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Archive for August, 2004

Georgia, the Unlikely War State

The aggressive tone Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili has taken up over the past two months in regard to Russia’s backing for the separatist region of South Ossetia picked up considerably last week, with the announcement that Georgia should prepare for war with Russia.However, considering that Georgia’s civil wars in the 1990’s, with [...]

Macedonia: The Bradt Travel Guide

By Thammy Evans
Bradt Travel Guides, 2004
Reviewed by Christopher Deliso
Indispensable, because it’s the only one out there, insufferable, because it’s so patchily written and permeated with questionable opinions, Macedonia: The Bradt Travel Guide bills itself as “the first-ever travel guide” to Macedonia. It is a book that, while definitely helpful in [...]

Russian TV Today: An Interview with Ellen Mickiewicz

Ellen Mickiewicz is the leading American expert on the Russian television media, and director of the DeWitt Wallace Center for Communications and Journalism at Duke University in North Carolina. Her views about the state of Russian television broadcasting are informed by many years of detailed research, fieldwork, and constant attention to emerging trends. A full list of her books, which include the definitive Changing Channels: Television and the Struggle for Power in Russia, appears at the end of the article.

We spoke with Ellen in July under the auspices of the Kokkalis Foundation’s Summer Balkan Seminar in Olympia, Greece. What follows is a transcript of that conversation, with a few updates concerning events that have occurred since then.Background

Christopher Deliso: First of all, can you tell us a little bit about your background? Where are you from, and how did you get interested in researching the Russian media anyway?

Ellen Mickiewicz: I am originally from Connecticut. Growing up, I didn’t have any foreign language background. I went to Wellesley as an undergraduate, and after that to Yale, where I got my PhD in Political Science. Between my freshman and sophomore years in college, I decided to take an immersion class in Russian.

CD: Why did you choose to do that?

EM: Well, it was really just a case of a parent having a really good idea. Russian was becoming very important in the world and few people knew it well, outside of йmigrйs and teachers of Russian. So I veered into political science with a Russian angle.

Later I taught at Yale, Michigan State, and then was appointed Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences after a national search by Emory University.   I taught there for 12 years. I also had a visiting professor chair at Wellesley in sociology and political science. In 1994 I moved to Duke, and took up the James R. Shepley Professorship of Public Policy Studies. I direct the DeWitt Wallace Center for Communications and Journalism there and am also Professor of Political Science.

I came to Emory at the same time [former President Jimmy] Carter did. He wanted not just a [presidential] library, but a real research center, one that had the capacity to help in implementing policy. We had interests in common and started working on projects such as international security and arms control. He developed ambitious working conferences, very thought-provoking and bipartisan, with former President Gerald Ford, co-chairing. Ted Turner carried some of them live.

Gorbachev’s TV Legacy

CD: Were you able to use this new opportunity to steer President Carter’s interest towards what was taking place in Russia, well, then the Soviet Union at that time?

EM: President Carter had long been interested in the dangers to nuclear balance posed by a vigorous campaign for Star Wars.   In addition, he was interested in my research. Because my research was on television and its effects on viewers, I could talk to the president and show him things that were really quite dramatic changes in Soviet TV, at that time, around 1984-85. That was when Gorbachev came to power and soon started his reforms. President Carter soon became convinced that Glasnost was not merely cosmetic… he was one of the few who took it seriously at a very early stage. I was able to show the president through my research how Gorbachev was using television as a really vital and important tactic in reaching the masses and pushing his reforms that way.

For the first time, a Soviet leader was talking more or less openly to his people, in a more immediate way that eschewed the long-standing alienating bureaucratic rhetorical style used up until that point.

So we wanted to understand why Gorbachev was using this risky and some times controversial method. He was up against a calcified, entrenched Soviet bureaucracy, and he was aware that every previous reform had been reversed. By going through television and in essence leapfrogging the ministries, he thought that he could accomplish these goals. We formed the “Commission on Radio and TV Policy,” a bilateral US-Soviet NGO dedicated to the consideration of television policy.

