The Battle For NTV
LIVE from Moscow with Alexei Pankin,
Russian Journalist
Wednesday, April 18, 2001; 11 a.m. EDT

Alexei Pankin, editor of the Russian-European journalism review SREDA and contributor to the Prague-based Transitions Online, will be online Wednesday, Apil 18 at 11 a.m. EDT to discuss the situation facing Russia's NTV and the journalists who protested its takeover by the state-run energy company, Gazprom.

The Post's Peter Baker and Susan Glasser report that security forces raided the NTV studio Saturday and forced out defiant journalists on behalf of the new management. Critics view the dramatic pre-dawn takeover as a move to silence free speech in Russia. Some former NTV journalists plan to set up a rival network.

Gazprom won a controlling interest in NTV, prompting a group of journalists to protest the new management. American billionaire and media mogul Ted Turner is reportedly interested in helping to preserve NTV's independence. Attempts to negotiate an end to the protest failed and led to Saturday's raid.

Submit your questions for Alexei Pankin now or during the Live Online hour.

Editor's Note: Washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.

washingtonpost.com: Welcome Mr. Pankin to washingtonpost.com. Can you please briefly describe the situation facing free media in Russia generally and NTV specifically?

Alexei Pankin: The Russian media is going through a painful transition from the state when the overriding priority was freedom of expression for journalists to a state when they are gradually turning into businesses, that is something that survives by catering to audiences rather than to owners and/or government.
I guess this is what makes NTV crisis so dramatic. Their founders have created an excellent channel, actually a big media holding which was too big and too good for Russia's relatively poor advertising market. To do it that had had to receive a lot of monies from the state. The state is no longer willing to subsidize an oppositional channel and is asking the money back as a pretext to silence an oppositional voice.
Please note that I do not call NTV an independent company - you can't be after for so many years feeding from the hands of the government. Yet, it certainly provided an alternative picture to what state TV was saying and showing

Washington, DC: So much has been made of the threat to the freedom of speech in Russia, which is obviously at the heart of this issue. I wonder what your thoughts are though regarding this issue as soley a matter of freedom. It seems that many Western journalists have ignored the debt that Media Most incurred along with the perosnal rivalries of the oligarchs and politicians. Is this really a focused attack on freedom of the press or is that merely caught in the crossfire of politics and greed?

Alexei Pankin: Yes,
it did got in a cross fire.
Basically, the question is simple enough - if you, like Media-Most did, are getting monies from the state, you should sooner or later expect the state would want this monies to be reimbursed - in cash, or in kind. This is exactly what they did.
In other words, the whole affair is not a strictly financial crisis, yet NTV made themselves extremely vulnerable to financial pressure by borrowing from state coffers.
As a libertarian, I beleive that a media company that accepts money from the state is a worse enemy of freedom of the press than a government, which for its money, wants to be covered positively.

Brooklyn, NY: What are the chances that the NTV journalists will be able to report critically of the Putin regime if they move to TV6? Will there be significant alternative reporting?

Alexei Pankin: It is difficult to say. I suspect that the whole conflict has become irrational on all sides. The state may continue to pursecute the NTV team irrespectively of what they are doing, and NTV guys seem intent to denounce the Kremlin irrespectively of actual faults and virtues of Putin's policies.
I think, the most critical programme on Russian TV has been Sundays's current affairs Vremena with Vladimir Pozner on ORt. ORT is Russia's Chanel 1 in all senses of the word and is fully controlled by the state. Yet, Pozner manages to discuss problems there, not jusdt criticize for criticizm sake, and so far, to the best of my knowledge, had had no problems with the governmmnet

Hanover, NH: What is the response of the Russian public to the NTV takeover and closings of Sevodnya and Itogi?

