After President Donald Trump characterized the media as “the enemy of the public,” Sen. John McCain responded, “The first thing that dictators do is shut down the press. I’m not saying that President Trump is trying to be a dictator. I’m just saying we need to learn the lessons of history.”
His comments reminded me of Russia’s brief, but shining era of freedom of the press while I was a reporter for The Moscow Times in the early 1990s. When Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev introduced glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring the central economy), in the mid-1980s, he unknowingly unleashed a longing for freedom by the Russian people.
Russian journalists began to model foreign correspondents’ practice of asking politicians hard questions and writing increasingly critical commentaries about government leaders. Russians typically subscribed to more than one newspaper and watched televised proceedings of the legislative hearings. It was a heyday for the Russian press.
Sadly, that is no longer the case.
Today thousands of Russians are protesting in the street — an action that is illegal in a country devoid of a right to assemble — in a powerful message of defiance in the face of mass police arrests. The protests were sparked by independent reporting of corruption in government. The head of the group that published the report was arrested and those who broadcast the protests were told they could face charges of extremism.
Freedom of the press began to fade into its final days on the first anniversary of the three-day 1991 coup d’état that brought down the Soviet Union. After the celebrations ended on Aug. 21, 1992, fireworks burst into Moscow skies and fizzled — and so did Russia’s attempts to remake itself into a democracy.
Russian President Boris Yeltsin and legislators had begun to wrestle over amendments to the Soviet constitution in order to create Russia’s first constitution. Their efforts to write democratic amendments became mired over the “division of powers” — a new concept in a culture ruled by communist leaders for more than 75 years.
Russian journalists, led by the staff at Izvestia, the most popular newspaper in the country, criticized both Yeltsin and his opponents. Their commentaries rankled old-school Russian legislators longing to control journalists and manipulate the message. In the fall of 1992, President Yeltsin issued a decree (similar to an executive order) to take control of the Izvestia. Two months later, the Congress voted to take over the newspaper. By the end of the year, the case had been appealed to the Constitutional Court.
With the control of Izvestia in limbo in early 1993, Yeltsin established the Federal Information Center to provide press releases and columns for the media. His administration said journalists would not be required to print or broadcast the articles, but several Russian editors predicted the new entity would evolve into a propaganda machine reminiscent of the communist era.
Meanwhile, the state-run Ostankino TV network’s Channel 1 and Channel 2 also became pawns in the tug of war over control of the news media. When Channel 1’s political pundits questioned his reformist policies, Yeltsin fired Ostankino’s director and appointed a successor who had embraced the presidentap reforms. Yeltsin also issued a decree designating Channel 2 as the official Russian government station.
The constitutional crisis intensified through the summer of 1993 and erupted in bloody battles at the Ostankino Tower and the Russian Parliament in October. For the rest of the 1990s, Yeltsin’s relationship with the Russian press remained contentious.
Since Vladimir Putin, a former 16-year career KGB officer from St. Petersburg, became president in the new millennium, Russian journalists have been closely monitored and punished for writing critical stories about the government. Twenty-three journalists have been murdered in Russia since 2000, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Government officials have also intimidated and jailed local and foreign journalists, censored the Russian press, and passed several laws to control the media. A 2006 law forbids the media from criticizing state officials. A law approved in July 2007, labels anyone criticizing the government as “an extremist” and requires journalists to describe organizations mentioned in stories as “extremists” if they fit the law’s criteria.
In 2014, the Putin government passed a law restricting foreigners from owning more than 20 percent of any news media in Russia. The following year, I was discouraged to read that The Moscow Times, an independently-owned English-language newspaper created in 1992, was sold to a Russian entrepreneur.
The newspaper was converted to a weekly magazine-style format with more features than news stories. The publisher said the change was needed to increase the newspaper’s profits, especially in light of an exodus of foreigners from Moscow in recent years that decreased the paper’s circulation and advertising revenue. The newspaper’s website continues to carry breaking news and objective, critical opinion pieces, but I wonder how long that will last.
Like Sen. McCain, I don’t believe President Trump’s feud with the media will result in our governmentap control of the press. But Trump’s degrading remarks and shutting out critical news outlets from covering his events are other ways of hampering the media. Corralling reporters in a cage during the campaign, his insults toward reporters, and labeling news stories that he disagrees with as “fake news” have marked his presidency’s lack of respect for a free, adversarial press.
Add to that the Trump administration’s tactics of removing scientific studies from the Environmental Protection Agency’s website and websites of other federal agencies. He’s hindering the free flow of information. His attempts to shape and manipulate the news and block access to information remind me of Yeltsin’s insistence of ruling by decree, as his Soviet predecessors did.
Nearly 200 years ago James Madison cautioned, “I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.”
Though our constitution guarantees freedom of the press, the media and the public need to be alert for subtle methods by the government to circumvent the media’s access to sources, manage the news by interjecting alternative facts and false accusations, and withhold critical data related to government policy. As McCain said, we need to heed the lessons of history.
Judi Buehrer is a freelance journalist who lives in Littleton. She was an editor and reporter at The Moscow Times from 1991-93.
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