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Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty
Henry M. Robert

Animal Farm

13 November, 2012 - 00:00

Leaders of Russia's major television companies have demanded President Yeltsin stop flouting the freedom of expression in his young democratic state. The broadcast tycoons were upset by the Russian Cabinet's decision to grant preferential rights the only company remaining under the Russian State Television and Radio Company's control.

However, I will concentrate not on the decision of Russian top-level bureaucrats but on the overall situation in Russia which is characteristic of all post-Soviet countries. There are dozens of independent TV companies and proceeding from the basic principles of democracy they all should be on equal terms with the state. However, some of them turn out "more equal" than the rest, perhaps in keeping with the law of Orwell's famous disutopia. Moscow ORT leaders recall their semiofficial status only when preferential terms are given someone else. Until then they live comfortably under their true, albeit demanding boss, Boris Berezovsky. When the oligarchs were after Anatoly Chubais's head, assisted by the talented and emotional Sergei Dorenko and his more restrained and cautious NTV counterpart Yevgeni Kiselev (several months later to ask the former Premier to return to office), I wonder if the two broadcast journalists and hosts realized how biased Russian television was. When the NTV leadership openly backed the presidential campaign, to be rewarded with a national channel now entirely theirs, did they realize that this was the end of independent television as such, because they had replaced it with an oligarch-run network? How is one to understand all these talented people blindfolded by their misguided zeal? Would it serve their cause if they knew that in Ukraine (and all over CIS, of course) all "independent studios" work in accordance with that same barnyard law when no one can explain you why this "talented" journalist is on payroll and all the others are out.

For as long as the media remains on the USSR debris, following Orwell's predatory rules, all will suffer, television included. Hence, Mr. Yeltsin might as well forget that letter of protest, because its authors are so brainwashed by their own greater equality that they will never defend any freedom other than that to remain more equal than others.

 

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