Georgy Vinokurov

MEDIA COVERAGE OF THE CHECHEN CONFLICT

The war and victims of the war by Russian mass media

Dr. Georgy Vinokurov is an Associate Director of the Media Law and Policy Center in Moscow, Russia. This article is based on the written by him part of the report "Journalism and War: Coverage of Hostilities in Chechnya by Russian mass media (1995)" conducted by the research group of the Russian-American Press and Information Center on which he was a member.

The diversity of approaches to the coverage of the events in Chechnya by different mass media can be deduced to the following characteristics of the major newspapers and broadcasters.

 

THE PRINT MEDIA

ROSSIYSKAYA GAZETA

Rossiyskaya Gazeta, the main governmental newspaper, equated its position with that of the federal authorities in opposition to the local authorities.

The newspaper therefore supported the decision to use force, distanced itself from the failures of the army, and did little to shield the Cabinet ministers involved from blame. This "detached" attitude betrayed a reluctance to associate the government with entities and politicians compromising it.

The paper tried to demonize the Chechen enemy and to show the futility of his resistance. Simultaneously, the government was presented as a defender of statehood and order, forced to take severe measures as a result of extraordinary circumstances. It tried to ignore the problem of the lack of popular support for the action of the authorities, and the civilian casualties of the conflict, while devoting much attention to humanitarian assistance to the latter. The newspaper also distinctly reflected the official attitude towards democrats and their supporters in the mass media by considering them as " traitors" .

On the whole, such position mirrors that of political forces (including the military-industrial complex) which rely on national capital, capital accumulated through internal production, and which aim to stem the inflow of foreign capital and to enable Russian economic expansion outwards.

With this end in view, these forces should rely on a strong state, capable of preventing the disintegration of the country and the national economic structure, and ready to protect their interests in defense of the development and diversification of production inside Russia. Hence their goal is strengthening of Russia and its comeback to the club of world leaders, for which any price is acceptable. At the same time, their attitude towards the army as the principal architect of such a policy is ambivalent: although due tribute is paid to the arguments for necessary force, a certain degree of apprehension is apparent to the effect that the army may burst out from under the control of the authorities and wreak vengeance on those who have used it as a political tool.

KRASNAYA ZVEZDA

Krasnaya Zvezda, an official newspaper of the Defense Ministry, like Rossiyskaya Gazeta, had its own picture of events. The paper devoted considerable attention to the hostilities, and evaluated them from a professional military perspective. By doing so, it distinguished itself from the incompetence and hasty conclusions of the military coverage in other publications.

This paper had a strong attitude towards "our side" and "the enemy" , which may understandably be ascribed to army solidarity. Trying to stir up sympathy for the thankless work the army had to do to remedy the mistakes of politicians, Krasnaya Zvezda paid a great deal of attention to casualties among the troops, as well as to the hardships encountered by the army.

In the process of humanizing the Russian armed forces, Krasnaya Zvezda tried to hush reports about multiple casualties among the civilian population, on about violations of human rights by the military. It did not miss, though, any opportunity to mention the sporadic cases of support for the army on the part of the local population. At the same time, " the enemy" was portrayed by the newspaper as brutal, unprincipled, and treacherous, reluctant to solve the conflict by peaceful means and unscrupulous about resorting to foul-play and the services of mercenaries. Simultaneously, Krasnaya Zvezda accentuated the support for the army given by the local opposition to Dudaev, thereby deflecting accusations of occupation by the Russian troops.

Krasnaya Zvezda regarded the press and the democratic public in Russia as a danger almost as great as Dudaev himself. Yet at the same time, the newspaper implied that despite all the problems, the army would carry out the orders, because the army is the only force still able to solve anything in Russia and still capable of self-sacrifice.

The attitude to the existing authorities was on the whole ambivalent: on the one hand, there were the values of army discipline and subordination, and on the other, a muffled tumult of dissatisfaction with the politicians for their incessant manipulation of the army.

On the whole, Krasnaya Zvezda was a good example of a professional military newspaper, defending the interests of its own corporation and making no claim to impartiality. The conflict was presented as the fight between the "good guys" and the "bad guys" .

It was obvious that the Russian army had no Latin American aspirations to become an independent political force with claims to power. The only thing it did lay claim to was its promised share of the budget and also the right to remain unaffected by the interference of civilians.

 

PRAVDA

No matter what the subject of its publications on Chechnya, the communist newspaper assumed an opposition stance, bringing everything down to the common denominator of government failure. The paper strove to underscore the "anti-popular" nature of the authorities by focusing readers' attention to the ordinary civilian victims of the conflict, by highlighting the resistance of the local population, and so on. The roots of the conflict were identified in the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the separatism of Russia’s provinces, while the current crisis of national statehood was directly connected to democratization and "pseudo-market" reforms.

