Why is Media Freedom Everybody’s Business?

I recently participated in a roundtable, "Old and New Media in Russia Today," at the Annual Convention of the Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (AAASS). The conference brings together political science, history, language, humanities, and other scholars and practitioners in the areas of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies from around the world.

Since my presentation was the first one I gave a brief overview of the Russian media environment and detailed the IREX and USAID approach to supporting new media. I gave several examples from Russia, and talked about the biggest challenges to online media:

Professional content: New media outlets usually employ non-professional journalists – those without degrees in journalism or experience of working in media. Lack of professional experience encourages the culture where speed of delivery of information and its potential to attract audience is valued more then unbiased reporting and professional content.

Understanding the Web: At the same time, those professional journalists who are employed by traditional media in Russia usually lack the skills necessary to navigate the online media environment. The internet gives enormous possibilities for gathering, checking and distributing information, while in Russia the great majority of journalists, especially those who work outside of Moscow do not have the knowledge to use the full potential of the network.

Education: As first examples of good solutions to those challenges, I presented two of our grantee’s projects. An educational portal for journalists in Yekaterinburg developed jointly with the University of Southern California and a citizen journalism portal also developed by IREX grantees in Novosibirsk. I also described in detail how we approach training of bloggers and new media reporters though IREX-sponsored seminars.

Other participants talked about traditional media challenges including declining paper circulation, lack of freedom on TV, the digital divide, and others. During the Q&A session we talked about education of journalists, perception of media freedom by Russian citizens, and competition in the Russian media market. The best question we received was from a radio journalist from Russia:

“Last week I had someone call my studio during a live program on media freedom and asked the following question: “Kashin is just a journalist, right? Why should I care about him?” I did not know what to say. What would you?”

This was probably the hardest one to answer. Oleg Kashin is a Russian journalist who was recently assaulted in Moscow, apparently, for his publications including those very critical of Kremlin youth organizations. He is currently undergoing treatment at an intensive care unit.

My answer was (and it was supported by others) that assaults on journalists usually reflect the health of democracy in any country. Harassment and killings of journalists and the government's reaction call into question the direction of any society - towards or away from democracy. At the same time the strong reaction of Russian president Medvedev, who immediately commented strongly condemning the act, is something that has never been done before. In addition to that, the State Duma is currently reviewing legislation that will toughen penalties for assaulting journalists and extend jail terms for those criminal acts to up to 15 years. So harassment of journalists whose profession is to serve their audience by providing the best possible information is an issue of national importance. 

Michael Mirny is the Chief of Party of the International Media Partnerships Program in Russia