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http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/06/-sp-ex-soviet-countries-front-line-russia-media-propaganda-war-west
Ex-Soviet countries on front line of Russia's media war with the west
By Alec Luhn in Moscow
Tuesday 6 January 2015
[Summary: The Kremlin's plans for the global expansion of state media
have been greeted with suspicion, especially in the countries of the
former USSR.]
When Dmitry Kiselyov, the Russian state television presenter known for
his scandalising monologues, announced the opening of the Kremlin's
new website and radio service Sputnik News, he stressed that it would
continue the tradition of Soviet propaganda to counter what he called
the `aggressive' pro-American bias of the western media.
Unveiled as a replacement for the government's international radio
broadcasting service Voice of Russia, Sputnik News primarily differs
from its predecessor in sheer size--the new outlet's content will be
produced in 130 cities in 34 countries around the globe, according to
Kiselov.
Each Sputnik hub will employ between 30 and 80 staff members, and an
expanded team of 100 will reportedly work in the office in the
Ukrainian capital Kiev, where a new government that Russian state
media decried as a `fascist junta' has adopted an association
agreement with the European Union and is fighting a simmering conflict
with Russia-backed rebels in the country's east.
`The majority of [Sputnik News] content ¦ will be prepared locally, by
local journalists, taking into account local discussions and the
demands of the local audience,' Kiselyov said, announcing the changes
in November.
The Kremlin's media strategy
Amid tensions on a scale not seen since the Cold War, the plans for
Sputnik News are just one component of the Kremlin's changing
international media strategy. Moscow has greatly increased projected
spending for its foreign-focused media outlets for 2015, budgeting
$400 million for its RT television channel and $170 million for
Rossiya Segodnya, the state news agency that includes Sputnik News and
is headed by Kiselyov.
The expansion of Russian state media and its increasingly anti-Western
content has prompted European Union lawmakers to propose creating a
joint Russian-language television channel to provide an alternative
source of information.
A communications researcher with close ties to the Estonian government
also told the Guardian that Estonia's public broadcasting company
plans to launch a Russian-language television channel next autumn to
counter pro-Kremlin media.
`Free media made according professional journalistic standards is the
best antitoxin to disinformation and propaganda,' said the researcher,
who did not want to be named.
While some argue that Sputnik News and other Russian media initiatives
will promote debate, concerns have also arisen that the
`decentralisation' of state media represents a huge expansion of the
frontline in what many are calling an information war between Russia
and the west.
And for some, that front line appears to fall across Russia's
neighbours--the countries of the former Soviet Union--where many have
watched events in Ukraine with growing concern.
Sputnik News
Sputnik News will have hubs in major capitals including Beijing,
Berlin, London, Paris and Washington DC, but its offices are
especially concentrated in Russia's near abroad; with the exception of
Turkmenistan, all former Soviet republics will host a Sputnik hub, as
well the Georgian breakaway provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia,
which Georgia considers to be under Russian military occupation.
Besides English, the Sputnik News website now has local-language
versions for Abkhazia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, China, Germany, Spain, and
Turkey.
[Map: 130 cities covered in 34 countries worldwide. Georgia includes
stations in Sukhumi, Tskhinvali, Yerevan and Tbilisi. Baku has a
separate station, Yerevan does not. ]
In Tajikistan, Rossiya Segodnya has already been aggressively hiring
the `best local journalists and prominent human rights activists, as
well as journalists from the western media, with the promise of higher
salaries and professional development,' according to the editor of a
local independent media outlet who asked not to be identified.
Rossiya Segodnya and Sputnik News declined to comment for this article.
Proponents have argued that initiatives such as Sputnik News are no
different than the United States' long-running Voice of America and
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty services, which are funded by the US
government.
`I don't know of one large country that hasn't engaged in
foreign-language broadcasting,' said Andrei Bystritsky, former Voice
of Russia chairman who is now dean of the communications, media and
design department at Moscow's Higher School of Economics.
`Broadcasting in the languages of its neighbours is an absolutely
logical part of Russia's open, transparent foreign policy.'