CD: Thinking back on the old Soviet leaders, and even Yeltsin, who was portrayed as bumbling and comical, I’m surprised at an apparent low level of concern on the part of these leaders for their own image. Did you find that to be the case, and if so, why?

EM: It goes beyond that. It’s not a lack of concern for image so much as an underestimation of their audience. All that mattered for them was the message- what you intend to say or do. What they didn’t think to pursue was how a message would be received. So it goes beyond image, to taking into account who matters more- the audience, or the guy saying “here I am at the mike, listen to me.” In Stalin’s times, for example, surveys were illegal. Why? There was this pervasive underlying assumption that the people don’t know, and are not sources of wisdom about how their own lives should be lived. Other people, experts, should tell them. You can call it paternalism… except the Soviet people were never so dumb. They knew the score; they skillfully read between the lines; they knew what was going on.

CD: Yes, but now, with Vladimir Putin, it seems like for the first time Russia has a leader who is really image-conscious in a more or less Western sort of way, no?

EM: It’s interesting that you say this… again, it goes back to Gorbachev. He really was the first one to speak in an ordinary way, not the kind of abstract jargon used up to the time. Which is not to say that it was all off-the-cuff, of course. I remember one time a crew from ABC Nightline came to film an interview, and wanted me to speak about “Gorbachev, Master of TV.” What I explained to them was, when you reduce what he says to a twenty-second sound byte, yes, he does sound like a master- except that this would just have been cut from one of those 2-4 hour Soviet perorations that the Russian audiences were still being forced to listen to. But that insight was left on the cutting room floor.

Putin’s PR and the Russian Audience Today

CD: That’s funny. I appreciate that, it does put things in perspective. But would it be right to say that Putin has sort of elevated this “image thing” to an art form, at least compared to his predecessors?

EM: Yes, he is image-conscious and PR-savvy. And he does have plenty of PR types working around him. Mikhail Margelov, a senator with a KGB background , worked for a while in a Malibu PR firm, before going back to work on political campaigns. Yes, for the first time there are Western-style companies and PR firms operating in Russia.

CD: Yes, but to what extent does Putin himself put an emphasis on cultivating a specific personal image?

EM: The image he prefers to disseminate is all business and seriousness on the job. This contrasts quite strongly with Yeltsin, whose image was controversial and increasingly weak.   But all of this businesslike, rarely-cracking-a-smile rigidity, I think you have to ask, what does all this spin get you?

Now it’s true, at election time in Russia, the quality of election advertising has changed dramatically.   But when people talk about spin, they sometimes fail to add that the audience is getting spun from every direction, in Russia or America or wherever else… And audiences know this. And the more they know the less effective it becomes.

The research I’m doing now has to do with audience reactions to television, to see if we can scientific
ally determine the effects of TV on audiences. And one of the points is, in this area, that everybody’s delivering PR- and it’s up to us. The audience, to extract as much as we can that is useful for us.

CD: But surely the Russian audience is quite different from the Western, with a different history and experience and outlook-

EM: Yes. Yes it is. And to some extent, these differences affect our ability to research it… all of the theoretical foundations come from Western cognitive theory and political psychology, but with this very different audience such theories often don’t apply or make sense. You can’t have parallel audiences… and the methods we might use to compare the effects of say, Fox versus PBS on their audiences, may not be good methods to compare differences between Russian and American audiences. The two can’t be compared very directly, but theory suggests paths to follow for interesting research questions. What I have done is to compare different cities within Russia, however, Moscow, Volgograd, Nizhny, Novgorod and Rostov.   Each has a different media market model and in each city, one of the four focus groups is made up of young people, whose only recollection of Soviet times would have been when they were under10.

CD: So could you determine any effects?

EM: The young do have different sources on which they draw; they are also more cut off, more likely to ignore other parts of the country or to see a looming ecological disaster in a far-off region as too removed to be concerned about.