Alexei Pankin: I suspect that the majority of the Russian public (which is a rather general notion sicne it includes 150M people living across at least 10 time zones) have never heard about Sevodnya and Itogi. Their reaction to NTV would probably be: we want good television and do not care who owns it.
Although this answer would certainly require lots of qualifications - we are a very complex and diverse society

Georgia, Tbilisi: Dear Mr. Pankin,
During the discussion, organized last week by Mr. Pozner, it was several times mentioned that similar processes already started in regions, when local independent channels were transformed into state or municipality channels. At the same time, this phenomena was not discussed later.
The second, what we see -- that "new" NTV tries to demonstrate very attractive movies and interesting programs, to save audience.
These two phenomena together can demonstrate that whole plan was prepared very carefully and by very experienced people.
At the same time, many of journalists from other channels did not react at all, or reacted very negatively. Was it competition, or jealous, or what else?

Alexei Pankin: 1. Take overs of media in the regions does happen indeed. Just today I received a letter from journalists in the Komi republic who describe how it happens there. Yet, the problem is that the local authorities only succeeded with those who ran big debts. They tried but failed with genuinely independent newspapers. From my stand point, this is the main lesson of the whole conflict - if you run your media company as a sound business, you have by far stronger positions vis a vis the state, or whoever
2. NTV had always ahd very attrcative programming, so there's nothing new there.
I don't think that people who carried out the NTV take over are really smart. After all NTV is so deeply in debt, that they could take it, and the rest of Media Most, over on strictly economic grounds by July. It seems to me that they acted extremely unprofessionally
3. Journalists from other channels and from many other media outlet reacted with reservation for many reasons, one of them being that many of them know the situation from inside, and from inside it looks very differently than how it is presented to the outsiders.

Gullsgate Mn.: What would be the greater threat to freedom of expression---a news service 'beholden' to the state or one dependent on fulfilling the whims and whistles of the corporation?

"Independent press' seems to be an impossibility in the face of these two limited alternatives?

Alexei Pankin: Well, I guess having both is what I call pluralism. In principle I am opposed to the state running the media directly or funding private media companies. Neither are 'corporate media' fully free. Yet, there are economic realities, and all we can hope for is to have a choice, and, above all, to rely on our own common sense.

Arlington, VA: Zdradstvuite,

Although the liberally minded in Russia and abroad are right to be concerned about the takeover of NTV, don't you think this is balanced by the lively print media in Russia? For my mind, Russian newspapers present a much wider array of ideas than the American press, where editors are so afraid of appearing biased that they neuter all strong voices. It's been a few years since I lived in Russia, but I would guess that most Russians still depend more on newspapers for their news than Americans do.

vsego khoroshego

Alexei Pankin: Well, we do have lively newspapers indeed. Unfortunately, most of the quality press is funded by the oligarhs and present their interests. In other words being lively does not make you reliable. Besides, for the Russians TV is the main source of news and entertainment.

Vienna Va: Dobre Den

How many news channels do people in the far reaches of Russia get. For example, what choices do people living in cities in the Russian Far East (Dalni Vostok) get, like Khabarosk (my favorite Russian City).

Alexei Pankin: It depends on the size of the city. In a city with a population over 1 million people you may have up to 10 local TV stations plus national channels.
Population 500 000 to 1 million - 4 to 5 local channels. I am not particularly aware of the situation in Khabarovsk.

washington, dc: What do you think that the international community and non-governmental organizations working with the press in Russia, such as Internews Network, can do to improve the situation for the media?

Alexei Pankin: First and foremost - management training.
Second: stand for principle of freedom of speech. This basically means a position "Plague on both of your houses" if I quote Shakespear correctly. Once somebody, like NTV, accepted special favours from the government, and behaved as a propaganda instrument for the President, no matter what he stood for (like Yeltsin in 1996) you do not qualify as independent media.
This lesson is most difficult to learn both for international community and for the local NGO's

New York, N.Y.: How many self-supporting media enterprises are there in Moscow or elsewhere in Russia?

How many media enterprises have financial support from U.S. foundations or media companies? Are they undertaking any legal risk by accepting such support?