Journalism standards
But the journalistic standards of Russian government-owned media have
been questioned, especially during the Ukraine crisis. Britain's
broadcasting regulator issued a warning to RT in November after
concluding that it had `failed to preserve due impartiality' in four
broadcasts about the conflict in eastern Ukraine.
On Thursday, the National Radio Company of Ukraine announced it was
beginning broadcasts in the Russian language that would reach Ukraine
and the European part of Russia. Officials in Kiev have said Ukraine
is ramping up its foreign broadcasts to improve the country's image in
Russia and Crimea.
A recent report on Russia's `weaponisation of information' published
by the Institute of Modern Russia, a New York-based think tank run by
the son of former oligarch and Putin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky,
argued that the Kremlin is wielding outlets like Sputnik News to not
just persuade, but also to `sow confusion via conspiracy theories and
proliferate falsehoods.'
`To compare Voice of America and RFE/RL with Russian propaganda is not
right,' said Belarusian politician and economist Yaroslav Romanchuk,
who heads Mises Centre, a think tank that promotes laissez-faire
capitalism. `On the one hand we are talking about mass media that are
putting out certain point of information but with standards and
multiple voices. On the other hand, we have the promotion of military
actions and an information war."
In its 85-year history, Voice of Russia--known in Soviet times as
Radio Moscow--broadcast in Russian and a variety of foreign languages,
but it wasn't until 2008 that it started broadcasting in some of the
languages of the newly independent countries of the former
USSR--specifically Armenian, Kyrgyz and Moldovan. Sputnik News,
however, will publish and broadcast in 30 different languages,
including English and the languages of all former Soviet republics
except Turkmenistan, Belarus and Lithuania, according to its website.
Its broadcast languages will also include Abkhaz, Ossetian and Crimean
Tatar, which is spoken by the Muslim minority whose leaders objected
to Russia's annexation of the Crimean peninsula this year.
Pro-Russian media already reaches a huge number of homes across the
former Soviet region. In the Baltics, the First Pribaltisky Channel
rebroadcasts Russian state-owned Channel One, which claims to reach
250 million viewers around the world. Russia's population is about 143
million.
Unlike the previous generation, however, many young people born after
the fall of the Soviet Union in the Baltics don't learn Russian.
Nerijus Maliukevicius, a political science lecturer at Vilnius
University who studies Russian media, believes this could partly
provide the rationale for Sputnik's expansion into English and local
language programming.
`I consider the coming of Sputnik to our region to be a twist in the
overall propaganda strategy,' said Maliukevicius. He believes the move
indicates that `Russia is worried about the younger generation, the
English-speaking generation, and that they would use narratives and
techniques similar to RT to gain ground in this segment.'
A Sputnik News radio host in Moscow who previously worked at Voice of
Russia said the new outlet seemed to be more `politicised', as are
other state-owned media. The host asked to speak anonymously out of
concern for job security, since the Moscow office has been cutting
staff in departments such as sport, culture and Arabic language.
Broadcasting in the languages of its neighbours is an absolutely
logical part of Russia's open, transparent foreign policy
In its first month, Sputnik News--whose tagline is `Telling the
untold'--has given extensive coverage to the Ferguson protests against
police brutality in the US, criticised policies such as Washington's
embargo of Cuba, argued that Russian gas is the best option for Europe
and that France should complete the sale of two Mistral warships to
Russia despite international sanctions against Moscow over the Ukraine
crisis. But on its debut, it also featured an interview in which
Polish white supremacist Mateusz Piskorski claimed that the United
States' secretly `Trotskyist' foreign policy had grown into a global
threat.
`Previously, you didn't hear as much of this intonation that takes you
back to the Soviet Union,' the host said. `I hear how my producer
interviews an expert, and before each question he describes the
situation in the way he wants to hear commentary about it. It seemed
that earlier the questions weren't phrased in such a way.'
Suspicion
Concerns about the aims of expanding Kremlin-backed media outlets are
especially palpable in Russia's EU member neighbours, the Baltic
states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which all have significant
Russian-speaking minorities, as does Ukraine.