What is interesting is that though Russia is supposedly a capitalistic, democratic society, Putin has made sure only three national networks have substantial newsgathering capacity. Eighty-five percent of Russians are tuned in to national channels during prime time. One is a station which state owns and operates; with the second, a close ally of Putin’s is in charge; and the third, NTV, is Gazprom-owned, a company with strong connections to the government. So you don’t get diverse viewpoints anymore.

Russian Perceptions of Chechnya and the Military

CD: What about Chechnya? What do you see as the differences between the first outbreak of war, in the 1990’s, and the latest starting in 2000?

EM: Between the two the situation on the ground has of course changed drastically. It’s a very different Chechnya than it was at the beginning of hostilities. In the first war, there was still a government… all of that has broken down- it’s become lawless, chaotic, and devolved to the rule of clans and tribes. And radicalized. Before the wars, Chechnya had a superficial Muslim culture but it was not fanatical at all up to about 1998. But as the atrocities worsened, the people became more radical. It’s a very serious situation, and could continue forever as a low-intensity guerrilla war.

CD: Now, as the violence continues to drag on just in the manner you describe, has Russian public opinion on Chechnya changed?

EM: After the first war, an odd kind of peace was reached… and one deliberately misunderstood. The Russian side understood that Chechnya would return to Russia after a few years of autonomy; the Chechens believed they were granted independence.   Putin had said that the second [the war] would be over in 3 months. The Persian Gulf War was the image they had selected, of surgical strikes and everything going very neatly… but random surveys of Russians showed that few believed it.

Now, average Russians seem to believe the fighting will last years… so they’re not very hopeful. There are of course vengeance seekers, but most Russians would be glad to give it up. Grozny was 75 percent Russian before the wars. It isn’t anymore. Most of the Russians that had been living there have long since packed up and left.

CD: Like with the Serbs in Kosovo?

EM: Exactly.

CD: It seems only every other week that we hear of yet another helicopter crash, submarine explosion or decrepit naval vessel malfunctioning somewhere in Russia – this in rather blatant contradiction of Putin’s frequent statements of Russian military might. So what do Russians think of their armed forces?

EM: Russians understand that things are not the same as they used to be. They don’t think they’re a great power, on the basis of surveys… No they don’t think they wield power, but not only because of military decline – also because of poverty.

So there are no ‘Greater Russia’ illusions. But I suppose there is a small minority that would like to reconstitute the Soviet Union by any means feasible. And thus they look on the former Soviet states in a certain light.

Russian-Georgian Relations

CD: Right. As you know, Georgians blame Russia for allegedly supporting the secessionists in Abkhazia and Ossetia during the 1990’s, and still providing them with tacit backing today. The question is, considering that Russia has much bigger problems to worry about, first of all Chechnya, isn’t it a waste of time and energy to maintain this interest in meddling in Georgian affairs? Or is it just a point of pride?

EM: Hmm, that’s an interesting question. I disagree that it’s a point of pride, but in terms of strategic uses, Russia has a hand in south Ossetia and north, which is one people…. Yes, there are strategic interventions in Abkhazia and Ossetia. And keep in mind that under Shevardnadze, Chechen fighters would escape into Georgia and take shelter there. The Georgian government would say, “no, no it’s not true,” but that denial was proven false even by Georgian investigative reporters.

Under Shevardnadze the Georgian media were heavily controlled by the state, and the manager of Rustavi 2 TV, Akaki Gogichiashvili, was under death threats. They even beheaded one of his sources.

CD: Who did?

EM: Forces of the security services… Georgia’s version of ‘60 Minutes’ had been exposing corruption in Shevardnadze’s government. They even had a tape of the police planting drugs for extortion, threats and coercion.

There were cases where you’d have someone coming in and speaking on camera, some victim of extortion, and later he’d be beaten. Even in that one case of the beheading, they took every journalistic effort to protect that witness, but couldn’t in the end. It seemed at the time like an act of vengeance from the state and was meant to play a role as a deterrent against any similar witnesses coming forward. But the new government in Georgia has not really proven exemplary for pluralism so far either.

CD: Yet now with Abashidze banished and Adjara back in the fold, Saakashvili seems to be acting with an almost unprecedented confidence and saying that he will “reunify” the country. Is there a realistic chance of him doing so?

