Publicity for the Owners. By Andrei Richter . Russia Profile Magazine March 2, 2005

There are, at present, about 25 bills related to the mass media in line to be reviewed by the State Duma, some of which have been waiting since 1998 and 1999. Most of them are weak and, in my opinion, doomed, even though they remain under review.

The key to Russian media legislation remains, however, the Law on the Mass Media, which was first adopted in early 1991. The law helped establish newspapers, magazines and electronic media outlets independent of Soviet control, free of government censorship, and run by private companies. The statute regulates the procedures for setting up, running and closing of media outlets, as well as the rights and obligations of journalists. It is one of Russia’s most liberal laws and one of the world’s most advanced laws regulating the field. Professor Monroe Price of the Annenberg School for Communication, in the United States, said that this law seems “to over-define freedom, stamping out any interference with the journalist, whether by the government or by the publisher.” He continued: “There is no guarantee in American law that an editor will be ‘independent’ of the publisher… It is also rare for journalists, as a body, to have rights independent of collective bargaining agreements.”

While the liberties provided by the law have been taken away by harsh economic conditions under which the press operates, and by mounting political pressure from the government, its liberal spirit is still intact. Whether it was this spirit or some hidden agenda that annoyed the Kremlin enough to move it to form the Federal Media Committee, an informal group of handpicked owners and executives at major national media outlets remains to be seen. Its main aim was to approve the draft law on the mass media and to call on the president to introduce it in the State Duma. With the United Russia majority in the State Duma, it should pass easily. The bill was made public in the spring of 2003, but met with broad criticism the independent experts and journalists, as well as with unexpected stubbornness from the lawyers within the presidential administration. While the latter were concerned mostly about legal and technical deficiencies, the former groups had other worries:

1. The current founders of the media outlets (journalists in many cases) will be replaced by owners, who take full charge of the their operations.
2. Gone will be the traces of institutional guarantees of editorial independence for journalists. The new bill abolishes editorial statutes or regulations, as well as the practice of the election of editors. The rights of journalists in formulating editorial policy will be curbed. The journalists and the editors simply work for the owner, without any legislated independent creative decision making powers. This would be implemented in a context of the total absence of collective bargaining agreements in the media industry.
3. The bill will introduce a system of official warnings issued by the Ministry of Culture and Mass Communications in the event of any violation of the mass media law. A second warning would allow the ministry to ask a court to either strip the media outlet’s registration and, in the case of electronic media, it’s license. If the court acknowledges that the violations occurred, it will be bound to shut the media entity down. There is the danger that this excessive punishment will be meted out in cases where the violations are minor, which is in clear violation of the European Human Rights Convention. Naturally, the government will not have sufficient resources to monitor all print and electronic media, but the mere fact that this weapon will be at hand presents a real threat to the media independence.
4. The Ministry of Culture and Mass Communications will become a monster, requiring a huge infusion of new staff, both to issue the warnings and to register about 50,000 outlets in the names of their owners, rather than the founders. Once this second process is completed, this huge body will then have to find something else to do with its time, and few doubt that it will involve even closer monitoring and control of the media.

After the March government reforms, the new bureaucrats in the Ministry of Culture and Mass Communications dusted off the bill and got to polishing it up to please the Kremlin and soothe the worries of journalists’ worries. In late 2004, there were several claims that the “final, final draft” was ready and would shortly be introduced in the Duma. Judging from recent remarks by Leonid Nadirov, the deputy minister in charge of the media, it doesn’t seem like it has been altered to any significant degree
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In a sense, the “captains of the media industry” who rubber-stamped the 2003 bill got hooked. They were promised full “market-economic” powers over their real or potential properties. They would be free to hire and fire anyone without any constraints related to the specific character of the mass media sector. But, while this is carrot, there is also a stick: The new media law will likely no longer shield them from ministry reprisals. Today, they can stay in the shadows and let the editors and journalists take responsibility. What’s more, the public will have legitimate cause to view the press as nothing more than a machine operated by the owners, which will likely reduce public trust of the media to a new low. This could not only put an end not to hopes of raising the market value of the new media assets, but also to the very notion of a free press in Russia.

Andrei Richter is the director of the Moscow Media Law and Policy Center. He contributed this comment to Russia Profile.