Sputnik has not yet begun broadcasting in these countries, but the
communication researcher said Sputnik has been setting up a web-based
service in Tallinn and is quietly recruiting journalists.
Previously, you didn't hear as much of this intonation that takes you
back to the Soviet Union
The researcher said the website would be especially effective if used
as a `source-laundry asset'--putting out viral web stories that would
then be republished by local news outlets and on social media.
`Journalists working in Estonian-language media are rather suspicious
of Russian messaging,' the researcher said. `This would not be always
the case if Estonian language content reaches them via their social
media contacts.'
Yevhen Fedchenko, director of the journalism school at the National
University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, agreed that local-language internet
content from Sputnik would be more effective than radio broadcasts.
`The Russian information on Ukraine is coming from suspicious websites
like Russian Spring, and you can say this is propaganda,' Fedchenko
said. `But if it's coming from other sources and would attract eyes of
web users, it would dilute information available in Ukrainian
throughout the web.'
In such a sensitive political climate, there are concerns that Kremlin
media outlets could spark tensions between ethnic Russians and
national majorities. After signing the EU association agreement, Kiev
has toyed with the idea of Nato membership, and the Baltics have
welcomed increased numbers of US and Nato troops in recent months,
moves that Russian President Vladimir Putin denounced in a recent
German television interview. A government poll in Latvia recently
found that ethnic Russians are more supportive of Moscow's position
over Ukraine than that of the west.
`This agenda to also have an information channel broadcasting in local
languages is probably a solution of how to talk not only to the
Russians but also to the Latvians and Estonians in Latvia and Estonia,
to change their opinions or ¦ get them to ask more questions about
things like Russia's actions in Ukraine,' said Maris Cepuritis, a
political science lecturer at Rigas Stradins University who has
studied the Russian media.
`In the last few years there have been lowered tensions in society.
Both Latvian- and Russian-language speakers are moving toward centre,
and there are only some limited radicals on both sides,' Cepuritis
said. `If the presence of Russian television and Sputnik are
increasing and continuing the propaganda, they could change this.'
Ex-Soviet countries on front line of Russia's media war with the west
By Alec Luhn in Moscow
Tuesday 6 January 2015
[Summary: The Kremlin's plans for the global expansion of state media
have been greeted with suspicion, especially in the countries of the
former USSR.]
When Dmitry Kiselyov, the Russian state television presenter known for
his scandalising monologues, announced the opening of the Kremlin's
new website and radio service Sputnik News, he stressed that it would
continue the tradition of Soviet propaganda to counter what he called
the `aggressive' pro-American bias of the western media.
Unveiled as a replacement for the government's international radio
broadcasting service Voice of Russia, Sputnik News primarily differs
from its predecessor in sheer size--the new outlet's content will be
produced in 130 cities in 34 countries around the globe, according to
Kiselov.
Each Sputnik hub will employ between 30 and 80 staff members, and an
expanded team of 100 will reportedly work in the office in the
Ukrainian capital Kiev, where a new government that Russian state
media decried as a `fascist junta' has adopted an association
agreement with the European Union and is fighting a simmering conflict
with Russia-backed rebels in the country's east.
`The majority of [Sputnik News] content ¦ will be prepared locally, by
local journalists, taking into account local discussions and the
demands of the local audience,' Kiselyov said, announcing the changes
in November.
The Kremlin's media strategy
Amid tensions on a scale not seen since the Cold War, the plans for
Sputnik News are just one component of the Kremlin's changing
international media strategy. Moscow has greatly increased projected
spending for its foreign-focused media outlets for 2015, budgeting
$400 million for its RT television channel and $170 million for
Rossiya Segodnya, the state news agency that includes Sputnik News and
is headed by Kiselyov.
The expansion of Russian state media and its increasingly anti-Western
content has prompted European Union lawmakers to propose creating a
joint Russian-language television channel to provide an alternative
source of information.
A communications researcher with close ties to the Estonian government
also told the Guardian that Estonia's public broadcasting company
plans to launch a Russian-language television channel next autumn to
counter pro-Kremlin media.