Characteristically, the main barrage of criticism was aimed not only at the president and the government, but also at the democrats who had "had a taste of power" and were presently in opposition to the Kremlin. Pravda thus ignored the principle of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend".

However, the newspaper did not reflect a single opposition view, but only the particular one of the "New Left" who, remaining loyal to socialist ideals, while expurgating the most odious aspects of the communist regime and adding patriotism to the mix, strive to enter the political establishment and act by its rules of the game. Much stress was therefore put on the parliamentary activities of the communist deputies, there were frequent references to opinions in the West, and distance was put between the paper and the "irreconcilable" radicals. On the whole, the "pink communist" opposition, whose views are reflected by Pravda, is close to occupying a political niche allocated in developed countries to "left-wing" social democrats.

SEGODNYA

The position of Segodnya, a daily for the businessmen, can, with some reservations, be defined as the most balanced of all: extreme judgments are anathema to a newspaper orientated towards a public moderate in views.

The newspaper criticized the actions of the Russian leadership as a whole, accentuating the incompetence of the authorities and the unworthy fulfillment of political instructions by the army. According to Segodnya, the Russian authorities are inferior even to Dudaev: unlike them, he took advantage of all the opposing side's mistakes and managed within three years to get ready for the war, to build a propaganda base, and so forth.

According to Segodnya, Dudaev had always been ready for peace negotiations, and the Russian side should have met him halfway, even if this entailed recognition of his legitimacy. The newspaper implied that "bad peace is better than a good quarrel" ,— there was no huge tragedy in the sovereignty of Chechnya, whereas the threat of totalitarianism was far more disturbing.

On the whole, the position of this newspaper reflected the interests of the socioeconomic entities involved in raw material production (primarily energy production and export) and the import of produce, as well as of major investors in this sphere. These interests support the primacy of raw materials in economic priorities, and continued high levels of imported goods. Their objective is to reduce state interference in the economy to an "optimal" level, on the one hand, ensuring conditions for the unimpeded functioning of the aforementioned entities, and on the other hand, providing support of a light socioeconomic crisis in Russia that makes grounds for its dependence on imports.

Their conclusion is that the present political leadership of the country is unsuitable. Unable to guarantee a minimum of socioeconomic stability, it keeps the nation and business people in a state of uncertainty. This conclusion entails sharp criticism of Yeltsin by the above entities, and a desire for his replacement by competent, predictable politicians, who understand their interests — "proficient economists" and "pragmatics"

It is in the interests of this same lobby to prevent "excessive" disintegration of the country, since that decreases the political and economic dependence of isolated Russian regions on the owners of raw materials and financial capital reserves in Moscow. The army, in Segodnya's opinion, should ensure civil peace in Russia wherever its disappearance may lead to outbreaks of social discontent and political instability (i.e. primarily in large cities), and should also prevent any separatist initiatives. The failings of the armed forces in Chechnya have demonstrated that, in order to perform these tasks, the army needs to be reformed and become professional.

IZVESTIA

Izvestia, a liberal daily, was not particularly concerned to maintain a formal balance and occupied an uncompromising position of criticizing both the decision of the authorities to use troops, and the manner in which this decision was executed.

The newspaper undermined the arguments for using force and rallied around the arguments against, these being of liberal standards — democracy, humanitarianism, and human rights in their contemporary Russian meaning. The "blood-thirstiness" of politicians and the army was at first particularly vivid against the backdrop of neutral or sympathetic descriptions of the Chechen side.

Analyzing the results of the conflict, the newspaper pointed to the growth of politic strife in the Kremlin, grumbling in the army, the danger of disintegration of the country and the economy, the growth of public protests, and the enormous human and material losses. Maintaining that this is too high a price to pay for instituting order and preserving the integrity of the Federation, the newspaper implied that the restructuring of the state on a confederate basis was not only tolerable, but desirable. The more so if, according to the paper, it is the will not only of the entire Chechen people but also of the majority of Russians.

In Izvestia's opinion, the army had become involved in something which was none of its business and proceeded to create further disorder by its unexpected "zeal" . The obvious hate — figures for the newspaper included the Defense, Interior and Security ministers, and the presidential entourage — the president himself was left relatively unscathed, because of his past merits and hopes for his " self-correction" .

The newspaper reacted with particular vehemence to attacks on mass media by the authorities for their attempts to give its coverage of the conflict. The newspaper allocated a lot of its space to debunking official government reports.