Alexei Pankin: I can't give you exact statistics. I would have thought that there are more self-supporting media in the regions, if only because the cost of production and distribution is by far lower there than in Moscow.
I don't think any media outlet would be getting support from the US foundations which will be decisive for its survival.
With media companie this is somewhat different. STS TV network which broadcasts in several dozen cities is owned by US Story First. In Russia, unlike most market democracies there are no limitations on foreign ownership of the media, including broadcasting. Ironically when the the Duma deputies have attempted last week to introduce such limitations, the same very government that is now strangling NTV, spoke strongly against that.
We are indeed a land of paradoxes

Alexandria Va: Is NTV watched in the former Soviet Republics such as Kazakstan, Tadijstan. How about the Baltic Republics such as Latvia which has banned the Russian Language as an official language.

Alexei Pankin: Yes, NTV like other channels are watched in ex-Soviet republics. Conditions vary, but even if foreign (Russian) broadcasting is banned on air, people can receive it by cable

Washington, DC: Apart from the ousting of NTV's board of directors and the closing down of Itogi and Segodnya, there have been several accusations (not only coming from Moscow but from the provinces as well) of journalists being intimidated verbally and physically. To what extent do think the Russian government can be implicated in this? Is this a federal problem, a local problem, a problem perpetuated by "businessmen", a problem perpetuated by government officials? Can these accusations even be believed? Please comment.

Alexei Pankin: A good qquestion! I guess there is a combination of all of those. The problem is that you never know what exactly is the case.
Personally I had had a chance to look into two cases of physical abuses of journalists where freedom of speech community voiced concern. Both had had to do with the guys borrowing money (as private persons, not as joutnalists) and failing to return them on time. Which does not mean that this is always like this.
We are a big country, media market is opaque, and I gues, agnosticism is a best appro

Washington, DC: As the largest corporation in Russia, how much is Gazprom really controlled by the government? I have no doubt that there is control, but I was wondering if it was closer to the state run industries of Europe.

Alexei Pankin: Technically speaking they state does not have a controlling stake in Gazprom, perhaps, around 40 per cent. I am not sure it is correct to compare Gazprom to European state run industries. There in Europe they is at least a great deal of transparency.
At least, to go back to our main topic, when yeltsin ordered Gazprom to begin to fund NTV, Gazprom obeyed. When Putin apperently told Gazprom to demand that monies be paid back - Gazprom obeyed once again

Hammerfest, Norway: Putin's New Russia has benefited from a certain reactionary trend in the population. When will the intelligensia say enough is enough and start to build a substantial opposition to Putin's regime? What kind of developments can move the broader segment of people against the rulers? Bad news from Chechnya, clampdown on the liberal press? Economic stagnation? If so, how will Putin react? If he shows hesitation: Are there even darker forces than Putin lurking in shadows, like "patriotic" financial forces, combined with certain elements in the power ministries?

With regards from
Per Edgar Nordmo,
Hammerfest, Norway

Alexei Pankin: Honestly, I do not beleive Putin is a particularly dark force. I think Yeltsin was by far worse. Putin is a price we pay for the Yeltsin era - when for the sake of democracy tanks were sent against legitimately elected Parliament with support from intelligentsia and international community. I am afraid that what you call intelligentsia is thoroughly discredited in Russia.

New York, NY: Alexei, I'm wondering how the rest of the Russian press is covering this media crisis. I see that the English-language Moscow Times is covering the closings of NTV, Sevodnya, and the rest of Gusinsky's holdings quite thoroughly. But what about the (former?) so-called official voices, like Pravda and Izvestia? And what, if any, is their point of view?
Thank you,
Wayne Robins
Editor & Publisher magazine

Alexei Pankin: I do not know who reads Pravda these days, certainly not I.
Izvestia which now belongs to Vladimir Potanin's Interros gives a rather balanced news coverage, while most of their columnists are between moderately to viciously anti-Gusinsky.
Once again: insiders have a very different picture than outsiders. I recently met an old friend of mine, a rather important person in Izvestya and the guy romantically committed to freedom of speech. All he had to say about Most and Gussinsky was just a chain of swear words.

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