`Free media made according professional journalistic standards is the
best antitoxin to disinformation and propaganda,' said the researcher,
who did not want to be named.
While some argue that Sputnik News and other Russian media initiatives
will promote debate, concerns have also arisen that the
`decentralisation' of state media represents a huge expansion of the
frontline in what many are calling an information war between Russia
and the west.
And for some, that front line appears to fall across Russia's
neighbours--the countries of the former Soviet Union--where many have
watched events in Ukraine with growing concern.
Sputnik News
Sputnik News will have hubs in major capitals including Beijing,
Berlin, London, Paris and Washington DC, but its offices are
especially concentrated in Russia's near abroad; with the exception of
Turkmenistan, all former Soviet republics will host a Sputnik hub, as
well the Georgian breakaway provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia,
which Georgia considers to be under Russian military occupation.
Besides English, the Sputnik News website now has local-language
versions for Abkhazia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, China, Germany, Spain, and
Turkey.
[Map: 130 cities covered in 34 countries worldwide. Georgia includes
stations in Sukhumi, Tskhinvali, Yerevan and Tbilisi. Baku has a
separate station, Yerevan does not. ]
In Tajikistan, Rossiya Segodnya has already been aggressively hiring
the `best local journalists and prominent human rights activists, as
well as journalists from the western media, with the promise of higher
salaries and professional development,' according to the editor of a
local independent media outlet who asked not to be identified.
Rossiya Segodnya and Sputnik News declined to comment for this article.
Proponents have argued that initiatives such as Sputnik News are no
different than the United States' long-running Voice of America and
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty services, which are funded by the US
government.
`I don't know of one large country that hasn't engaged in
foreign-language broadcasting,' said Andrei Bystritsky, former Voice
of Russia chairman who is now dean of the communications, media and
design department at Moscow's Higher School of Economics.
`Broadcasting in the languages of its neighbours is an absolutely
logical part of Russia's open, transparent foreign policy.'
Journalism standards
But the journalistic standards of Russian government-owned media have
been questioned, especially during the Ukraine crisis. Britain's
broadcasting regulator issued a warning to RT in November after
concluding that it had `failed to preserve due impartiality' in four
broadcasts about the conflict in eastern Ukraine.
On Thursday, the National Radio Company of Ukraine announced it was
beginning broadcasts in the Russian language that would reach Ukraine
and the European part of Russia. Officials in Kiev have said Ukraine
is ramping up its foreign broadcasts to improve the country's image in
Russia and Crimea.
A recent report on Russia's `weaponisation of information' published
by the Institute of Modern Russia, a New York-based think tank run by
the son of former oligarch and Putin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky,
argued that the Kremlin is wielding outlets like Sputnik News to not
just persuade, but also to `sow confusion via conspiracy theories and
proliferate falsehoods.'
`To compare Voice of America and RFE/RL with Russian propaganda is not
right,' said Belarusian politician and economist Yaroslav Romanchuk,
who heads Mises Centre, a think tank that promotes laissez-faire
capitalism. `On the one hand we are talking about mass media that are
putting out certain point of information but with standards and
multiple voices. On the other hand, we have the promotion of military
actions and an information war."
In its 85-year history, Voice of Russia--known in Soviet times as
Radio Moscow--broadcast in Russian and a variety of foreign languages,
but it wasn't until 2008 that it started broadcasting in some of the
languages of the newly independent countries of the former
USSR--specifically Armenian, Kyrgyz and Moldovan. Sputnik News,
however, will publish and broadcast in 30 different languages,
including English and the languages of all former Soviet republics
except Turkmenistan, Belarus and Lithuania, according to its website.
Its broadcast languages will also include Abkhaz, Ossetian and Crimean
Tatar, which is spoken by the Muslim minority whose leaders objected
to Russia's annexation of the Crimean peninsula this year.
Pro-Russian media already reaches a huge number of homes across the
former Soviet region. In the Baltics, the First Pribaltisky Channel
rebroadcasts Russian state-owned Channel One, which claims to reach
250 million viewers around the world. Russia's population is about 143
million.