On the whole, Izvestia's position can be qualified as liberally-orientated. This position expresses the desire to include Russia in the institution of the New World Order, a process which requires a homogenization of Western and Russian systems. In the economic sphere, it signifies the absolute victory of private property and the full freedom of the market, and in the cultural-political sphere, it entails the priority of general human values and the triumph of individualism. Izvestia is an example of the media's potential to adopt an anti-etatist, an anti-imperialist, anti-nationalistic, and anti-traditionalist position.

MOSKOVSKY KOMSOMOLETS

Moskovskiy Komsomolets, a daily newspaper for the young Russians, occupied a peculiar niche in its Chechen coverage, compensating for a relatively small amount of space on this subject by focusing on certain crucial topics.

Overt priority was given to hostilities, possible casualties and victims, the violation of human rights by the army, the resistance of the local population to the troops and their support of Dudaev, thereby exposing the falsehoods of official sources.

The newspaper favored neither side: the actions of both of them were described by terms such as "terror, banditry, massacre" , and they were often labeled as the "occupants" (the army) and the "bandits" (the Dudaev forces).

These peremptory judgments and scathing epithets, this inclination towards the presentation of death, torture, brutality and ruin, and the simplification of complex processes are particularly attractive to people who hunger for radical changes.

In some aspects, the youthful ardor of the newspaper echoes the recklessness of the first post-revolutionary times, and in others, the mutinous nihilism and self-destructiveness of the "angry generation" of the sixties. It might be possible to say that the newspaper is trying to form a "new man", whose mentality fundamentally differs from the existing one, able to integrate the Russians fully with the Western cultures. For this reason, the newspaper targets a youthful audience, as the most malleable one.

 

TELEVISION

Analyzing the differences in approach of television newscasts to the coverage of the conflict in Chechnya, it is necessary to start out by pointing to the incompatibility of Vremya and Vesti newscasts with their formal status. The former, part of the "Ostankino" company as it prepared to become "public" , occupied a more official position, whereas Vesti of the state television company "Rossia" , was critical of the government.

On the other hand, it is necessary to beware of simplistic conclusions. Despite the outwardly "pro-governmental" orientation of Vremya, the latter can in no way be regarded as a propaganda show, and in absolutely no way as a "pro-Yeltsin" newscasts. Under glasnost, it was impossible to entirely neglect facts and to show overt bias. Nevertheless, the program displayed passivity and indecisiveness, even in cases when the facts pointed to clear conclusions. It is thus possible to identify the position of Vremya with the positions of Rossiyskaya Gazeta and Krasnaya Zvezda — but only on the basis of external signs and with certain reservations.

The position of Vesti is more frank in its critical attitude to Yeltsin and the generals in the Cabinet. Although its formal state position at times compelled the news program to cover up the core of the matter. On the whole, however, the program did not try very hard to disguise its disapproval of the use of force. They made their position clear both directly — giving their own opinion or quoting somebody else's opinion — and indirectly — by showing the non-conformity of facts and official statements, or by accompanying a governmental announcement with a "picture" disavowing it.

It is necessary to add that Vesti compensated for the shortage of illustrative video materials by the exaggerated emotion of its hosts, who by mimicry, voice modulations, and sarcastic interjections, added greater force to the information. On the whole, the position of Vesti is similar to that of Izvestia, with the only difference lying in its "subordinate" status, and the consequent restrictions on its freedom of expression.

Among all the television news programs analyzed, NTV's Segodnya was the most balanced. It tried to allow the audience to reach an independent conclusion, by familiarizing them with the wide spectrum of opinions on the conflict, and using for this purpose a minimum of comments and a maximum of reports. Yet at the same time, Segodnya persuasively and accurately pushed its viewers towards a certain conclusion. The analysis of this news program showed that it held a similar stance to that of the newspaper with the same name.

 

E PLURIBUS UNUM

There was, as is clear, a diversity of positions in the mass media. Nevertheless, there was also a conceptual unity: the coverage of events in Chechnya as a whole represented a single complex of views, united in their essence by some common idea.

For instance, all editions and programs in different ways underlined the senselessness both of the decision to apply force in Chechnya and of its implementation: the unnecessary casualties, the deficiencies in the military operations, the futility of the politicians' efforts to find a way out of the situation, the blood — lust of the two sides and so forth — in short, there was a lack of any sense of the situation in general.

Even Rossiyskaya Gazeta and Vremya, not to mention the other mass media outlets, could not explain why these events were unavoidable and why they had occurred.