EM: Ossetia and especially Abkhazia are important for Russia’s notions of its own security.   Russia has had a powerful role in keeping the divisions in force.   Most of the people in Abkhazia have taken on Russian citizenship.   It will be very difficult to reintegrate these regions and it cannot be done by force.

CD: What about Saakashvili’s most recent provocations, this bit about sinking any boats which come towards Abkhazia? If the leader of any say, Balkan state were to make such a statement about their neighbor they would be pilloried instantly. Why is the Western press apparently so supportive of the Georgian side, when it seems quite clear that the latter stoked this latest round of tensions?

EM:   The West seems not to have thought through any consistent policy with respect
to Georgia.   The one rubric of “anti-terrorism” is not going to be able to stretch across all of the policy issues at hand.   Abkhazia is a place of great beauty and a favorite vacation spot for pre-Revolutionary as well as Soviet and post-Soviet Russians.   There is substantial traffic.   Even to bluff about shooting tourist vessels is irresponsible and must rank among the poorer foreign policy initiatives.

Capital, Crime and Russian Media

CD: I heard an interesting statistic, that whereas in the year 2000 there were no billionaires in Russia, in 2004 there are 17. Aside from signs of state control, what effect does the new factor of the oligarchs have on media?

EM: I don’t know about the numbers, but it is true that there are now for the first time people of definable wealth.   In Soviet times people didn’t have the right to own such large entities yielding so much money.   However, if they were among the political elite, they had the right to use and control substantial advantages: health spas, trips, food, the finest medical care and drugs, etc. So it wasn’t private property- but the Communist elite did live differently, and they lived as a rich, if not owning, class.

But to get back to our question, how does this affect TV? Right now, it doesn’t. Right now three stations toe the government line. The rich people aren’t in control. It’s true, in the previous period, owning a TV station was extremely important; you could push your own agenda. Now, however, they have been excluded for precisely this reason: that TV ownership could be used as a precursor to gaining political power.

CD: What happened? Did Putin shut them down?

EM:   In 1993, Soviet-style, state-operated and state-owned television system became a limited market in which for the first time, the state competed with commercially-run networks.   By 2002, when this study was in the field, the television landscape was dominated by four Moscow-based networks:   Channel One, a public-private hybrid with the greatest penetration and ratings; Channel Two, directly owned and operated by the state; NTV, the largest commercial network; and TV-6, another commercial, less widely received station. In 2000, NTV was taken over by force by its largest stockholder, the natural gas industry, an ally of Russia’s president.   Many of NTV’s staff went over to TV-6, then under tycoon Boris Berezovsky’s control, and became the transplanted opposition side of television news.   It, too, was crushed by presidential disapproval, hasty court decisions, bankruptcy, and closure.   Months later, TVS emerged:   the same leader and familiar on-screen personalities, but a set of quarreling investor-directors, a hugely reduced audience and perilously low advertising revenue.   By the summer of 2003, after TVS had closed down, all that was left of national network television news were three channels (One, Two, and NTV), all owned either wholly or in part by the state or large energy companies close to the state.

CD why?

EM: Putin was unwilling for opposition viewpoints to be aired nationally, especially at election time.   Even before, in 1996, the four channels, including private channels, voluntarily collaborated to favor Boris Yeltsin’s campaign.   Elections always put enormous pressure on television channels, and Putin made certain that no critical views would be widely.

The Klebnikov Killing

CD: What about the murder of Paul Klebnikov, head of Forbes Russia in Moscow this July. Can you give us some background on him, and who might have killed him?

EM: Well, it was stunning, something of this level hasn’t happened in a long time.

Klebnikov was an American of Russian descent. He had gotten involved in several controversial topics of investigation regarding, mostly, Russia’s oligarchs. He wrote a story for Forbes and a book called Godfather of the Kremlin: The Decline of Russia in the Age of Gangster Capitalism in which he accused Berezovsky of ordering the killing of a major TV personality. Berezovsky then sued Forbes for defamation- but in London, where libel law is different and the onus falls on the defendant to disprove the allegation. He had said that no fair trial was possible in Moscow, since Putin had after all exiled him. In the end Berezovsky settled- he wanted no money but an apology, so the New York Times and perhaps other organizations published an apology taking up an entire page, in big black letters.

