William Dunkerley has released his analysis of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's recent state of the nation address. The analysis is published in the Moscow Times for Tuesday, November 23 ("Cleaning Up the Media Garbage"). It concludes that the state of the media stands as a significant obstacle not only to modernization, but to Medvedev's fight against corruption, as well.
Dunkerley points out that Russia's media are awash in a corrupt culture of paid-for news stories that are literally propaganda masquerading as news. Few news outlets, he says, are free to tell the whole truth. They are instead subjugated by businessmen, governors, mayors, and natural resource monopolies controlled by the state. They put money into the loss-making media companies in return for an opportunity to color the news in their own favor. According to Dunkerley, the present media constitute a pluralistic but conscripted press, hardly a free press. That makes it difficult for voters to make informed choices among candidates, and leaves them without the aid of a Fourth Estate in exercising vigilance over their government.
Medvedev has ambitions for developing Russia's information technology. But, as Dunkerley observes, the new technology may succumb to the old garbage-in garbage-out phenomenon unless the media are reformed.
Dunkerley reports that the Russian people recognize that their media have not been serving their needs and interests for a long time. They've reported a desire for a return to censorship rather than a continuation of the current nonsense. Dunkerley suggests that cleaning up the corruption would be a more productive way of responding to that popular mandate.
To resolve Medvedev's media dilemma, Dunkerley offers a simple, two-step prescription:
Step 1: Get the government out of the media business. Its role in the well-documented corrupt business culture that dominates the media casts a dark shadow upon Medvedev's vision for a less corrupt Russia.
Step 2. Clean up the other corruption in the media. Dunkerley analogizes, "When a consumer buys a bag of potatoes, he doesn't want to find that the bag is also full of garbage. Similarly, when Russians watch news broadcasts, they deserve not to have the news intermixed with disguised propaganda."
Dunkerley concludes that paid-for news content makes Russia's media a megaphone for corruption. He points out that kicking off an anti-corruption campaign with the media sector would touch every citizen and every segment of commerce. That would be a strong start, he says.
