Americans know all about that; Vietnam was their first televised war, and most of them didn’t like what they saw either. But Americans of that era were more sophisticated about the media than today’s Russians. And in the years since Vietnam, the technology of journalism has been revolutionized, making war reportage far more immediate than it was then. Film does not have to be flown back from the front anymore; instead, video images can be sent over telephone lines. Reporters carry portable phones and write copy on laptop computers for instant transmission. The war in Afghanistan was at least as cruel as the Chechen conflict, but Kremlin censors gave Russians a sanitized version of the events. Now overt censorship has been lifted, and apparently the government – unsophisticated itself about the ways of the media – has been surprised by the result.
“Our politicians thought this would be like Afghanistan,” says Igor Malashenko, the president of NTV, a private network whose coverage of Chechnya has been the hardest-hitting of all. “They didn’t take the media into account.” Yeltsin and other Kremlin officials have accused journalists of taking Chechen money for slanted coverage. Nationalities Minister Nikolai Yegorov reportedly warned that he would “turn the guns” on Russian broadcasters for their critical coverage of the war. And recently Yeltsin threatened to fire Oleg Poptsov, the head of Russian Television, one of two state-owned networks.
Yeltsin launched the attack on Chechnya without consulting either his Parliament or the public, but last week he was out on the hustings, trying to convince skeptical Russians that the war was all but over and that talk about the disintegration of their army was unfounded. During a visit to the central Russian city of Lipetsk, he talked to a few employees at a metallurgical plant. “I encouraged the workers to ask questions about Chechnya,” he told reporters afterward, “and they told me it is high time to end the conflict. I told them we wanted with all our heart to end the conflict quickly and peacefully.”
But few Russians seem to believe Yeltsin, and some generals criticize him openly (following story). Punctured by a bad press, the president’s approval rating has sunk to 14 percent. The credibility of his government isn’t any better. Moscow claimed last week that only 617 army and Interior Ministry troops had been killed in the fighting so far, a much lower figure than most other estimates. Oleg Lobov, the secretary of Yeltsin’s powerful Security Council, claimed that the influence of Chechen leader Dzhokhar Dudayev was “steadily declining.” But such hopeful pronouncements were starkly contradicted by media coverage of the fighting in Chechnya, where artillery barrages continued to take a heavy toll as the rebels stubbornly held on to parts of their capital, Grozny.
Not all of the media coverage is believable. The Russian press is far from objective, often dishing up more opinion than fact. Anti-Yeltsin newspapers have topped their front pages with headlines like RUSSIA ON THE VERGE OF CATASTROPHE and THERE IS NO AUTHORITY LEFT, NO TRUTH AND NO PRESIDENT. But the government’s version of the truth can be even wilder. Attempting to discredit their critics, Kremlin officials have charged that Dudayev’s forces are outfitted with modern Japanese radio equipment and that every Chechen sniper carries American or Japanese ammunition. Dudayev’s forces, they claim, are mostly mercenaries who receive $2,000 a day for their work. Sergei Kovalyov, the Russian commissioner for human rights who has used the press to challenge the government’s claims at every turn, has come under particularly withering fire. Defense Minister Pavel Grachev called him “an enemy of Russia,” while ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who supports the assault on Chechen independence, charged that Kovalyov was “defending bandits, thieves, rapists and rebels.”
“The authorities give one side of the war, and the press gives another, but there’s no complete picture,” complains Vladimir Lepyokhin, editor of the daily Novaya Yezhednevnaya Gazeta and a centrist deputy in Parliament. “The Chechen crisis proves that we need urgent reforms in the media,” he argues. But reforms, even if needed, can easily become a euphemism for something else. The government claims it doesn’t want to censor the media. Sergei Filatov, Yeltsin’s chief of staff, says journalists “should be helped and not hampered.” Lobov denies that the Kremlin has put the screws to the press. “On the contrary, it has been tolerating everything,” he maintains.
Yet government pressure increasingly has led to indirect censorship, especially of Ostankino, the biggest state TV network. Its evening newscast recently reverted to its old Soviet name, “Vremya” (“Time”). The program used to balance government statements with on-scene reports that often contradicted the official claims. Lately the program has gone back to serving upgovernment propaganda, more or less undiluted. Private media outlets are more resistant to pressure, but still they feel it. Yeltsin’s Security Council has threatened to “reorganize” NTV, which could mean bringing it under state control. Last month, when Russian officials tried to tell reporters that the bombing of Grozny had stopped, NTV showed more air raids taking place. “We do not take any political position,” claims Malashenko, the network president. “But the images speak for themselves.” As long as Yeltsin makes any claim to democratic rule, he may have to allow some of the televised images to go on speaking against him.