CD: Do we have any clearer idea of who might have killed Klebnikov, based on any updated information received since July? And what does this case mean, if anything, for freedom of the Russian media?

EM:   Although the Russian government has put thi   case in the category of the most important to solve quickly, so far there are no answers for the public.   It is unlikely that Klebnikov was going back in history to work on the murder of Vlad Listev, the television personality:   Klebnikov’s family and colleagues doubt it.   Investigative reporting is extremely dangerous; that is what Klebnikov specialized in, but it is not known what exactly he was working on.   Forbes also published lists of Russians who qualified as among the richest, but that continues after Klebnikov’s death and would be an unlikely reason.

Advertising and Long-term Issues

CD: Your research discusses media effects. Sometimes the free market is restricted in issues of what is construed as the public good, for example with the ban on televised cigarette advertising in the US. Is this the case with the Duma’s unanimous vote to restrict televised beer ads on August 5? Or was it for other reasons?

EM:   I do think that the decision to restrict beer advertising on television is a response to the tremendous upswing in the consumption of beer in Russia.   However, it will have economic consequences.   Some of the most successful new domestic enterprises have been beer breweries. I don’t know the extent to which their success is linked to television advertising.

CD: What kind of a future do you see for Russian television?

EM: Well, considering that this is a country of 125 million, all with the same language, it’s an extremely attractive market. However, there is a monopoly on advertising held by companies close to the president. You must buy airtime through these companies that represent all the channels and are linked to the state. Some changes will come, but just as with Berlusconi in Italy, Putin is holding back huge growth. That limits any new would-be entrepreneurs… Putin’s monopoly of advertising is so pernicious because, if there was access to the market, you could have explosive growth in business and in the sheer number of choices for consumers.   If access to the market becomes more rational; if there are no longer monopolies; and if property rights are assured, the market will provide the answer.   And the Russian people will have far more choice than they do at present.

CD: What about the status of foreign owners? Will they be allowed to come in?

EM: Recently a foreign company wanted to buy into a small channel- and was told that it was ‘not a good idea.’ But this type of behavior is self-defeating for the government, not only economically but also because the audience sees through it.

CD: What about satellite TV? Is it available?

EM: Yes, but it’s expensive, so only a minority can subscribe at presen
t.

CD: What about the future of Russia after Putin?

EM: Well he has said that he wants to craft a protйgй, but there is really no one who comes to mind right now… he does have plenty of time of course. But as for the more liberal-minded opposition, all of the possible alternatives, they continue to bicker amongst themselves and unless they forge some sort of unity, it may be too late.

Readers interested in learning more about the Russian media today should check out the following books by Ellen Mickiewicz:

Changing Channels: Television and the Struggle for Power in Russia

Split Signals: Television and Politics in the Soviet Union

Media and the Russian Public

Interview with Boris Trajanov (Part 2)

The following is the second part of our exclusive interview with Macedonia’s world-renowned opera singer, Boris Trajanov, on the current state of Macedonia and some possible ways of improving the situation in the years ahead.CD: What about with the new minority language rights, and new Albanian university in Tetovo. Do you think these things [...]

Picture This: Freedom of Photography in Kosovo

Rarely do we spring to the defense of Kosovo’s UNMIK masters. However, in the spirit of correcting media errors where and when they occur, it seems meet at this time to resurrect a story that was destined for publication a month and a half ago, but somehow got lost within the mountain of [...]

Interview with Boris Trajanov (Part 1)

One of Macedonia’s most illustrious international representatives is renowned opera singer Boris Trajanov, who has attained fame throughout the world, playing to opera houses in France, Italy, Germany, America and more. (A detailed professional biography follows the interview text).
In this exclusive interview, conducted last month in the aftermath of the [...]