A political leader, criticized both from the "right" and from the "left", has been stripped of his charisma. His authority has been minimized to an unprecedented degree both by the direct accusations of the independent mass media and by the silence and hints of the official mass media.

Moreover, the very concept of authority has been damaged: its suppression of the part of its own population, and especially the methods used in this suppression, have undermined the bases of its legitimacy, irrespective of whether a particular outlet considered such a struggle to be a justified and inevitable measure or, on the contrary, to be the abuse of power.

The preservation of Russian territorial integrity has also been questioned — regardless of whom in particular a given newspaper or program holds responsible for the future disintegration, and whether it considers such developments desirable or not.

The army has been presented in a totally different light, turning in front of the eyes of the Russians, from a nation’s defender into a punitive weapon. Even the muffled tumult of dissatisfaction of Krasnaya Zvezda acknowledges this new status. A certain historicism has emerged, between August 1991 to October 1993 in Chechnya and resulting in the question: what next? In a country with universal military conscription, in which the army has always been the people's flesh and blood, one more stereotype has crumbled.

Another peculiarity, according to the mass media, lay in the fact that this war lacked a hero. There was no one, whose sacrifice imparted a supreme meaning to military activities, which without it, became a banal fratricide.

The considerable attention paid to the casualties (on both sides), to the victims, the brutality, the destruction and grief, to all the horrible consequences of war at first shocked people, and later de-sensitized the audience till they became accustomed to viewing the charred remains of their compatriots during the family supper.

Values became less easy to define: i.e. "us" and "them" , the right and the wrong, the executioners and the victims, this led to frequent disorientation due to reversals in roles. It became almost impossible to formulate one's own personal moral attitude to the conflict and to more fundamental issues.

All these aspects have been present, to varying degrees, in all mass media. Even those newspapers or television programs for which none of the above seems a salient characteristic, have not given us an alternative stance to consider. Willingly or unwillingly, the different mass media arrived at the same conclusion, albeit by different routes.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the conflict in Chechnya has demonstrated the aspiration of the "fourth estate" to strengthen its position in society. Mass media have demanded the opportunity to exercise unimpeded penetration into every sphere and the right to cover all aspects of the sociopolitical life of the country. At the same time, the mass media have reacted rather badly to any attempts to control their activities.

This was manifest during the Chechen conflict: it was apparent in interviews with journalists, in the statements of media management, and in the very output of the press and TV, that mass media were deeply wounded by the negative attitude towards them on the part of the authorities and the army.

The corporate unity of the mass media was also evidenced by the persuasiveness of certain professional techniques and methods of coverage. The media have found that it is possible to be unscrupulous in the verification of facts; to conceal something "unpleasant" (for example, casualties among Russian troops inflicted by friendly fire); to rephrase a quotation; to dispute someone's opinion by discrediting their person; to advance false alternatives ("either recognition of Dudaev and independence for Chechnya, or civil war throughout the Caucasus"); to make misleading generalizations ("the Russians are fighting against the Caucasians"); to resort to double standards (the Chechens deserve to have their human rights respected, while the Russians do not); to refer to unidentified sources ("they say" or "it is felt"); to ask suggestive questions during an interview; and to extract statements out of context; to proclaim questionable and dubious statements as if they were incontrovertibly true ("it is common knowledge" or " no one would deny" ).

These gimmicks were underpinned by repeated if tendentious assertions, to the effect, for instance, that "throughout its entire history, Russia has been undertaking imperial expansion"; and also by the imitation of pluralism, when an undesirable opinion is quoted with a negative spin off effect.

There were a range of additional methods used to strengthen or weaken the emotional impact of the coverage on the audience:

a) naturalism in the description and presentation of the dead and wounded, eliciting a negative response to developments; or the casual mention of the oppression of the Russians during the last three years in Chechnya, with no elaboration on the grief of the victims;

b) the sympathetic individualization of the participating personalities, by mentioning the name of a chechen volunteer, his "peaceful" occupation (as a rule, a driver of a "bread truck" , or a country teacher), the sex and age of his children; or the depersonalization of the participating personalities so that the Russian soldiers become a nameless "gray mass" , for which it is difficult to feel sympathy;

c) heroism whereby the Chechen fighters are portrayed as born warriors, risen to defend their fatherland and ready for feats of daring, evoking respect; or misery whereby the soldiers are shown as hunted hungry, frozen, disorientated and demoralized creatures, evoking both pity and shame;