Unlike the previous generation, however, many young people born after
the fall of the Soviet Union in the Baltics don't learn Russian.
Nerijus Maliukevicius, a political science lecturer at Vilnius
University who studies Russian media, believes this could partly
provide the rationale for Sputnik's expansion into English and local
language programming.
`I consider the coming of Sputnik to our region to be a twist in the
overall propaganda strategy,' said Maliukevicius. He believes the move
indicates that `Russia is worried about the younger generation, the
English-speaking generation, and that they would use narratives and
techniques similar to RT to gain ground in this segment.'
A Sputnik News radio host in Moscow who previously worked at Voice of
Russia said the new outlet seemed to be more `politicised', as are
other state-owned media. The host asked to speak anonymously out of
concern for job security, since the Moscow office has been cutting
staff in departments such as sport, culture and Arabic language.
Broadcasting in the languages of its neighbours is an absolutely
logical part of Russia's open, transparent foreign policy
In its first month, Sputnik News--whose tagline is `Telling the
untold'--has given extensive coverage to the Ferguson protests against
police brutality in the US, criticised policies such as Washington's
embargo of Cuba, argued that Russian gas is the best option for Europe
and that France should complete the sale of two Mistral warships to
Russia despite international sanctions against Moscow over the Ukraine
crisis. But on its debut, it also featured an interview in which
Polish white supremacist Mateusz Piskorski claimed that the United
States' secretly `Trotskyist' foreign policy had grown into a global
threat.
`Previously, you didn't hear as much of this intonation that takes you
back to the Soviet Union,' the host said. `I hear how my producer
interviews an expert, and before each question he describes the
situation in the way he wants to hear commentary about it. It seemed
that earlier the questions weren't phrased in such a way.'
Suspicion
Concerns about the aims of expanding Kremlin-backed media outlets are
especially palpable in Russia's EU member neighbours, the Baltic
states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which all have significant
Russian-speaking minorities, as does Ukraine.
Sputnik has not yet begun broadcasting in these countries, but the
communication researcher said Sputnik has been setting up a web-based
service in Tallinn and is quietly recruiting journalists.
Previously, you didn't hear as much of this intonation that takes you
back to the Soviet Union
The researcher said the website would be especially effective if used
as a `source-laundry asset'--putting out viral web stories that would
then be republished by local news outlets and on social media.
`Journalists working in Estonian-language media are rather suspicious
of Russian messaging,' the researcher said. `This would not be always
the case if Estonian language content reaches them via their social
media contacts.'
Yevhen Fedchenko, director of the journalism school at the National
University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, agreed that local-language internet
content from Sputnik would be more effective than radio broadcasts.
`The Russian information on Ukraine is coming from suspicious websites
like Russian Spring, and you can say this is propaganda,' Fedchenko
said. `But if it's coming from other sources and would attract eyes of
web users, it would dilute information available in Ukrainian
throughout the web.'
In such a sensitive political climate, there are concerns that Kremlin
media outlets could spark tensions between ethnic Russians and
national majorities. After signing the EU association agreement, Kiev
has toyed with the idea of Nato membership, and the Baltics have
welcomed increased numbers of US and Nato troops in recent months,
moves that Russian President Vladimir Putin denounced in a recent
German television interview. A government poll in Latvia recently
found that ethnic Russians are more supportive of Moscow's position
over Ukraine than that of the west.
`This agenda to also have an information channel broadcasting in local
languages is probably a solution of how to talk not only to the
Russians but also to the Latvians and Estonians in Latvia and Estonia,
to change their opinions or ¦ get them to ask more questions about
things like Russia's actions in Ukraine,' said Maris Cepuritis, a
political science lecturer at Rigas Stradins University who has
studied the Russian media.
`In the last few years there have been lowered tensions in society.
Both Latvian- and Russian-language speakers are moving toward centre,
and there are only some limited radicals on both sides,' Cepuritis
said. `If the presence of Russian television and Sputnik are
increasing and continuing the propaganda, they could change this.'