Why a Real Decentralization Cannot Be in Macedonia

It must be a nice view from Brussels. That is the vantage point from where EU officials and pseudo-governmental appendages like the International Crisis Group loftily dictate both their wisdom and their terms to the ignorant savages of the Balkans. The revival of turbulent events (most recently, today’s announcement that the [...]

The Changing Face of Skopje

Like everywhere else, Skopje is changing, and perceptibly so. The following images of Skopje in summer may have potential historic value some day; for now, they may simply serve to provide humorous illustration of the article’s theme.This year has seen a wild proliferation of new buildings springing up everywhere in Skopje [...]

If Goss is the Best Weíve Got, Weíre All in Trouble

On Wednesday, a Bush administration spokesman declared Porter Goss, the president’s nominee for CIA chief, “…the most qualified man for the job.” This statement came in response to the shocking revelation, supplied by Goss himself, that he was in fact not qualified for the job.Until now, most of the grumbling [...]

Balkan Teams Optimistic for Olympics

As the Athens Olympics descends upon us, various Balkan countries are confident of victory in Greece. Of course, it’s part wishful thinking, but also there are some definite contenders. Yet scandal has already arisen in the case of Bulgaria, and a general air of giddy confusion prevails as the Greeks grapple [...]

Still, Donít Give Up on Turkey

The news that terrorist bombs have again caused carnage in Istanbul was, while not entirely unpredicted, immensely saddening. For those of us who know the city intimately, and who could envision exactly the places mentioned in the reports, the news left a sick feeling in the throat.
Terrorist attacks on hotels in [...]

Georgia Lit by the Warm Interventionist Glow

In an escalating situation made all the more bizarre by its abruptness, provocations continued in the Caucasus today with the Russians charging Georgia over an alleged armed attack on the Duma Vice-Speaker, Vladimir Zhirinovsky.
According to MosNews, the Georgian military fired from a ship, targeting the “ultranationalist” politician as he [...]

Pakistan: the Ambivalent Ally Makes Good?

Calling Pakistan the “ground zero of terrorism,” the Times of India (admittedly, there’s a partisan interest here) today reports:
“…Pakistan is coming sharply into Washington’s crosshairs with the United States finally focusing on a country widely seen as the ground zero of terrorism.
Authorities in Britain and the United States have made [...]

They Said It: Wordplay and War in Macedonia

The publication of yet another hard-hitting commentary from American writer and Macedonia resident Jason Miko, entitled “A Deal With the Devil,” has given us the idea to dust off some more telling data from way back when. In his piece, Miko challenges the sincerity of Albanian leader Ali Ahmeti’s stated devotion [...]

Did Pentagon Reveal Name of Edmondsí ‘Semi-Legit’ Group?

The ongoing saga of FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds’ small war with the Department of Justice has garnered increasing media attention in recent weeks. However, this has almost entirely centered on free speech and legal issues: John Ashcroft’s gag order, Judge Reggie Walton’s dismissal of her case, and now, her [...]

9/11 Commission Ignores Truth, Charges Sibel Edmonds

Former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds, already uncompromising in her single-minded determination to bring her tale of sordid FBI crime, corruption and incompetence to the attention of the world, turns her guns in this official letter on the people who she’d hoped would stand by her- the members of the 9/11 Commission.
This incendiary [...]

Sons of the Black Hand

By Carolyn Kvajic
PublishAmerica (2004), 199 pp.
Reviewed by Christopher Deliso
A sultry young journalist of mixed Balkan bloodline, Alexandra Miletic, is leading an ordinary enough life in Miami, on-again off-again with her likeable but dull sportswriter boyfriend, occupied with chasing down stories of middling importance. However, what appears to represent the nadir of [...]

Out of Control in South Ossetia?

For the past two months, or, since the forced exodus of Aslan Abashidze from his fiefdom in Adjara on the Black Sea, the Georgian government has shifted its attention to the breakaway region of South Ossetia, northwest of Tbilisi and bordering on Russia. As if trying to capitalize on the momentum [...]