d) infantilisation whereby rank-and-file soldiers are portrayed as simpletons, 18 to 20-year-old kids, virtually torn away from mothers breast and sent to massacre, causing any mother sitting in front of the TV set or reading a newspaper instinctively to think with apprehension of her son only of conscription or pre-conscription age, or to sigh with relief that her son has already served in the army; or maturation whereby even 12 to 14-year- old Chechen boys take on the impression of quite manlike fighters, waging war against adults and with victims already under their belt, causing a reader or viewer to think: "What sort of country is it where even the children..." ;

e) symbolism, whereby much attention is paid to such things as green "martyr bands" or to the "oath on the Koran" , as a means of underscoring the ideological preparedness of the Chechens; or profanation, whereby the hoisting of the Russian flag over "Dudaev's Palace" is ridiculed as a parody of the hoisting a red banner over the Reichstag in 1945, and undermines the pathos of the moment;

f) psychological analysis, so that the aspirations and actions of participants in these events are explained by psychological impulses — the need to protect their next of kin and to avenge dead comrades, or the refusal to succumb to injustice — which are comprehensible to anyone; or rationalization, so that explaining actions in terms of reinforcing authority, material interests, and obeying orders, diminishes their moral value in the eyes of the post-Soviets;

g) globalisation of the conflict, emphasizing the threat of its spread beyond the boundaries of Chechnya and the Caucasus, stretching it as far as your own home thus becoming a threat to personal well-being; or localization of events within the frames of Chechnya, and more specifically Grozny, thereby calming the audience and depersonalizing consideration of the events;

h) infernalization, whereby the adversary is dehumanized, to the extent that the use of even the most inhuman methods against him is justified; or sanctification of thoughts and deeds, by explaining them in terms of lofty motives — "protection of the law and the Constitution" , or "defense of the fatherland from occupation" ,— which also serve to justify all ensuing sins;

i) extrapolation, enlarging the enemy forces to encompass, for instance, the entire Muslim world, and raising the nature of conflict to a generalized level; or narrowing the definition of the enemy down to "illegal bandit formations" , and reducing the conflict to the level of a standard police operation;

j) solidarity, by means of pronouns (ours), or suggestive devices (a description of a joint meal or a story about common dangers), which identifies the author with the protagonist and creates empathy with the latter; or detachment, by direct means ("this country" , "this army") or subtle means ("corpses of soldiers" instead of "bodies");

k) understatement, whereby inconvenient facts are given insufficient attention (for instance, the provision of the newest types of Russian armament, even after the launching of hostilities, to the Chechen side); or overstatement, exaggerating the significance of other features of the conflict (for instance, the support for Dudaev of a number of Moslem countries, which in fact has not gone beyond cautious declarations);

l) openness, allowing for a rounded discussion of usually taboo subjects, such as the ability of the leadership, or military secrets; or prohibition of discussion of certain dangerous issues and opinions, fraught with unpleasant associations, such as the Russia-Japanese War of 1904-5, the Sin-Vietnamese war or the USSR's invasion of Afghanistan.

Using the analogy of the market, it is possible to argue that mass media had a specific product to sell — in this case, information, news, and comment — and were thus forced to take the laws of advertising into consideration when marketing that product. It followed from these laws that ideas have greater currency if they are offered not in the form of bare facts, but in the form of images. There is a difference between a disinterested report on numbers of army casualties and a picture of 'losses' which emerges from the description of charred corpses scattered around Grozny, left to be gnawed by wild dogs. Sufficient repetition of those kinds of images leads to symbols, and thence to mythology — for instance, the low combat capability of the army and high combat qualities of Dudaev's troops.

Television clearly has an advantage here, but the press too is aware of its strengths — it is not coincidence that in their reports from the scene, all newspapers often chose the form of an essay or a dialogue rather than that of an field report.

To ensure their efficient influence over the audience, the mass media were careful to provide a framework of values, within which to situate their coverage. The issue of "human rights" was one such value initially, but since this is associated with the West and is quite indifferently received by a Russian audience, references to it became rarer in the mass media.

As long as the mass media communicate with the masses, they will be compelled to address the common denominators of the human psyche, in order to achieve maximal audiences. As such, the mass media are only concerned with stimulating universal interest, at the expense of individuality of interpretation: here freedom of expression is in conflict with freedom of thought.

Yet at the same time, the differentiation of society demands a wide variety of orientations and marketing strategies from its mass media. The 'carpet bombing' propaganda of totalitarian times is far less efficient in reaching its targets than the smart missiles of a diversity of media outlets. Hence the legion of different newspapers and broadcasters.

It turns out, therefore, that the coverage of events in Chechnya proved that there is no fundamental difference between a "red" or "black" mass media outlet in the game of information roulette — "zero" is the winning number.