and both parties were hospitalized.

So maybe this was just a drunken altercation and not an addition to St. Petersburg's growing list of disgraceful hate crimes, or maybe that's the spin that the powers-that-be would like to put on this incident.

Racists attack again in St. Petersburg?

I just heard a report on Echo of Moscow Radio - apparently an Angolan student was attacked last night in the St. Petersburg metro by knife-wielding assailants, and one of the two people arrested in connection with the attack is a student of a military academy. However, when I go to the news page of Echo's website , the headline is there but it takes me to a broken link . Maybe this means they are verifying the story - the initial broadcast I heard didn't cite a specific source, and I haven't been able to find this story on any of the Russian wires. Stay tuned...

Sunday comics

I've wanted for a while to share this comic strip, "Akimych and Vladimir Vladimirovich" by Konstantin Yavorskiy. I guess the strip is sort of like "Doonesbury," in that it's political satire, but it has a much smaller cast of regular characters. Akimych is an average Russian guy, and he and the President are shown hanging out in various situations. "Akimych" was mentioned in this 2003 article in Nezavisimaya Gazeta, this 2004 article in Novye Izvestiia , and on a talk-show on Echo of Moscow Radio where the discussion focused on comics, but there's not much else on the internet about it.

I don't think Yavorskiy is doing new editions of this strip anymore - whether that's because he's moved on or Bolshoi Gorod didn't want to run the it anymore (maybe it didn't fit their glossy new image), I don't know. One Russian blogger commented on her disappointment with this particular change from the old version of Bolshoi Gorod, and I have to say that I share the sentiment, although I think they may have stopped running the strip before their re-launch.

Here's a quality edition of "Akimych" for your Sunday viewing pleasure (you may want to click on the image to expand it):



Translation:
[Frame 1] Old Lady: OK, go on.
[Frame 2] Akimych: Leader, head of state...
[Frame 3] Old Lady: Tsar!
Akimych: No, that doesn't fit.
[Frame 4] Old Lady: King?
Akimych: Nope.
[Frame 5] Akimych: It has to be 9 letters long.
[Frame 6] Old Lady: OK then - Emperor! [the word has 9 letters in Russian]
[Frame 7] Akimych: Nope, that doesn't work either...
[Frame 8] Akimych: ...the fourth letter has to be an "S."
[Frame 9] Vladimir Vladimirovich: President! I figured it out right away.
Akimych: Correct!
Old Lady: OK, go on.

This website has an archive of "Akimych" for your enjoyment.

Moscow: an "aggressive," "overwhelming" city

Carmen at carmen mirada has an interesting post about Moscow architecture. She introduces the topic as follows:

Before moving here to Buenos Aires, I lived in Moscow. Without doubt, it's the city I've loved the most unconditionally, as I've always known it would sooner bite than embrace me back. It's the most aggressive city I've ever had bearings in, with an architecture that befits this by being overwhelming in its level of ideological inscription.

I couldn't agree more with that description, although for me DC will always be the city that enjoys truly unconditional love. Moscow is aggressive, and you can always sense it trying to bite you, but somehow that grows on you. If you've ever tried to walk around the city anywhere other than downtown, you know how intimidating the scale of the distances and roadways to be crossed can be. When we eventually move away from here, though, we will miss it, probably more than we can imagine.